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BAD NEWS (2): Your BA Premium Plus Amex fee is going up – but more Club seats opened

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American Express has announced some substantial changes today to the two British Airways credit cards.

The biggest changes are to the free British Airways American Express card which I cover here. This card has lost much of its value with the ‘2-4-1’ companion voucher being reduced to ‘Economy only’ flights. The only upside is that the qualifying spend is reduced from £20,000 to £12,000 per year.

This article covers changes to the Premium Plus card. Our full review of the British Airways Premium Plus American Express credit card is here. You can apply here (and beat the fee increase, if you apply before 1st September).

You can see full details of the changes on ba.com here.

What is changing with the British Airways Premium Plus American Express card?

Not a huge amount, but the change is still painful.

The annual fee is going up on 1st September from £195 to £250 per year.

The increase will take effect from your next anniversary date after 1st September. You will receive a letter confirming the changes in the next week or so.

Am I getting any new benefits from my extra £55?

There are some positive changes to the 2-4-1 companion voucher from 1st September.

Premium Plus cardholders get access to additional award availability. This is in addition to the new minimum number of seats guaranteed by BA, although it will vary by route and demand. British Airways will open up ‘I Class’ discounted Club World tickets for voucher redemptions (new vouchers from 1st September only) which should increase availability considerably off peak.

You will also be able to use it for flights which do not depart from the UK. This won’t benefit many people, however, and it doesn’t apply retrospectively to companion vouchers which have already been issued.

The two ways in which this might be useful are:

  • for one-way flights back to the UK, when you are travelling outwards on another airline or on a BA cash ticket
  • if you want to save Air Passenger Duty by booking, say, Dublin to Heathrow to Dubai – but the extra Avios need for Dublin to Heathrow, plus the cost of getting to Dublin in the first place, would eat up much of the saving

In a cosmetic change, the card is getting a new design which I haven’t seen. The card number will be moved to the back of the card.

What can you do if you don’t want to pay £250 per year?

British Airways and American Express are hoping that the additional Avios availability announced last week, plus access to I-class seating, will make people willing to pay the higher fee.

The snag, of course, is that it will take a while for value of additional availability to become clear, whilst the £250 will be very obvious from the start.

There isn’t even any additional Avios availability, if you are being pedantic, until British Airways returns to at least 50% of the schedule it was running in January 2019. At the moment it is offering double the number of Avios seats but on fewer than 50% of the usual number of services.

Your options would include:

Conclusion

My gut feeling is that most people will suck up the £250 fee for the British Airways Premium Plus card. There was lots of grumbling in this HfP article from 2016 when the fee rose from £150 to £195 but how many people actually went through with their threat to cancel?

The benefits are still very powerful if you can use the 2-4-1 voucher for a premium cabin redemption, and in theory there should eventually be more Avios seats available under the new arrangements. Letting you redeem new vouchers earned from September for I-class Club World seats will also help.

I am more interested to see how holders of the free British Airways American Express card react now that their companion voucher can only be used in Economy. How many will cancel and how many will decide to pay £250 per year to upgrade? It would be interesting to know what percentage of 2-4-1 vouchers issued on the free card are redeemed in premium cabins.

Amex needs to be careful because I think it is now vulnerable to attack. There are, I believe, around 500,000 holders of BA Amex cards and they are an attractive market, spending over £1 billion per month AFAIK. They are relatively easy to target via HfP and other travel media.

JP Morgan Chase is reportedly planning premium UK credit cards. It has hired 400 people in the UK to launch a Marcus-style retail bank under the Chase brand and is proving a strong competitor to Amex in the US. Who knows what mileage products may emerge from Chase or other players?

Given that American Express recently bailed out British Airways by pre-paying for £750 million-worth of Avios, it is clearly assuming that you stick around.

If you decide not to stick around, we will cover some of the alternatives in the weeks to come.

You can find out more on this special page of ba.com.

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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

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Category

British Airways American Express

Comments (363)

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

  • Grimz says:
    1 Jun1 June 15:23

    I am sitting on a spend of 9500 on the blue card, I was holding back till nearer the end of the year before upgrading to black to trigger the voucher – will this still work? I know the fee will be higher but I will cancel the card after a couple of months.

    • Polly says:
      1 Jun1 June 22:50

      Yes, better to upgrade when new system in place…then cancel as planned. Bit iffy if people immediately drop back to free blue card tho. Best to just cancel out once new 241 voucher earned.

  • VINZ says:
    1 Jun1 June 15:47

    One silly question: will the BAPP vouchers still be redeemable in first class? That’s all I’m interested in…

    • jj says:
      1 Jun1 June 16:00

      Yes – it can be used in first class, although availability is likely to be scarce given the recent fleet changes. From the FAQs:

      “A British Airways American Express Premium Plus Companion Voucher (earned after 1 September 2021) can be used to book a seat in any cabin for a companion on the same flight as you (the British Airways American Express Card Account Holder) and in the same cabin.”

    • Claire Jacobs says:
      1 Jun1 June 18:38

      Yes. I just got one for April 2022. It’s very rare to get First Class nowadays though.

    • Vinz says:
      2 Jun2 June 08:43

      Thank you! If I can I always book first class with those vouchers. Glad they’re not scrapping it

  • Russ says:
    1 Jun1 June 16:08

    Seems to me that there’s going to be more availability in J+ class for cash and full avios fares? Are they tying to reinstate premium cabins as premium again but want point collectors safely down the back before they release upgrades in J and F? Very few I’d imagine want to fly economy when they can fly business class and would think twice about taking out a card committing themselves to such a cheap conclusion to all their spending efforts.

  • Alex W says:
    1 Jun1 June 16:12

    First class one-way back from Hong Kong it is then!

    • Claire Jacobs says:
      1 Jun1 June 18:39

      Did that a couple of years ago. It was well worth the extra avios

    • Polly says:
      1 Jun1 June 22:52

      Will we find any F seats tho…had to settle for J on our next trip there…

  • Anna says:
    1 Jun1 June 16:23

    My gut feeling is that it’ll still be worth it for us, at least for the next 2/3 years while we still need 3/4 seats on peak dates. After that, possibly – if we can get 2 F seats per year out of it.

  • John says:
    1 Jun1 June 16:29

    This is going to be a no for me. As a single traveller (usually) it’s the voucher isn’t really useful, and with the additional award availability tied to the voucher, the card isn’t useful either with that kind of fee.

    Switching to the free card makes sense just for booking BA flights and MR cards for the rest.

    • John says:
      1 Jun1 June 16:40

      I should add, the main reason I was using this over MR was to clear the 2 year period and get a sign-up bonuses on the Platinum anyway, which I got along with the boosted sign-up bonus.

    • Memesweeper says:
      1 Jun1 June 16:42

      “ Premium Plus cardholders get access to additional award availability. ”

      Seems to be tied to the account, not the voucher.

      • John says:
        1 Jun1 June 16:47

        “British Airways will open up ‘I Class’ discounted Club World tickets for voucher redemptions (new vouchers from 1st September only)”

        I took this to mean that the additional availability only applies when booking with the voucher – if it applies to the account regardless of whether you’re using a voucher then I’d definitely stick with it.

        • Memesweeper says:
          1 Jun1 June 17:01

          Hmmm … yup that makes sense …

        • Matthew R says:
          1 Jun1 June 17:12

          Any clarification possible @Rob? Extra inventory just when using the voucher, or when booking any redemption as BAPP holder?

          • Rob says:
            1 Jun1 June 18:52

            Just with the 241, and only with a 241 issued after 1/9/21.

  • pauldb says:
    1 Jun1 June 16:30

    Actually, thinking about it, wasn’t the to/from UK restriction partly to stop people taking the mickey:

    241a: open jaw LON-HKG , HKG-LON(stopover)-JFK
    241b: JFK-LON(stopover)-CPT, CPT-LON(stopover)-YVR
    241c: YVR-LON(s)-SIN, SIN-LON(s)-BGI

    All of those are permissible return bookings. Out of three vouchers I’ve made 5-and-a-half trips to HKG, JFK, CPT, YVR, SIN and BGI.

    Perhaps more realistically, why would anyone not stick a shorthaul CE leg on the end of a normal CW booking, after a stopover. And then come back in CE on the first leg of your next longhaul 241, and so on…

    • JDB says:
      1 Jun1 June 17:21

      I believe you can only start and end (or open jaw) in a different country if those airports are in the same zone. That’s an Avios rule, not specific to the voucher. Also, not sure if you are allowed (free) stopovers, except to domestic flights??

      • meta says:
        1 Jun1 June 17:34

        No it doesn’t have to be in the same zone. The rule is that the separate segment must not be in greater in distance than either of the two segments on one ticket.

    • BuilBackBetter says:
      1 Jun1 June 17:30

      Aren’t you paying full APD on the stopovers?
      Also Avios is charged for each segment, not just by distance.
      Is there any point in these itineraries?

      • pauldb says:
        1 Jun1 June 17:49

        Yes you’ll pay APD for each UK departure. But the point is you get to apply the 241 benefit to 11 flights instead of 6 (for 3 vouchers). So each voucher is saving you an average 230k avios instead of 130k (62.5k per leg as an example, x11/3 vs x2).

        • JDB says:
          1 Jun1 June 18:25

          I don’t believe any of the three itineraries are permissible Avios routings per the T&Cs, including:-
          15.15. Rewards are subject to IATA fare construction rules. Travel itineraries for Reward bookings may start and end at different airports within the same country, or in different countries, provided the two airports are in the same zone. Outbound journeys may terminate at a different airport to the airport where the return journey starts provided the two airports are within the same zone.

          • pauldb says:
            1 Jun1 June 18:34

            That rule has always been there, but never applied, whatever “zone” is meant to mean. I’ve done LON-DXB//BOM-LON, and LON-TYO//LAX-LON is another common, extreme one.

          • meta says:
            1 Jun1 June 20:01

            IATA rules are as outlined above. In @pauldb scenario. DXB-BOM is shorter than LHR-DXB and BOM-LON. Same as the other one, although I think LAX is no good as I have only been able to do SFO (but perhaps that was because LAX was difficult to get on Avios).

          • Polly says:
            1 Jun1 June 22:57

            Yep wouldn’t let us change from HKG to KUL a couple of years ago, zone issue, they said.

  • Gothbe says:
    1 Jun1 June 18:30

    If I apply for the premium card now to get in at £150, can I use the 2 for 1 ex UK any time after I earn it or only if I trigger it after 1st September. In other words if I trigger it pre 1/9 is it only usable from the UK and if I trigger after 1/9 it’s usable from anywhere?

    • David says:
      1 Jun1 June 18:41

      Rob, I’d be interested in the answer to Gothbe. I was planning to trigger my BAPP Companion Voucher in July, but will hold off on the final spending until after Sept 1 if it will allow me the additional benefits.

      • Rob says:
        1 Jun1 June 18:47

        £195, not £150.

        Yes, as long as you trigger the £10k after 1/9 then you get the new-style voucher.

        • Gothbe says:
          1 Jun1 June 18:51

          Doh, wishful thinking re £150 lol. Cheers Rob. Apply now, trigger post 1/9

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

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