Two new American Express deals – 1,000 Avios on £500 BA spend and £300 off Qatar Airways

Two new American Express cashback flight offers have appeared which are worth a look.

As usual, you need to see if you are targetted for these promotions by looking at the ‘Offers’ tab online or in the Amex app for each American Express card you hold. You must click ‘Save to Card’ to activate the offer.

A British Airways deal

First is a British Airways deal which is only available to British Airways Premium Plus American Express (EDIT: and apparently BA Amex) cardholders.

You can find our British Airways Premium Plus American Express review here and our free British Airways American Express review here.

You’re looking for this:

You will receive 1,000 Avios when you spend £500 at ba.com by 28th February. It is valid up to FIVE times.

I’m not sure BA has thought this through. When you book flights at ba.com, each ticket is charged separately to your credit card. This means that, if you book 4 x £500 tickets for your family, it should – in theory – trigger 4 x 1,000 Avios. Was this the plan?

There are no rules about booking certain ticket classes. All flights must depart from the UK.

I imagine that Avios redemption taxes and charges will trigger the bonus IF each ticket has charges of £500+. The offer is NOT cumulative and, as BA will split out individual tickets on your statement, you are unlikely to get anything if you book two tickets with taxes and charges of £350.

Here’s the weird bit. The rules say:

Phone & Mobile transactions are excluded from this Offer.

What does this mean? Are bookings via the BA app blocked? Or does it mean you can’t use Apple Pay? I mean …. if you go onto your mobile browser to visit ba.com, BA will treat the purchase in exactly the same way as a purchase on a desktop browswer. It’s all very odd.

Whilst, officially, payments to BA Holidays are not part of this deal, I suspect that they will trigger the bonus. If you are paying off a BA Holidays package in instalments you may want to break each down into £500 chunks.

A Qatar Airways deal

Second up is Qatar Airways.

You are looking for this offer:

You will receive £300 cashback when you spend £2,000 on Qatar Airways flights by 10th March 2023. For obvious reasons you probably won’t find this on BA Amex cards.

There are a couple of points to note:

• cumulative spend counts – this is good news if you book tickets for multiple people if they end up being charged separately to your statement, or if you book more than one flight for yourself

• there is no restriction on travel classes

• you must depart from the UK

I would guess that if you book Avios redemptions via qatarairways.com then it would also trigger the cashback if the taxes and charges were above £2,000. However, you are trading off the fact that cancellations, changes etc to the ticket would need to be done via Qatar Airways and not British Airways – which may not be as simple – and you need to move your Avios across to Qatar Airways (instructions here).

If you want to look at the current Qatar Airways sale deals, the offers page is here.

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Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 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 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:

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.

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:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.