Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

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

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

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.

PS. If you are not a regular Head for Points visitor, why not sign up for our FREE weekly or daily newsletters? They are full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news and will help you travel better. To join our 65,000 free subscribers, click the button below or visit this page of the site to find out more. Thank you.

earns points from credit cards

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2025 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 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

Get 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 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:

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up 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 Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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

Category

British Airways American Express

Comments (360)

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

  • Rich says:
    1 Jun1 June 10:47

    Presumably any voucher issued against a premium account is still valid for 2 years and in all cabins even if the card is subsequently downgraded (with associated pro rata refund) to the free version? Might be worth an upgrade back to premium in August then reduce back to free once I’ve spent the £10k if so.

  • Chris says:
    1 Jun1 June 10:48

    I think they should reintroduce a mid tier card. There’s a huge gap between a free BA blue card and a £250 a year BA black card.

    If they introduced a BA silver card priced around £60 to £99 a year, it would make the BA cards more competitive with the Marriott Bonvoy amex which is £75 a year.

    If they wanted to differentiate it from the BA black card (to avoid cannibalising their own sales), they could restrict the silver amex companion voucher to Euro Traveller, Club Europe and World Traveller Plus.

    If they had a better mid range offering they could raise the price of the BA black to £299 or go even higher and add better features to it like lounge access or fast track security.

    • sigma421 says:
      1 Jun1 June 10:50

      I think there was a product like this at one point?

      • lumma says:
        1 Jun1 June 11:01

        Yeah, it’s a silver coloured one where the spend is £15k for a 1.5 year valid 241. Not sure what the other benefits are but I sometimes encounter one in the wild at work

      • Rob says:
        1 Jun1 June 12:16

        It is scrapped on 31/8.

    • BuilBackBetter says:
      1 Jun1 June 11:23

      Add BA bronze to it and BA Silver to the BAPP card. That’ll work.

      • Travel Strong says:
        1 Jun1 June 12:00

        +1. I’d take BAPP for the sake of bronze and 7 day out seat reservations, on top of the 241 of course.

    • planeconcorde says:
      1 Jun1 June 11:56

      The BA AMEX Silver card (mid tier) still exists, but not available to new clients. Currently £95 annual fee. I await with interest to see what changes are going to be made to the mid-tier Ts & Cs.

      • Rob says:
        1 Jun1 June 12:10

        It is scrapped. It is part of this change.

        • planeconcorde says:
          1 Jun1 June 12:51

          Oh dear. Is there any news as to what will happen to existing card holders. Will they be automatically moved to one of the other cards, if so which one?

          • Rob says:
            1 Jun1 June 22:39

            Are you sure? Reads to me like the £195 is charged immediately.

          • planeconcorde says:
            1 Jun1 June 23:13

            @Rob I agree with you, I misread it the first time. I have sent you some screenshots to your email address.

    • Rob says:
      1 Jun1 June 12:22

      I pitched this once in an article – give Bronze and charge £300+.

  • Richie says:
    1 Jun1 June 10:53

    £55 extra per year is more than an extra £1 per week and more than an extra £4.50 per month. £47.50 extra per year or less isn’t.

    • lumma says:
      1 Jun1 June 11:02

      I think 250 minus 195 is £55 per year extra to be fair

  • MikeW says:
    1 Jun1 June 10:53

    Delighted with this change. Being based more in Spain than the U.K. currently, the ability to start a 2-4-1 itinerary somewhere other than the U.K. with future vouchers is a huge plus.

  • Safety Card says:
    1 Jun1 June 10:57

    I’ve been thinking about what to do with my cards for a while, and this is making me really consider my options. Currently I have a Amex Gold and my wife is supplementary on it. She has a BA Amex and I am supplementary on it. We have just triggered our 2-4-1 for this year and do make use of them. What with the bonuses (or lack of them available if you already have a card) I was thinking on cancelling her BA Amex. Keeping myself on the Gold card, then in 18 months (is that right?) when she’s eligible for the bonus again, sign her back up to the BA card and trigger the voucher as soon as possible for that year.

  • Babyg says:
    1 Jun1 June 11:00

    AMEX/BA meeting
    “we need to make our black card better”
    “well lets make the blue card really awful”
    “perfect, now charge 25% more for the new awesome black card”
    to be honest, the being able to use the 2for1 from outside of the UK is huge for me… so much more flexibility now…

    • Harry T says:
      1 Jun1 June 11:02

      At least it’s slightly better than the hike for the Amex platinum fee which was justified by the addition of credit for an average to poor taxi service most of the UK can’t use…

  • SammyJ says:
    1 Jun1 June 11:14

    Any idea what the tax/surcharges would be on a return flight originating in the US, eg MIA-LHR-MIA in Club?
    Or open jaw MIA-LHR/DUB-MIA?

    I’m wondering whether this could work to
    reduce surcharges if we nested that inside a standard LHR-MIA-LHR flight in two trips?

    • meta says:
      1 Jun1 June 11:23

      This is unknown and if there are no surcharges especially for Hong Kong/Tokyo/Brazil it would totally justify me keeping the card now that I managed to considerably diversify my miles and points in various schemes.

      • Polly says:
        1 Jun1 June 19:02

        Totally, we would nest from HKG no problem… provided we can get in and out of there in the future!

      • Michael C says:
        1 Jun1 June 21:27

        BA stopped this with Brazil by including one of their special unknown charges (after you’ve clicked through all the reservation process). I’m guessing HKG will be next.

  • Dave Pearson says:
    1 Jun1 June 11:15

    Please don’t abbreviate ‘As Far As I Know’ to AFAIK. It took me a little while to work out what this meant.

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

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.

Get 25,000 Avios with the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

GET A SIGN-UP BONUS OF 18,000 VIRGIN POINTS!

Latest Forum Posts

Get 80,000 bonus points (worth 80,000 Avios) and £400 of dining credit with The Platinum Card (Offer ends 27th May)

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Get up to 10,000 bonus Hilton Honors points

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.

SME? GET THE ONLY FREE SMALL BUSINESS CREDIT CARD WHICH CAN EARN AVIOS

Get points worth 30,000 Avios with 'first year free' American Express Gold (ends 27th May)

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.

Got it!