Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

BIG NEWS: BA Amex annual fee AND voucher qualifying spend to rise sharply

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

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

The fee for the Premium Plus card will increase to £300. This is effective immediately for new applications.

The annual spend required to receive a 2-4-1 companion voucher will increase to £15,000 in November. This applies to both cards.

BA Amex fee AND voucher qualifying spend to rise sharply

The British Airways Premium Plus fee will rise to £300

This is the easiest change to get your head around.

The fee for the Premium Plus card will increase from the current £250 per year to £300 per year.

The fee increase will apply:

  • from today, if you are a new applicant for the card
  • for your next renewal after 1st August, if you already have the card

This means that if your renewal date is in April, May, June or July, your card will renew at the current £250. You will not pay the higher fee until your subsequent renewal in 2025.

If your next renewal date is after 1st August 2024, you will pay £300 from your next renewal.

The 2-4-1 companion voucher will require £15,000 of spending

This change is more complex because it is NOT linked to your current card year.

From 1st November, you will need to spend £15,000 to receive a 2-4-1 companion voucher. This applies to BOTH the free British Airways American Express card and the Premium Plus version.

The change will kick in on 1st November for both new and existing cardholders.

This means that you are now under pressure to hit your current membership year spend target by 31st October. If you don’t, you’ll need to spend £15,000 instead.

Here’s an example. Let’s assume that you have the Premium Plus card and that your card year runs to 1st February. You will need to either:

  • spend £10,000 by 31 October 2024, or
  • spend £15,000 by 31 January 2025

…. to earn your next voucher. From 1st February 2025, when your membership year renews, you will need to spend £15,000.

BA Amex fee AND voucher qualifying spend to rise sharply

As a reminder, this is how the companion vouchers currently work:

  • the free British Airways American Express card awards a 2-4-1 companion voucher when you spend £12,000 in your membership year. The voucher is valid for one year for an Economy flight redemption on British Airways, Aer Lingus or Iberia.

What do we think?

The increase in the annual fee is not easy to justify. American Express is pointing to improvements in card benefits (the ability for a solo traveller to use it for a 50% Avios discount, the ability to use it on Aer Lingus and Iberia) but for 90% of cardholders these changes have no impact.

(The solo traveller benefit IS valuable, but by default most existing cardholders applied when the voucher was only usable by two people and don’t need this functionality. The ‘value’ in the solo traveller discount is all for the benefit of Amex, since solo travellers are now applying for the card when they wouldn’t previously.)

It will be interesting to see how many people decide that the maths no longer stacks up.

I am more amenable to the increase in annual spend. The card is now over 20 years old and the spend target for the Premium Plus voucher was £10,000 from the start. £10,000 in 2004 is equivalent to over £17,000 in 2024, so it is hard to argue with £15,000.

What should you do if you can’t spend £15,000 per year?

We’ll look at this in a separate article later in the week.

Fundamentally:

  • there is little value in having the free British Airways American Express card if you can’t spend £15,000 per year on it – it makes more sense to have the free American Express Rewards credit card or the free Barclaycard Avios Mastercard
  • there is absolutely no value in having the Premium Plus card (beyond the first year and the big sign-up bonus) if you can’t spend £15,000 to earn the voucher. This isn’t up for discussion.

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, British Airways and Avios

Comments (623)

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

  • Robert says:
    10 Apr10 April 19:52

    To play devils advocate, I’ve just booked flights with my 2-4-1 voucher and paid 700 quid + 160k Avios.
    Same flights have a cost price of £4,500 for two of us.
    I hit my spend to trigger the voucher around half way through the year so it’s of no consequence the increase to £15k and the extra £50 fee just eats into the savings, so I can’t really complain too much.
    Obviously if your not in a particular sweet spot then the card has become less attractive but for me it’s still a no brainer saving.
    It also depends if your prepared to pay for the flights you book with your voucher, that’s the relativity of it.

    • Josh B says:
      10 Apr10 April 20:07

      We are similar although I doubt 2 biz flights LHR – NYC would be quite that low unless you snap them up in the sale but even then…)

      • Robert says:
        10 Apr10 April 21:00

        Biz to NYC for us also, just had a quick re-check and now showing £4700. It’s a short enough flight that I can’t justify splurging on F with how the taxes work. J definately the sweet spot in terms of savings.

        • Josh B says:
          10 Apr10 April 22:27

          Agree with the sweet spot point – I did F last week and as lovely as the vueve grande dame champagne was it’s not a wildly superior product to J as it stands.

    • CheshirePete says:
      10 Apr10 April 21:23

      I think you also have to factor into the £4500 the TPs and Avios you would earn back.

      • pigeon says:
        10 Apr10 April 21:27

        Very roughly, Avios + TP worth 10% of the ticket?

        Or better, compare prices against the cheapest in market? Eg JetBlue, earns Avios via Qatar.

    • pigeon says:
      10 Apr10 April 21:23

      A tiny minority of card holders generate 160k Avios every year. Indeed these are the folks who could pay full cash price.

      Everyone else holding this card long term gets a medium to bad deal.

      • Deek says:
        11 Apr11 April 07:38

        I can’t pay full cash price or generate anywhere near that many avios, but I use part of the cash I’d pay for economy and boost what I do earn and that gets me enough to travel long-haul J or F as that’s still a great deal if you can plan ahead and be persistent in getting the seats.

        It’s a bad deal if you can’t get the avios, are restricted to short haul, or have no flexibility on popular routes.

    • bennymoon says:
      11 Apr11 April 18:31

      I definitely wouldn’t generate enough Avios each year from just the card. Me and P2 were doing the subscription for 100,000 points. So once you do the costs for that…
      £450pp for subscription (£899 on old price split between two)
      £125pp for the card (£250 card fee split between two)
      £350-550 in RFS taxes.
      So just to acquire the Avios to use with the voucher in Business I was looking at £575 each and then adding on the taxes it was going over £1k each for the flights. Obviously that’s still much cheaper than paying the revenue tickets but we did the big trip to Japan we wanted to do and then next year doing SIN/HKG so kinda feel like we’ve done what we want to do and would rather put the £600 each into other trips.

  • Wally1976 says:
    10 Apr10 April 20:10

    Someone remind me…when are are expecting pro-rata refunds to end now?

    • BBbetter says:
      10 Apr10 April 20:11

      Most likely when the higher spending threshold goes live.

      • Wally1976 says:
        10 Apr10 April 20:39

        It’s not specific to the BAPP card though. Wasn’t it meant to be October then February, then ??

        • HampshireHog says:
          11 Apr11 April 00:25

          Yes but we are led to believe that the BAPP is their biggest earner

  • Finn says:
    10 Apr10 April 20:10

    Does anyone know if my wife’s card – on my account – counts towards the spend? Is it per account or per card? She never uses it but that may change.

    Cheers

  • Lady London says:
    10 Apr10 April 21:03

    This is the best thread ever @Rob

    • tw33ty says:
      10 Apr10 April 21:07

      Yeah, guessing it easy to see which is the most held Amex card among hfp readers, hence the sheer number of comments.

    • Gordon says:
      10 Apr10 April 21:08

      Agreed- lol- there are worse ways to cross the world, “Race across the world” is live!

  • CJD says:
    10 Apr10 April 21:10

    If I trigger the voucher on the BAPP, then downgrade to the free version at the end of the card year, that won’t affect the voucher, will it?

    I don’t think I’ll spend enough annually to justify the card fee unfortunately.

  • Bervios says:
    10 Apr10 April 21:18

    Check your Amex offers , 4 new £ off Hotel offers have dropped tonight. Marriot, IHG, Minor (?) & small luxury hotels

    • t0m says:
      10 Apr10 April 21:34

      No sign of Marriott or SLH on my or my wife’s BAPP card.

      • Bervios says:
        10 Apr10 April 21:48

        I’ve got :

        £100 off £400 at marriot
        £50 off £150 at minor (NH hotels)
        £75 off £300 IHG
        £100 off £300 at small luxury hotels

  • LetBAgonesbe says:
    10 Apr10 April 21:54

    I am actually waiting for a more premium version of this card, with higher fee and more benefits.

    I would be happy to pay £450 (and cancel my Platinum card) to receive lets say:
    -300 tier points per year to get to bronze
    -additional tier points with spend
    -improved ba amex voucher (ability to upgrade cash tickets or the possibility to use it on even more oneworld airlines)

    • Carl says:
      10 Apr10 April 22:24

      I imagine people would be happy to pay a lot more than £450 if those were the benefits.

    • KeHu57 says:
      10 Apr10 April 22:24

      I would LOVE THAT too, but I can’t see that happening especially getting Tier Points with no really significant cash spend.

      But most of all what I really would like is that when I finally manage to snag a couple of difficult to find long haul business class redemptions with a companion voucher to somewhere really nice, I and my wife are not always picked on by BA to be downgraded because they have oversold the aircraft in business again.

    • Josh B says:
      10 Apr10 April 22:32

      I’d much rather have a single travel card. Add lounges and travel insurance to the existing BAPP and charge me £500.

      • BoeingA340 says:
        10 Apr10 April 23:00

        Had something like this when I lived in New Zealand, had an Air New Zealand Visa Platinum that earned status, miles, and thew in full travel insurance and discounted Air NZ lounge access all for only £75.

        • Josh B says:
          10 Apr10 April 23:18

          That sounds ace!

        • Charles Martel says:
          11 Apr11 April 20:55

          But in New Zealand everyone except large chains charge ~2% for use of a credit card at the point of sale; in most cases you spend 2% to get a 1% return.

      • TGLoyalty says:
        11 Apr11 April 00:00

        So a platinum with BA status … if only we could rewind time

    • Harry T says:
      11 Apr11 April 01:29

      That is pretty unicorn territory and opens Pandora’s box in some ways.

  • Carl says:
    10 Apr10 April 22:23

    Think I’ll be cancel my platinum card. I can’t really justify holding both any more with the new fees.

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!