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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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Category

British Airways American Express

Comments (360)

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

  • Clarence says:
    1 Jun1 June 11:31

    Living in Northern Ireland this might work for us. If we are flying from Dub to LHR and onwards using a 241 on the same day will it reduce the taxes element of the cost as we would only be in the UK for about 7 or 8 hours

    • Super Secret Stuff says:
      1 Jun1 June 12:15

      Yes but the Air Passenger Duty rules are complicated to explain. Best read up on it

    • Walty says:
      1 Jun1 June 12:27

      I did a dummy booking on BA.com for first class…BHD-LHR-DXB and DUB-LHR-DXB and there is a saving of about £330 in “Charges / Fees / Taxes” person.
      If that’s still the case when using a 2-4-1 post sept 1st, then it’s great news

      • ChrisC says:
        1 Jun1 June 13:04

        Part of that would be no APD from Dublin (saving £180)

        The ex NI APD exemption is only for Zone B (so basically not Europe) direct flights.

        If I was in NI I would price up starting un DUB but returning to BHD just to eliminate that extra journey from DUB to home

  • JamesW says:
    1 Jun1 June 11:31

    £250 is still cheap for the 2-4-1 voucher. I’ve just saved over £5000 on a pair of tickets.

    • HAK says:
      1 Jun1 June 13:01

      How did you save £5000 on a pair of tickets unless you were actually planning to pay £5000 (plus the difference in the taxes and fees)? If you were not planning on paying this then you never made the saving. Moreover, is saving even the right word if there is not 5k now in your bank? The clever marketing people convince you that you have somehow “saved” money when you have in fact spent money!

      • Andy says:
        1 Jun1 June 14:25

        Good for you saving 5k, shame people have to pi** on your parade.

        I recently bought a brand new Audi for 12000 less than list price.

        Instead of 38k I paid 26k, please Einstein, explain how I didn’t save 12k.

        If I’d have paid 38 or not Either way I saved 12k on the list price full stop

      • Phil says:
        1 Jun1 June 16:03

        Correct, at best you could describe the £5k as cost avoidance but not a saving. 20 years as a procurement professional has seen me try every different trick to get something described as a saving, this definitely isn’t one.

  • Dave says:
    1 Jun1 June 11:31

    “Premium Plus cardholders also get access to additional award availability.” I did not know this, is this something new?

    I will stay with the card as I like to use it on the Heathrow – JFK route, so £250 is still good value. I would be willing to pay £500 a year for a 3rd tier Platinum BA Avios card if it opened up even more First Class availability and maybe 2 Avios per £1 or some other perks.

    • OT says:
      1 Jun1 June 11:53

      I thought the same, but was surprised there wasn’t any more details in the article

      Rob – is the detail of this yet to be confirmed? Odd to only mention it in passing otherwise

      • Rob says:
        1 Jun1 June 12:11

        They didn’t tell us. We are digging but seems like I-class in CW.

    • Memesweeper says:
      1 Jun1 June 12:07

      “British Airways will open it discounted Club World tickets to redemptions“

      Fantastic news

      • Rob says:
        1 Jun1 June 12:09

        I class. They didn’t tell us this in advance.

        • jj says:
          1 Jun1 June 14:12

          Is this as huge as it seems? I’ve just tried searching January 2022 on ITA matrix, and I availability is wide open to most destinations that I’m interested in visiting including, for example, Sydney, Cape Town, Sao Paolo and Vancouver (even on weekends in the ski season).

          This seems too good to be true?

          • lcylocal says:
            1 Jun1 June 14:24

            Yes if this is correct it seems like a massive new benefit. Will be definitely worth the £55 for me. I am actually hoping it will be on I class in Club Europe too.

    • Mike says:
      1 Jun1 June 21:37

      Dave – I agree I would be willing to pay circa £500 for a BA platinum card at 2 avios to the £ and may be BA silver status included too

  • 1ATL says:
    1 Jun1 June 11:44

    I’m not overly excited by this revelation but I can’t say I’m exactly surprised – it’s been at least 5 years since the fee went up to £195 from the previous £150. Centurion and Platinum are well overdue a price hike too so there’s a spoiler for you …. I can assure you it won’t be long. I’ve never seen the value in triggering a 241voucher on the free card anyway. If I were nearing the £10k spend I’d just switch over to the paid card and get the voucher valid for all classes and valid for 2yrs before going back to the basic and claiming a retrospective refund.

    • Dominic says:
      1 Jun1 June 11:53

      Platinum already got a price hike from £4XX to £550.

      • Andrew says:
        1 Jun1 June 11:57

        *575. And that was only a couple of years ago, so wouldn’t expect a fee increase any time soon, especially as they are struggling to hold on to members, handing out retention offers and free credits.

      • Travel Strong says:
        1 Jun1 June 11:58

        £575! There’s no more headroom for further platinum price hikes IMO!

        • 1ATL says:
          1 Jun1 June 13:09

          Trust me, it’s coming

          • Phil says:
            1 Jun1 June 16:06

            That’s like saying night will follow day. A price increase is almost inevitable. Over what time frame would be the real insight.

          • Rob says:
            1 Jun1 June 18:54

            The metal Gold Amex is now rolling out across Europe so that looks most likely to be the next personal card hit.

          • Mike says:
            1 Jun1 June 21:38

            Yup Plat will be £750 in no time

  • Duck Ling says:
    1 Jun1 June 11:52

    The biggest beef I have with BA Exec Club and the 2-4-1 voucher remains – the insane fuel surcharges and taxes.

    An example. I wanted to book a trip in September from LHR to DXB and with the increased number of Avios seats available quickly went on BA.com. Seats were available – for 120K Avios. PLUS £542 tax/fees per person. I just think that’s crazy.

    There was another miles promotion going on with LifeMiles where you could purchase miles and get a bonus %. In the end I cound an itinerary that suited. LX outbound via ZRH and LH inbound via FRA. I purchased 84,000 miles for the return trip to DXB which cost £720 in total. The taxes and fees? US$12.90.

    For me, this represents MUCH better value. Esentially £730 for a return ticket, essentially using no miles per se.

    At the moment it’s looking like my 2-4-1 vouchers will probably go to waste or more likely i’ll use them for some short haul european trip where taxes and fees are not insane.

    I’ll use my Avios instead where I believe they represent their best value – sweet spots on NON BA flights where I can avoid the ridiculous charges.

    • bafan says:
      1 Jun1 June 12:08

      Yeah the MR cards are a better bet IMHO. RFS is good for short haul but the surcharges really are absolutely ridiculous. I can book a JFK-LHR with AAdvantage miles for however much plus $5.60.

    • Babyg says:
      1 Jun1 June 13:09

      Yeah taxes/fees are rubbish with BA…
      DUB-DXB is 141250 Avios + £ 340.63 if you can be ar$ed flying to dub first…

  • Paul Hickey says:
    1 Jun1 June 11:52

    Can you still use the free card, spend £10,001 and upgrade to the premium card for a few days, get the 2-4-1 for premium cabins and then downgrade back to the free card – to save £250?

    • OT says:
      1 Jun1 June 11:53

      Yep, that’s what we always do. So this change makes will very little impact on that approach

    • Peter K says:
      1 Jun1 June 13:07

      You need to spend £9999 then change to the paid card, not £10001. It means when you upgrade you don’t trigger a 1yr voucher.

      • Paul Hickey says:
        1 Jun1 June 13:30

        I’ve done it by spending over £10k before and the voucher has landed within 48h after upgrading.. In fact, I’ve just done it this morning so hoping it lands lol

        • Peter K says:
          1 Jun1 June 17:22

          I’m not saying the voucher won’t arrive, just several have reported a1yr validity rather than 2yrs and have had to chase to get it altered.

    • Polly says:
      1 Jun1 June 22:15

      Must upgrade to BAPP before you spend to the final 10k….

      • Rob says:
        1 Jun1 June 22:37

        Yes, do it at £9,999 or you get a 1-year voucher in error and spend the next 6 weeks on the phone to Amex trying to fix it ….

  • Neil says:
    1 Jun1 June 12:00

    I will be cancelling it. I’ve got a Marriott card and a Gold charge card so felt uneasy about paying an extra £195 a year. I can’t justify this going to £250. Time to swap to the Virgin card I think.

  • Eligold says:
    1 Jun1 June 12:02

    Starting outside the UK is a massive one for me but I won’t keep the card any longer and it won’t help for the old vouchers. Too bad Definitely not keeping it for £250

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