Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

How do you unlock ‘extra’ Club World Avios seats with the BAPP Amex 2-4-1 voucher?

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

A reader mentioned recently that we hadn’t done a dedicated article on the additional Club World business class availability that comes with the British Airways American Express Premium Plus credit card.

It turned out he was right. We haven’t looked at this in detail since the feature launched in 2021.

It’s time to set that right as many readers may not be clear how it works.

How do you book the 'extra' Club World Avios seats unlocked with BAPP Amex 2-4-1 vouchers?

As part of the relaunch of the British Airways American Express cards in 2021, there was a major change to the 2-4-1 companion voucher which comes with the British Airways American Express Premium Plus.

Cardholders were promised access to ‘extra’ Club World business class seating when redeeming their voucher.

British Airways and American Express have been very cagey about how this extra availability works, and three years on we still have no definitive answer.

It is loosely linked to the number of I-class seats (the cheapest sub-class of business class seats) available, but it isn’t as simple as that. If a cheap cash seat is available in Club World, there is a better – but not guaranteed – chance that ‘extra’ Avios seats will be available using your voucher.

For clarity:

  • you only get extra availability with a 2-4-1 voucher issued with the Premium Plus American Express card – it is not a feature of the free British Airways American Express vouchers or the Barclays Avios Rewards vouchers
  • there is only extra availability in business class – if you prefer to redeem in another cabin this benefit has no value to you

You can’t see the extra availability without a voucher

Frustratingly, you cannot see the extra availability without a 2-4-1 companion voucher in your account.

How do you book the 'extra' Club World Avios seats unlocked with BAPP Amex 2-4-1 vouchers?

This means, for example, that if you have an existing 2-4-1 booking but are considering changing the dates, you can’t check availability unless you have a spare voucher in your BA account.

It isn’t possible to see the extra availability via SeatSpy or other reward seat notification services.

How does the extra availability work?

The key thing to remember is that ba.com does not automatically show you the extra Club World availability just because you have a 2-4-1 companion voucher in your account.

Whenever you search, you need to ensure that the box below is ticked and that you only search for two adults (unless you are using your voucher for a 50% Avios discount on a single ticket):

How do you book the 'extra' Club World Avios seats unlocked with BAPP Amex 2-4-1 vouchers?

If you have two vouchers in your account, you can select both and search for four people.

If you only have one voucher in your account but search for three or more seats, the system will only show availability if the additional seats beyond two can be booked from standard availability. Otherwise you see this warning:

How do you book the 'extra' Club World Avios seats unlocked with BAPP Amex 2-4-1 vouchers?

Here’s an example

I looked at London to Miami in January 2025.

This is the message you get when trying to use your Premium Plus 2-4-1 companion voucher on a date when additional Club World seats have been made available:

How do you book the 'extra' Club World Avios seats unlocked with BAPP Amex 2-4-1 vouchers?

Booking using a companion voucher

This is what you see on 8th January when you use a 2-4-1 companion voucher:

How do you book the 'extra' Club World Avios seats unlocked with BAPP Amex 2-4-1 vouchers?

It’s looking good, with eight seats on one flight and 10+ seats on the other flight. (When ba.com does not show the number of remaining seats, it means there are 10+ bookable.)

Booking without using a companion voucher

However, let’s do the same search WITHOUT using a 2-4-1 companion voucher:

How do you book the 'extra' Club World Avios seats unlocked with BAPP Amex 2-4-1 vouchers?

Nothing ….

No Club World seats are bookable on either flight.

The difference is not always this stark, of course. January is probably the sweet spot if you are booking in November with a voucher because cash prices usually bottom out 2-4 months before the date of travel. I doubt you’d see such an impact if you searched 11 months in advance.

Is ‘regional variation’ still a thing?

When the extra availability first launched, there was a very interesting quirk.

Because of the way BA prices flights from regional airports, you would often see extra availability if you started outside London.

For example, Manchester to Heathrow to Miami could be booked even when Heathrow to Miami on its own was not available.

This appears to have been fixed now, or at least very sharply reduced.

However, if you search for Club World and still see no availability for a direct flight from Heathrow using your voucher, it is worth repeating the search starting in Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, just in case. Something may pop up if BA is also running a cash deal from those cities, perhaps to compete with a Middle Eastern carrier.

Conclusion

Let’s give credit where its due. Every so often the Avios team pull something really impressive out of the bag.

They did it when they became the first airline globally (I think) to offer guaranteed reward seats on every flight, and they did it again when they introduced the extra availability in Club World for British Airways American Express Premium Plus voucher holders.

Not only does your companion voucher give you two seats for the Avios of one, it also gives you access to seats which no-one else can get. It’s a hugely powerful incentive that makes the £300 annual card fee more acceptable.

Our review of the British Airways American Express Premium Plus card is here. You can apply here. The current sign-up bonus is 30,000 Avios when you spend £6,000 in three months.

The representative APR is 137.8% variable, including the annual fee.  The representative APR on purchases is 30.0% variable.

If you want to know more, we did an article on the core benefits of the British Airways Premium Plus American Express card here. If you don’t want to pay an annual fee, a similar article on the benefits of the free British Airways American Express card is here.

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.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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

Get 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

30,000 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.

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

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large 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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

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

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

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

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

Category

British Airways American Express, British Airways and Avios

Comments (66)

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

  • 1958 says:
    2 Nov2 November 05:35

    The “extra seats from non-London airports” does not appear to work.
    Last year I “opened up” Singapore to Edinburgh in Club (when Singapore to London was unavailable). When I searched earlier today, London to Singapore was available in Club for a few dates, but Manchester to Singapore was not available on these dates.
    It may be that Manchester to London is unavailable – or it may be that BA’s IT is giving an incorrect answer.

    • JDB says:
      2 Nov2 November 06:59

      It does work from non-London airports in exactly the same way as it does from London, but as you have identified, it requires BA to be offering discounted cash fares on both sectors and/or as married sectors. Anecdotally, it appears that BA has reduced its (cash) promotional activity from regional airports and that is reflected in less ‘extra’ voucher availability from those airports when such availability is available starting in London.

  • BJ says:
    2 Nov2 November 06:04

    Probably because there is no ‘detail’, you simply click the box for the voucher and you see the availability – that’s it. I’m not sure what this article adds to the initial coverage other than bringing it into focus again.

    • Qrfan says:
      2 Nov2 November 08:05

      I’m more cynical. When the regional variation worked everyone wanted it kept quiet. Now it doesn’t work you can have an article on it. 🙂

      • JDB says:
        2 Nov2 November 08:53

        @Qrfan – actually, the problem may have been that they didn’t keep quiet. Some regulars wrote about it endlessly.

      • BJ says:
        2 Nov2 November 09:36

        There’s a few gems floating around at the moment that never get mentioned, not huge but useful. I keep waiting for somebody to stumble across one and flag it up. Then there’s the huge one, seven months on from my riddle it has never been mentioned here in the comments or uncovered by any blogger.

        • MikeHi says:
          2 Nov2 November 09:53

          What was the riddle…? 🙂

        • JDB says:
          2 Nov2 November 10:32

          @BJ – fortunately there are a whole lot of things about Avios, vouchers, availability etc. that either aren’t too widely known or people are sensible enough not to mention publicly. I’m amazed also just how many myths (often based on zero real evidence) get repeated as fact.

          • Rob says:
            2 Nov2 November 10:38

            There’s also just ‘weird stuff’. Last week Virgin Atlantic was doing married segment availability for example – stick on a KLM or Air France connection to Paris or France and suddenly flights would open up. This must have been a bug in Delta’s software and I couldn’t get it to repeat, although I got something ticketed.

            Was it Avianca that treated Dutch territories (Aruba etc) as Dutch and therefore charged Amsterdam to Aruba as the cost of a European domestic flight? BMI used to treat Russia as Europe so you could fly to the edge of Japan – on the Russian side, connecting flight out of a dodgy Russian regional airport needed! – for the cost of a European flight. Etc etc.

          • BJ says:
            2 Nov2 November 10:58

            All I am going to say is that I recomment anybody redeeming avios to FULLY-evaluate all their options on a trip by trip basis. That is what people should be doing as a matter of course and wifh it becoming a habit they should find themselves rewarded in more ways than one.

        • No longer Entitled says:
          2 Nov2 November 12:30

          Was it the hidden gem of searching from “Madchester” brought about a buy one get one free offer so that you could reunite two brothers around the time of the Oasis reunion?

  • Toby says:
    2 Nov2 November 06:18

    I believe this is the same availability as the Barclays ‘not an upgrade but everyone calls it an upgrade’ voucher.

    So if you have one of those in your account you have another way of seeing the extra 2 4 1 availability

  • Elizabeth says:
    2 Nov2 November 06:39

    Might be worth clarifying that you can also search for just one adult if you are using the “half” avios option with the 2-4-1 voucher. The article suggests “that you only search for two adults”.

  • Fang says:
    2 Nov2 November 06:55

    Does anyone have any experience of changing a booking on a 241 voucher ? (Including changing the return date after booking ?).
    I did use a voucher for a one way single person booking (I know it could be considered a waste, but I wanted to get a flight and the only availability was by triggering the voucher ) shortly after this additional availability was launched. I did have to change the date – from memory, I tried that on-line , and could see the extra availability – but there was a ‘trap’ that to change I wouldn’t be refunded any cash I had paid (to reduce the Avios amount ). So I called BA – and the agent could see the availability- so she held the flight, I released my flight with the voucher attached, and she then booked by flight, with the 241 voucher.
    All of this is a bit of a distant memory now.
    But I would like to know of any change experience ( including changing an inbound after already taking the outbound – which is something I do , as I return to my original home country, and like the flexibility of when to come back to the UK (my now home )).

    • Livia says:
      2 Nov2 November 07:03

      We had a situation years back when my husband’s passport was damaged by Cambodian authorities while travelling to Thailand (they pulled at it to check if it was fake until a page literally ripped apart). So we ended up having to move our return flight from Bangkok while waiting for the German embassy to issue a new passport, but we were on a 2-4-1 booking and had no issue moving the date via the call centre.

      • Barry cutters says:
        2 Nov2 November 08:20

        You should have just flown with it – I had pages pealing in mine for 2y after being in a washing machine and also in the sea.
        My chip stopped working , the pages were smudged and pealing but each time I just said / I’m getting a new one next week when I get home . I must have had at least 20 international trips all over the world and I used it right to expiry

    • kevinchoi says:
      2 Nov2 November 14:52

      Yes I have done that. I have an open-jaw booking LHR-HKG and PVG-LHR booking, both using the same Amex 2-4-1 voucher. (They’re on separate booking references though as I booked them at T-355 then refunded half the avios in the return leg). I managed to change my PVG-LHR booking back by a week, completely done online, by just paying the change fee of £35.

      Not sure if it’ll work just as smoothly if they’re on the same booking reference though.

  • The Original Nick. says:
    2 Nov2 November 07:03

    Does it not include R class too?

  • Andrew says:
    2 Nov2 November 07:17

    Don’t forget the flight doesn’t have to start in the UK anymore! Some fantastic value available if you do a long 2 for 1 flight with stop overs in London.

    • BBbetter says:
      2 Nov2 November 22:31

      But you’ll pay full APD on stopovers in London. You’ll benefit from less avios, obviously.

  • Sam says:
    2 Nov2 November 07:19

    I just booked some flights with the new voucher for the first time. In the last I’ve been able to use 2 vouchers to cover 3 people, or at least have 3 people on the booking with 1 voucher, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore… I had to do 2 separate bookings which means it cost a lot more and my wife can’t select her seat free of charge with my silver status. I’m not sure the vouchers are as valuable in a 3 person family anymore.

    • NorthernLass says:
      2 Nov2 November 09:24

      The issue is that you can’t mix standard and extra availability. You can book 3 standard award seats with the voucher, but IME you can’t book 3 “extra” ones (as they are only available for 2 pax per booking), or a combination.

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!