BA launches unprecedented 75% ‘buy Avios points’ bonus – worth it?

British Airways has launched a new ‘buy Avios’ bonus promotion – and it is the most generous we have ever seen.

Until 18th May you will receive 75% bonus Avios when you buy or gift points as long as you are a British Airways American Express cardholder.  It even seems to work if you’ve had a BA Amex in the last couple of years – see below.

If you are NOT a British Airways American Express cardholder, you get a 50% bonus.

Even better, there is no minimum purchase.  The bonus kicks in with the smallest 1,000 Avios transaction.

You need to visit ba.com via this page in order to buy.

IMPORTANT: The landing page shows a 50% bonus irrespective of whether you are a BA Amex cardholder or not.  However, when you reach the purchase page it WILL show you the 75% bonus rather than the 50% shown on the first page.

British Airways has increased the number of Avios you can buy under this deal – the cap is now 200,000 points per year!  Annual purchase limits have been reset so that everyone can buy the full 200,000 + 75%.

This means that, with the bonus, you can buy up to 350,000 Avios for a whopping £3,215 – as long as you have a BA Amex.  Despite what the website says, you can pay with any American Express card.

What if I just cancelled or just got a BA Amex?

Here’s the thing.  The Executive Club website appears to be offering the 75% bonus to anyone who has earned Avios from a BA Amex credit card in the last couple of years – even if you don’t still have it.

This means:

if you just took out a British Airways American Express card in the last couple of weeks, you probably WON’T be offered 75%

if you cancelled your card in the last two years you probably WILL be offered 75%, although this seems to vary looking at our comments section

Interestingly, some people who still have a Lloyds Avios credit card, but NOT a BA Amex, are also being offered 75%!

The website says that you MUST pay with a British Airways American Express card.  However, ANY American Express card will work.

What does it cost if I have a BA Amex?

In general, you will pay around 0.92p per Avios under this offer.  Based on my spreadsheet of the last 7.7 million Avios I redeemed, I got 1.18p of value.  This is using very conservative valuations for the flights booked, eg I value a Business Class flight to Dubai at £1,500 because even if BA isn’t charging that there is usually a deal with a secondary airline.

If you don’t have a BA Amex, you will be paying nearer 1.1p as your bonus is only 50%.

As my core article on ‘What is an Avios worth?’ shows, it is easy to get a lot more than 0.92p.  My 1.18p real-life valuation is low because I do a lot of Gold Priority Rewards (using double Avios to force open a seat, mainly due to school holiday restrictions) and don’t always have a BA Amex 2-4-1 voucher to use.  I also tend to use Avios irrespective of the value, because I am sitting on a lot of them.

If you are strategic you should do far better than me – certainly far better than 0.92p.  It is well worth thinking about at this price even if you are not normally a buyer.

The link to buy is here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2021)

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

There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

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

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

If you have a small business, we especially recommend Capital On Cap’s Visa card which comes with a generous bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)