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Have you been given 2019 free Avios from British Airways?

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It looks like British Airways has kicked off its 100th birthday celebrations, although it has been kept very much wraps.

At noon yesterday BA launched its special ‘£200 return’ flights to selected destinations in Economy / World Traveller.  This deal will run until Thursday, with two new destinations launched each day at noon.

More interesting, however, is the 2019 Avios which are mysteriously appearing in British Airways Executive Club accounts.

Some people – and my wife and I are NOT among them – received 2,018 Avios from British Airways on their birthday last year.  It isn’t clear what you had to do to receive these (my wife and I are both BA Gold) but we clearly didn’t do it!

If you received 2,018 birthday Avios from BA last year on your birthday, it seems that you should have received 2,019 Avios from British Airways yesterday to celebrate BA’s 100th birthday.

Why? Who knows?  It is a generous gesture, although now you’ve read about this – and realised that you haven’t got them – the net balance of ‘people who now feel happier towards BA’ versus ‘people who now feel grumpier towards BA’ may not be positive ….

HFP-Barclaycard-Avios-Card

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (September 2023)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £12,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

Get a 10,000 points bonus plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

EDIT: Applications for this card are temporarily suspended due to IT issues with the British Airways On Business SME loyalty scheme.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and free for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (118)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Simon Schus says:
    22 Jan22 January 22:16

    Off topic but I appreciate quite late in the day today so might need to ask tomorrow:

    I have a flight DUB-LHR-JFK (BA then AA). I am taking a positioning flight LHR-DUB the same day, with a reasonable time between inbound to DUB and outbound to DUB for delays. I have two questions from your wisdom:

    1) Rather than dragging my bags to DUB, can I check them in early with AA in LHR despite not having flown the DUB-LHR segment yet? I’d still take the DUB-LHR segment, just trying to minimize what I need to do in DUB.

    2) If not, do you think I could check my bags in at LHR after taking the DUB-LHR flight? I could drop it in storage for a few hours if LHR offers that (I can’t remember if they do).

    • Peter K says:
      22 Jan22 January 22:25

      Don’t know about 1)
      My guess is no to 2) as you check in bags before security and if on a connecting flight you don’t go back through security between flights but stay in the airport terminal, airside.
      Your boarding pass would not be for LHR (but DUB) so if you did try to leave to check in a bag you might have difficulty getting airside again.

      • Simon Schus says:
        22 Jan22 January 22:36

        Thanks for getting back.

        Re 2:
        After DUB-LHR, I’d have to reclear security anyway on a connection which would involve scanning my boarding pass and then proceeding back through the hand luggage scanners (from memory, it’s been a while since doing a connection from DUB-LHR). I’d have an inter-terminal connection from T5-T3 which I could do by the “airside” buses but could also just go through the LHR passport egates and hop on the HeX/Underground between the two terminals.

        Thoughts?

        • Simon Schus says:
          22 Jan22 January 22:37

          (The boarding pass would be for LHR as I would have the onward boarding pass likely in my phone and if not I could have AA print a new one out when I get to to the bag drop desks).

      • TGLoyalty says:
        22 Jan22 January 22:40

        I’m confused I’ve read this as Simon leaves his bags in lhr and flies round trip to Dub and rather than using flight connections goes landslide grabs his bags and checks them in.

        I’m sure there’s no issue as there would be a boarding pass for lhr to jfk and getting airside again would’t be an issue.

        A connection is just another flight and it’s perfectly reasonable to leave an airport between flights if you can.

        Re 1 you can always try if it’s a baggage machine it may well accept it if not 2 will 100% work if time allows.

        • Simon Schus says:
          22 Jan22 January 22:46

          Thanks for your thoughts! I’ll have a think!

        • Janet says:
          23 Jan23 January 01:05

          My reading of this is… oh why the fuck bother? Rob earns money from advice and I get diddly squat.

  • Tim says:
    23 Jan23 January 00:54

    Have been BA Gold since 2002. Now Star Gold instead. Often placed in between Oneworld Sapphire and Emerald – there are a good few locations where food and champagne is better than BA GF. On another note… £7 access to Dragonpass lounges is possible. Which is why I’ve abandoned BA and shifted to Star. The £7 access to lounges is a secret I’m keeping.

  • Trev says:
    23 Jan23 January 05:33

    Got both promotions. 2018 on 14 Jan and 2019 on 21st. Nice!

  • Mike says:
    23 Jan23 January 09:26

    Not sure about Avios, but I did get a suprise 2000 Virgin miles on my birthday. Which was nice.

  • Thunderbirds says:
    23 Jan23 January 12:32

    I’m Blue and got both, perhaps it it a reverse status thing…

  • Sarah says:
    23 Jan23 January 21:47

    Grrrrr…. 🙁

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