Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

ENDS SUNDAY: Get 20% off ALL British Airways flights to May 2022 in an Olympic flash sale

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Timed to coincide with the opening ceremony for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, British Airways – Official Airline Partner of Team GB and Paralympics GB – has launched a flash sale.

You can save 20% off all flights booked between now and midnight on Sunday.

Full details of the sale are on this special page of ba.com.

British Airways A350

How does the sale work?

The sale is only available to British Airways Executive Club members.

What this means is you must log in to your BA account before you start to book, or the code will be rejected.

The discount is only available on trips which begin in the UK.

You need to use the following promotional codes when booking:

  • TeamGB1 for short haul flights – £100 spend needed
  • TeamGB2 for long haul flights – £300 spend needed

Obviously the codes only work when booking at ba.com or via a British Airways call centre.

There is a slight niggle in how the codes work looking at reports. If you have a child on your booking, and the child ticket is under £100 / £300 even though the adult tickets are not, you cannot use the code. This seems a bit weird to me – surely it would have made more sense to allow the discount on the adult tickets and just ignore the child tickets?

Is the discount off the base fare or the full fare?

Impressively, it is off the full fare. This means that you are getting a 20% discount on the taxes, fees and charges too.

Can I use ‘part pay with Avios’ as well?

No. The ability to reduce the cost of the flight with Avios disappears once you have input the discount code.

Are all flights and classes included?

You get the discount on all British Airways operated and marketed flights, including BA CityFlyer services from London City and Southampton.

It will not work on codeshare partners such as Loganair or flights on franchise partners such as Comair.

All travel classes are included except First Class.

Can you use a Future Travel Voucher?

Looking at the comments below, yes.

This means, of course, that you could refund an existing flight (the voucher usually appears immediately) and then rebook, assuming you save money.

What are the travel dates?

You must fly between 1st August 2021 and 25th May 2022. This seems surprisingly generous as it includes Christmas, February half-term for ski trips and Easter 2022.

Full details of the British Airways flash sale and the small print are on ba.com here.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

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

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

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

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

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

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

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

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

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

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

Comments (112)

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

  • ee says:

    Thanks for highlighting this. Just cancelled and rebooked flights to Malta and saved £130 (in the form of a FTV for my next booking!)

    • ee says:

      I should have also said the website was not working well on Chrome or IE. I could only get safari to accept both the TEAMGB1 code and my existing FTV.

  • Tom says:

    Sorry I am sure this has been covered a million times before. I have an avios booking which I would like to now cancel and pay cash for. If I cancel my avios booking would I get an evoucher/FTV for the value of the taxes I paid? Or do I still lose that?

    • ChrisC says:

      If you get a voucher everything you used to pay for the flight – cash, avios, 2-4-1 vouchers, green shield stamps – is wrapped up in it so you lose nothing.

      Remember with avios bookings you can still cancel and get a full refund of everything less the £35 cancellation fee.

  • Oz_Traveller says:

    Thanks for alerting me. I just saved £600 on flights to Dubai!

  • Howard says:

    Sorry to be off topic but Amex have just cancelled my BA Amex and Gold Cards. Have been with Amex for over 15 years. I always pay on time and never missed a payment. My Experian rating is normally around 900 but the last few months its gone to 999/999. I am 100% certain there is nothing suspicious purchase. I moved house three months ago. I have no debt apart from a new car lease from April 2021. The BA card I have not used much recently has I have my voucher for the year and the Gold Card my average spend is around £200 a month. My wife’s cards are still ok.

    I realise there is little I can do apart from move my 400,000 Amex Points but is this common? I have not even done any card switching in past year or new applications.

    • Danny says:

      Have Amex told you the reasons or have you attempted to find out why they have cancelled your cards? You should posted this in today’s Chat Thread.

      • Howard says:

        “likely business reason”…..I will move….Thanks

        • Howard says:

          I spoke to someone else who says “suspicious account activity”.

          All my purchases are from stores or online…..I dont gamble or do lottery…..I did pay £3,000 on Amex Card for part payment of new kitchen.

          • Nick says:

            Amex doesn’t care what your Experian score is. In fact no one does apart from Experian themselves, it’s meaningless otherwise.

            Amex will have their reasons for this. They should give you a steer if you ask. But ultimately it’s in their T&C that they can close accounts, so you might just have to smile and move on. They’ll have a reason though, are you sure there isn’t something you’ve missed in the post above?

    • Luke says:

      Might be something to do with your change of address?

      • Howard says:

        Thanks all for advice. I have been through both accounts and I have emailed the CEO and board asking for a review of my account. All purchases going back to November 2020 are just normal spending. I understand MS but I dont do that. I think Luke may have a point as its due to change of address. I just realised that I have a Nationwide Account and I paid Amex with this bank account but I have not changed my address with Nationwide so that’s a possibility. I have flagged this up in my email. Also I have forgotten to register on electorial register so I did this yesterday.

  • ChrisC says:

    I called earlier to make a booking using 2 FTVs

    No problems in using FTVs on a booking and to get the TEAMGB1 discount.

    Small balance issued as a new e-voucher even though it was only a fiver. I asked if I could have thst as cash and he said policy used to be refund if less that £20 but they can’t do that now.

    One tip is that if you have a 125-2 voucher then those are FTVs (needing a call to use)

    A 125-4 voucher is an e-voucher and can be used on line.

    • Sarah says:

      That is strange – I was refunded £173 last week when I used my FTV

  • @mkcol says:

    They could have been a lot clearer in their T&C about the discount being applicable to a min spend of £100 per person for short haul flights as I’ve faffed around for ages to see if my Oslo flights in November could be cheaper.

    Annoyingly it only says “The Promotion Code “TeamGB1” is valid on all Euro Traveller and Club Europe flights, where the total flight spend is £100 or more”.

    Nonetheless I’m still happy that I’d previously got 2 economy plus seats for £172.

    • Babyg says:

      can you tweak it by adding seat selection, or baggage to trigger the voucher?

  • Peter says:

    Can anyone explain why Avios prices for LHR-ORL in economy are showing as 30,000 off-peak or 35,000 peak Avios each way in July 2022, as opposed to 16250 / 25000?

    I know value for money is poor on economy, but I thought Orlando was in Zone 6? Business class comes in at the correct Zone 6 numbers.

    Any help appreciated!

    • Peter says:

      To be clear, I mean Orlando (MCO)!

    • ChrisC says:

      Have you clicked on the ‘more pricing options’ tab?

      That should bring up other avios and cash combinations.

      • Peter says:

        Ah – got it. Thanks. Strange that now the table price is in the middle of a range. It’s a while since I booked a flight so I guess things have moved on.

  • Michael Purcell says:

    Thanks for the article on this Rob, myself and my husband saved over £800 on business class flights to Rio that we were looking at over the past few days, also you saved us a bundle through Emyr with a stay in London next week, keep up the good work and thanks again… Michael

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

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