Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get bonus Avios on all BA Amex spend until 27th December

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American Express is currently running a special offer for all British Airways American Express cardholders.

You may have been emailed about this last week, but if you have opted out of email marketing you won’t have seen it.  The offer is automatic (Amex has confirmed to me that all cardholders are eligible) and does not require registration.

You will earn 1 bonus Avios for every £4 you spend on your BA or BAPP (or indeed BAP if you’re an old timer) American Express card until 27th December.

Bonus Avios on British Airways American Express spending this month

The bonus is ‘per transaction’ and you receive one bonus Avios for every full £4 spent.  A £7.99 purchase would earn one bonus Avios, for example, whilst a £12 purchase would earn three.

The official terms and conditions for the deal are very badly written and imply that you get one bonus Avios per transaction of £4+.  I have spoken to Amex and they have confirmed that it is one bonus Avios per multiple of £4, as in my example above.

The offer is valid for both UK and overseas spend.

For British Airways Premium Plus cardholders, this bonus takes the effective rate – at least on larger transactions where the impact of rounding down is negligible – to 1.75 Avios per £1 spent.  This is highest earning rate on any UK travel rewards credit card, at least for the next 17 days.

If you applied for a card today it should arrive before Christmas, allowing you to get the bonus over the first couple of days of the sales.  The free British Airways American Express card comes with a sign-up bonus of 5,000 Avios (apply here, full BA Amex review here) whilst the Premium Plus card comes with a sign-up bonus of 25,000 Avios (apply here, full BA Premium Plus Amex review here).


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current 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

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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

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

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

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

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up 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

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Comments (130)

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

  • Graham Walsh says:

    Got the £10 offer on 2 out of 4 cards. Thanks for the heads up

  • ThinkSquare says:

    A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Amex saying there would be a £5 credit for £50 spend at Esso, but it hasn’t appeared on my Offers list. Anyone else?

    • TGLoyalty says:

      Yep it appeared and spent/received it already.

    • Paul says:

      I too received the email offer, but couldn’t and still can’t find the actual offer on my account. Also, is it just me, the Amex app (IOS) just keeps asking for log in details then Errors, ‘sorry there was an error loading the content’, for over a week now…

      • ThinkSquare says:

        Amex app (Android) is working fine for me, apart from the missing Esso offer. The new supermarket one was there this morning. (Still waiting for the Avios from the last one, mind. They say I have to wait the full 90 days for them to post)

    • BJ says:

      Nectar card holders may have x10 points at Esso, ends in two days. Forgot to hand over my own Nectar card yesterday.

    • Rich says:

      I had a similar thing with the Hilton offer a couple of months ago. Came through by email asking me to opt in, but there was no way to save it to my account. I was contacting CS about something else, and they added to my account

  • stevenhp1987 says:

    How does the bonus Avios appear on my Amex account?

    Will it all be bundled up at the end or is it supposed to be added with each item? We’ve not had any bonus points appear for spend over the last week, just the regular 1.5 points per £1! The offer does appear on the main cardholders online account in saved offers too.

    • ThinkSquare says:

      In my experience, they appear (or not!) as a separate transaction, and as far as I can see, you can’t tell which purchase they were for if you’ve made more than one

      • TGLoyalty says:

        They seem to be posting based upon the collective spend in a day but i can could be wrong and its juts the bonus points applicable for the transactions for the day, I’ve been spending lots of round £50/100 etc

  • Timbo says:

    I’ve had an email from American Express this morning which seems to be a duplicate of my Bonvoy transfer from when they were running the transfer bonus.

    I wasn’t targeted for the original offer, so I ran it speculatively. Hopefully this indicates that the bonus is going out to everybody.

    • Grant says:

      I had the same

    • RussellH says:

      I doubt it, somehow.

      A few weeks ago I transferred some points to both Hilton and Marriott. The points arrived promptly. Yesterday I got an e-mail from Amex telling me that the Hilton points had arrived.
      And today I got two more e-mails from Amex, one confirming that I had asked for a transfer to Hilton, the other to Marriott.
      Seems to me that Amex’s auto e-mail system is in serious need of maintenance, nothing more.

    • JPa says:

      There seems to have been a number of ‘stuck’ emails go out from Amex yesterday from a while ago. I assume your one was in the stuck list from when it was first sent. I go a number of confirmation emails about partner registrations and transfers etc yesterday.

    • The Savage Squirrel says:

      +1 for the Amex Email server having crapped itself and spat out a load of historical stuff today. I think it was happening yesterday too.

  • Michael C says:

    OT: anyone heard if there been any BA flight disruption to Paris?
    Hoping to do that + Roissy bus to centre on Sunday…

    • BJ says:

      Had two separate lots of relatives flying from Paris with easyjet on 5th and 6th. Flights delayed around an hour, no other issues.

      • Lady London says:

        Had a flight canceled for this evening due the strike. It was notified well over 24hrs ahead as a 45min “delay”. At that kind of notice it’s not a delay itsa reschedule. Watched it all day yesterday at 45min “delay”. Remembering that flight is regularly delayed 1 hour even when there isn’t a strike. Which misses all connecting public transport or at least means arriving home 0200am if lucky.

        At 19.19 yesterday evening I bottled and moved the flight to a day later

        At 19.38 I got the ‘your flight is cancelled’ email with an offer of hotel accommodation. Too late already moved the flight and booked hotel. Grrrr. Will not be able to claim as timestamps will show I moved the flight before the timestamp of the cancellation email.grr

  • guesswho2000 says:

    OT CX Asia Miles – bit niche for the UK market admittedly, but the horrible 36m expiry policy will be no more as of 1/1 https://milelion.com/2019/12/10/asia-miles-no-longer-expire-with-activity-every-18-months/

  • Paul Stevens says:

    OT data-point – Had to pay HMRC a little bit extra so tried my COT mastercard. It is still working.

    • The Savage Squirrel says:

      It’ll keep working until Jan (unless you choose to order a new one early).

  • Max says:

    I haven’t received any email about the bonus avios offer. Does it definitely apply to all free BA Amex cardholders?

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

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