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

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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.

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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.

  • apbj says:
    10 Apr10 April 08:23

    Might we see a bonus offer for new applications later in the year, perhaps?

    • TJOB81 says:
      10 Apr10 April 13:20

      That’s what I’m hoping for, myself and P2 are both outside of the 24 month window!

  • TomB says:
    10 Apr10 April 08:23

    More than happy with this if they run the tier point offer regularly as 200 tier points essentially becomes one of the benefits alongside the voucher.

  • NotGrumpy says:
    10 Apr10 April 08:24

    I used a 241 to save 180k Avios recently on business return flights to the US, so £300 for 180k Avios? Still sounds like a good deal to me.

    £15k a year on the card I would imagine is pretty straight forward to anyone travelling as much as the average HfP reader does.

    • S says:
      10 Apr10 April 08:26

      Yes, exactly. I saved 200k to HKG. The 241 makes this whole game possible for me.

      • Paul says:
        10 Apr10 April 09:04

        There are fares ex EU of less than £1600 to HKG. It’s not that simple to say it’s a 200,000 saving!

        • S says:
          10 Apr10 April 09:15

          But I’m not flying ex-EU, or chasing some discount fare on a date I don’t want to travel. It’s not a direct comparison.

    • Paul says:
      10 Apr10 April 09:03

      You need to show your workings. 180,000 Avios minus the spend and fees you have paid. It’s not simply a 180,000 Avios saving which is £1800 at 1p per Avios.

      • simonbarker says:
        10 Apr10 April 10:46

        🙄 obviously it’s not as simple as that. So all in cost for two business return flights were 180,000 + £800. So add on £300 for the card fee gets you to £1,100 for two US returns. So yeh, seems like a pretty good deal to me since I can then use the ‘saved’ 180K Avios for some European flights if I want or, more likely, it made a trip possible that otherwise wouldn’t have been since the likelihood of me getting to 360K Avios is slim.

        The companion voucher isn’t just a “save Avios voucher” it’s a “go away more often as it effectively double your Avios earning rate” voucher.

        • Rob says:
          10 Apr10 April 10:50

          This is another issue, of course. I suspect a lot of BAPP holders don’t earn enough Avios to use their 241 on long haul every year. Perhaps they do a long haul every 2 years and burn the 2nd 241 on a short haul just so its not wasted. These people are really squeezed now as effectively paying £600 in fees for every long haul 241 redemption.

          • bennymoon says:
            10 Apr10 April 18:27

            I definitely don’t earn/spend enough to put the amount of money through the BAPP to do long haul from just the points earned from the card. This year we used the 100,000 Avios subscription option and myself and P2 split it. P2 also has a supplementary card for my AMEX and between both our spending, the subscription, Nectar conversions and other odd bits we got enough for an open jaw to SIN/HKG for the both of us. The question we now have though is that the subscription cost (£899 on the old price), plus the card £250, plus the RFS cash element for long haul, you’re looking at £1200ish each for Biz tickets, which is a great deal but actually whilst I’m getting a good deal for a cheap price I wouldn’t pay cash for Biz so I’m not sure whether I want to keep up an annual outlay of £1200 for a flight.

  • Chris says:
    10 Apr10 April 08:24

    Two years ago I was paying £30 a year for the BAPP, soon to be 900% higher. Yikes

    • Deek says:
      10 Apr10 April 12:58

      How did you manage that? I was paying £195 when I first signed up 5 or 6 years ago.

      • Rob says:
        10 Apr10 April 13:01

        There were deals for people who held other cards in 2002, to persuade them not to cancel their existing Amex.

  • Mark says:
    10 Apr10 April 08:28

    Any ideas how this will work for people who were looking to upgrade from the free card just to trigger the voucher on the premium card? Would look to hit 10k in the next few months.

    • Colin_Thames says:
      10 Apr10 April 12:52

      +1
      Is upgrading a card counted as applying for a new account?

    • LittleNick says:
      10 Apr10 April 12:53

      The new threshold is from 1st November so to me it seems upgrades and spend of £10k now is fine if all done before Nov

  • Gordon says:
    10 Apr10 April 08:28

    @Rob- prove me wrong, but I’d take a wild guess that this increased fee and spend target, is not going to make much of a difference to the majority of hfp readers!?

    • Gordon says:
      10 Apr10 April 09:07

      Agree on that point, yes.

    • Rob says:
      10 Apr10 April 09:07

      If you want 2 vouchers per year, doing £30k of Amex spend and paying £600 will flip some.

      • Sharon says:
        10 Apr10 April 10:40

        My renewal was Feb 24 so paid £250 and just triggered my 241 by a hefty bit of strategic spending so I am okay for the next year. My Husband’s anniversary is after 1 Aug so for the next 4 months no spend on either Amex PP counts apart from 1.5 points p£. We also have a Barc card premium as backup where Amex isn’t taken and 2 x upgrade vouchers which we are struggling to use so my feeling is downgrade the BC and save £240. Any views? Not sure if we can spend £30k Pa and justify 2 Amex cards. Have done well with the 241 in the past but not sure we can keep both cards.
        BTW, What is this retention bonus everyone is talking about ?
        If they allowed the 241 on Qatar that would be a game changer for me😀

        • Rob says:
          10 Apr10 April 10:45

          See the forum re retention bonuses.

          I understand that discussions over using the 241 on Qatar have broken down but Qatar may do its own card at some point. You will shortly see the first Qatar Airways credit card in a ‘Western’ country, although it’s not the UK.

  • m says:
    10 Apr10 April 08:28

    I could live with the spent threshold increase as I’d put that money anyway. Increasing the fee is a stretch and is in no way justified.

  • ed_fly says:
    10 Apr10 April 08:31

    If you’ve spent £9,999 and put your card in your draw to trigger you voucher in November / December this is going to be a bit pain. Can imagine we’re going to see some I need to spend £5k on a refundable basis come that time of year

    • Mark says:
      10 Apr10 April 08:46

      That’s the challenge I now have. Year ends in late Jan – I now have to decide weather to trigger it and therefore have it expire earlier than I would have planned or have to hit a £5000 spend requirement in 2.5 months.

      As you say spending something on a refundable basis may be required.

      • Hampshirehog says:
        10 Apr10 April 11:01

        You could hardly blame anyone spending £5k on a refundable ticket. One unethical act leading to another.

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

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