Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

OFFICIAL INFO: How to earn tier points from your British Airways American Express card

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

American Express has now officially released details of how you will earn tier points from your British Airways American Express Premium Plus card.

We published most of this information over the weekend, but we now know the small print, including the timings.

Let’s take a look.

How to earn tier points from your British Airways American Express

As you will remember, when The British Airways Club was announced last December, BA said that you would be able to earn 2,500 tier points per year from the British Airways American Express Premium Plus card.

Note: this ONLY applies to the Premium Plus card. There was never any intention to involve the free American Express card. Discussions were held with Barclaycard over including those cards but fell through, according to our insider.

The offer launches TODAY, 18th June

You will receive an email from American Express today inviting you to register, assuming you opted in to receive marketing communications. It will also show in the American Express app.

You will need to opt-in to be included.

All other elements of the card continue unchanged, even if you do not register for this offer.

You are getting 500 free tier points

As a goodwill gesture / apology / call it what you will, British Airways is giving 500 free tier points to all British Airways American Express Premium Plus cardholders.

This offer does not appear on the American Express website when you register, or in the email you received from American Express today. A separate email will come from British Airways.

This bonus will NOT go to anyone who takes out the card today. There is presumably a cut-off point which has already passed.

Will card spend between 1st April and 17th June be backdated?

No.

This is important. Irrespective of what you have spent so far in your British Airways Club year or Amex membership year, you are starting from scratch.

What are the thresholds?

This is what you get:

  • you will receive 750 tier points for hitting £15,000 of BAPP spend
  • you will receive a further 750 tier points for hitting £20,000 of BAPP spend
  • you will receive a further 1,000 tier points for hitting £25,000 of BAPP spend

This means that earning the full 2,500 tier points will require £25,000 of card spend.

Remember that only spend from when you register will count.

How to earn tier points from your British Airways American Express

How long does the offer run?

The offer will run until 1st February 2026.

This means that you have just over seven months to spend £25,000 to receive the full tier point allocation.

Will this offer repeat every year?

Whilst nothing has been published, BA has told us that the offer will return in 2026.

It will presumably not start on 18th June and will hopefully run from 1st April.

How far will 2,500 tier points get me?

Whilst it’s not making much of a dint in Gold status (20,000 tier points), it is a bigger chunk of the 7,500 tier points required for Silver status.

Bronze is potentially most interesting. Bronze members of British Airways Club get free seat selection seven days before departure as the core benefit, which can be valuable.

Anyone earning the full 2,500 tier points from their Premium Plus card would only need to spend £1,000 net (note net, not gross) with British Airways in a membership year to earn the extra 1,000 tier points they need.

For the current year, factoring in the 500 bonus tier points you will receive, anyone spending £25,000 on their American Express card would only need £500 of net (note net, not gross) qualifying spend. If the spend was on British Airways you’d do it for even less, because of the bonus tier points offer currently running. This HfP article looks at the cheapest / easiest way of getting the extra 500 tier points you need for Bronze.

Any other obvious problems?

Yes.

A lot of HfP readers delay triggering their 2-4-1 Companion Voucher because they don’t want to start the two year clock on using it.

Both my wife and I currently have our Premium Plus cards in a drawer having passed £14,000 of spend for this card year. They won’t be coming out again until a month before our year end date.

Anyone chasing the full 2,500 tier points will need to trigger their voucher earlier than necessary.

A quick note about FX spending ….

The T&C state that the 2.99% FX fee added by American Express on non-Sterling transactions does not count towards your spend target.

The snag is that this fee is not broken out on your statement. If you are totting up what you have spent on a calculator, you need to adjust for this.

Find out more about the card

Click here for our full British Airways American Express Premium Plus review.

Click here to apply.

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

Category

British Airways American Express, British Airways and Avios

Comments (228)

  • Ilou says:
    18 Jun18 June 09:41

    No mention of the free 500 tier in the email I’ve got.. hopefully that will still happen

    Reply
  • ed_fly says:
    18 Jun18 June 09:54

    So in year one, you can potentially trigger 2,500 nTP’s through the card spend, and an additional 500 for holding the card. So up to 3,000 nTP’s from the BAPP.

    Reply
    • Rob says:
      18 Jun18 June 10:04

      Yes

      Reply
      • ed_fly says:
        18 Jun18 June 10:13

        Thanks Rob, now just need to find my missing bonus tier points from flights already taken.

        Reply
        • roverinexile says:
          18 Jun18 June 10:50

          Got the opposite issue here. Have been awarded the bonus tier points, but not the basic ones for the purchase. A week after contacting them, BA still haven’t added them

          Reply
  • Seagull says:
    18 Jun18 June 10:07

    Do we know if these Amex tier points will count towards the 32,000 of BA spend required for maintaining GGL?

    Reply
  • WGunn1899 says:
    18 Jun18 June 10:11

    No mention of the 500 goodwill tier points in my email this morning either.
    I suppose one glimmer of sunlight on this, is that if you pay for your BA trips on the card, you effectively get double points on the base fare and single points on the normally unrewarded taxes and surcharges. Unfortunately for me, I have to use a corporate card for my business travel.

    Reply
  • Rob says:
    18 Jun18 June 10:20

    So I can pay BA £600 for a return flight in Euro Traveler and earn 750 tier points (600 for spend plus 75 bonus each way) or spend 25x that on an Amex card for the same result. Even easier.. spend £400 in Club Europe and get 750 Tier points or spend 37.5 that on an Amex card for the same result. No brainer…

    Reply
    • Craig says:
      18 Jun18 June 10:41

      @ Rob: that’s not correct, nTP’s are only on “eligible” spend so in the case of your £600 return flight example, a large chunk of that will still be APD and Fees etc etc etc and so therefore, you’ll be (very!) lucky to get anything like 30-50% of that ET fare in nTP!

      For instance, I flew CGN > LHR (admittedly O class) the other week and received 23 (yes 23) nTP’s… based on “Total Eligible Spend: GBP £22.76”…

      On that basis, I *only* need to do another 846 flights CGN LHR to get the remaining 19.5k nTP’s I need to requalify for Gold…

      Whoop WHOOP! LOL (not)

      Reply
      • Rob says:
        18 Jun18 June 13:59

        Hi Craig, As per my response to Charlie… 100% the taxes are a factor but not considerable. An example from BA website today: a return Club Europe flight to Glasgow costing £400 would still earn 665 Tier points (315 for the flight and 350 in bonuses) Also, I’ve not factored in the £300 you need to pay for the card.
        My point is the offer from Amex/BA is nowhere near as good in terms of value for money as buying a flight. Sure, you have to be careful, but getting 750 points by flying CAN be a lot cheaper than using this offer if you’re savvy.

        Reply
        • Lumma says:
          18 Jun18 June 14:44

          Isn’t the point that the tier points from the card are effectively free as long as you would spend £25k as nothing else has changed? Anyone chasing an extra 1750 tier of tier points for putting an extra £10k through their card is a bit crazy.

          Reply
          • Rob says:
            18 Jun18 June 15:27

            I agree Lumma, but people used to take random flights to chase status, so I guess the same will happen with spending on a card

    • Charlie says:
      18 Jun18 June 11:03

      Before taxes, your actual spend will be considerably higher

      Reply
      • Rob says:
        18 Jun18 June 11:18

        100% the taxes are a factor but not considerable. An example from BA website today: a return Club Europe flight to Glasgow costing £400 would still earn 665 Tier points (315 for the flight and 350 in bonuses) Also, I’ve not factored in the £300 you need to pay for the card.

        Reply
    • Haimrich says:
      18 Jun18 June 11:15

      Sort of agree: calibration seems very poor (from my POV). Two trips planned for this membership year will yield me ca. 3,000 nTP for less than 1/5th of the spent required here. Whilst it is better than nothing, BA did a very poor job at managing expectations. I feel the offer will yield real value for those just starting their BAPP year, who can chase concurrently the 2-4-1 and the nTP on spent, but those (like me) who have brought forward large expenses to unlock the 2-4-1 a few weeks ago may be left frustrated.

      Reply
    • Rui N. says:
      18 Jun18 June 16:22

      If the expression “apples and oranges” ever needs an example this post is perfect.

      Reply
  • Katy says:
    18 Jun18 June 10:49

    I’m sure the answer is no but as a supplementary card holder, would my spend count for my account?! Assume it’s all contributing to the main card holder spend total.

    Reply
    • liam says:
      18 Jun18 June 13:58

      It’s linked to the main account only, and is combined with the supplementary card holders.

      5. This Offer applies to spend at an Account level. Qualifying spend includes spend on the primary Card enrolled into the Offer and any Supplementary Card linked to the same Account.

      Reply
  • HjS says:
    18 Jun18 June 10:52

    Sounds good. It was only a fillip anyway. Reckon that’s a good excuse for a new guitar!

    The notice says that progress will be visible in the Amex app. Has anyone seen that yet or could advise where I can find it? I assume it’s under “membership” but nowt there for me yet.

    Reply
    • ALISON says:
      18 Jun18 June 11:40

      @HjS I’m gutted because I bought myself a rather expensive new guitar last month on BAPP which will not get recognised.

      Reply
      • polly says:
        18 Jun18 June 14:15

        Could you return the guitar, refund, and simply buy it again a week or so later maybe? Naughty, I know, but it might make you feel better…

        Reply
        • Alison says:
          18 Jun18 June 15:49

          Sadly no, it’s a custom item, oh well…!

          Reply
          • HjS says:
            18 Jun18 June 17:05

            Probably not – Avios points are “deducted” when refunds are issued so I assume the same would apply here – i.e. it’s *net* spend that counts :/

          • Rob H not Rob says:
            18 Jun18 June 17:29

            Flying V? BC Rich ?

    • PeterK says:
      19 Jun19 June 08:13

      My wife has never seen her progress in the Amex app. We both have cards in our own right, I see 2-4-1 progress on the app (by clicking on the membership tab) whereas my wife sees nothing. She’s been complaining to Amex for ages trying to get this resolved but with no success.

      Yesterday she got the email from BA about the Amex TP offer but no email from Amex to register. Upon calling Amex yesterday initially Amex tried to tell her that the Amex TP offer was only to certain targeted cardholders!

      They’ve once again escalated the issue to their technical team to resolve, which is what they’ve promised each time she’s made contact with Amex over the past year complaining that she doesn’t see the 2-4-1 progress tracker in the app!

      Reply
  • memesweeper says:
    18 Jun18 June 10:55

    I wonder if anyone will complain to the FCA? Would the announcement at the start of the year survive critical scrutiny?

    https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/fca-firm-checker/firm-10456-466424

    I don’t hold the BAPP so I have no standing. I get the feeling Rob is more careful in his choice of words with respect to regulated products than British Airways PLC.

    Reply
    • NFH says:
      18 Jun18 June 11:30

      Well spotted that British Airways is on the FCA register. I assume that this is because of the co-branding of the card. But any complaint would need to be to the Financial Ombudsman Service, rather than to the FCA.

      Reply
    • Haimrich says:
      18 Jun18 June 11:37

      Shaky grounds, IMO.
      Difficult to argue that this is a core benefit of the card (unlike avios on spent and 241 voucher) and clearly it was indicated details would be communicated later. So anyone who renewed their card or took it between the initial announcement and the launch, did so, knowing they did not know how this would work.
      If one argues this was a core benefit for them, then the counter-argument is that they should have waited until the details were released to make their decision.

      Reply
      • NFH says:
        18 Jun18 June 11:57

        It’s not about core benefits of the card. It’s about a misleading action, which influenced consumers to take a transactional decision that they would not have otherwise taken. That transactional decision was to credit tier points for flights to British Airways instead of to other Oneworld airlines. See my post on page 1 about this.

        Reply
        • memesweeper says:
          18 Jun18 June 12:28

          My reading too.

          Also, unlike most civil law, or aviation law, the rules governing consumer protection around financial products are actively enforced.

          Reply
        • Haimrich says:
          18 Jun18 June 12:35

          Very long shot, IMO, as that decision you describe would have been made on information that was not known to be incomplete: BA did not advertised how the nTP on spent would work. So transactional decision was made partly on assumptions made by the claimant.

          Reply
          • memesweeper says:
            18 Jun18 June 12:50

            If you held the card expecting the date of TPs to start collecting to be from April, I think you could win the argument. It’s not an assumption, it’s a perfectly rational interpretation of the statement made by BA (I think most observers would agree that BA made the statement in the expectation the new TPs-from-Amex scheme *would* launch in April, so this is hardly a stretch of interpretation).

          • The Savage Squirrel says:
            18 Jun18 June 13:52

            Could anyone show any loss or harm though? The answer is no.
            No explicit promises of how the scheme would operate were ever made.
            They could claim that the current TP earning terms are FAR more generous than ones that would have been in place had the scheme started on 1st April. That might even be true (especially if the 500 bonus TPs even for people who have spent £1 arrive).

            I sometimes disagree with JDB but here: ultimately to a normal person outside the HfP/Amex/BA obsession echo chamber, this looks like a trivial complaint to the point of being spurious or vexatious.
            – nobody has suffered no loss
            – addition of an extra benefit has slipped by a couple of months from its expected date (I can hear the regulatory ‘meh’ in my head)
            – nobody ever signed any agreement document promising them TPs on Apr 1st 2025
            – cardholders are now getting extra benefits at zero extra cost

            Good luck getting that to fly as a complaint that is taken seriously; especially as, if they follow the tone here, the complaints will be submitted as angry rants and therefore look even more ridiculous.

          • memesweeper says:
            18 Jun18 June 14:52

            “Could anyone show any loss or harm though?”

            I can’t, others might, and if they can, they might be able to pursue it via the regulator.

            Airlines can make non-binding “aspirational” statements about their commitments to flying and aviation related matters, but they need to be very careful indeed when doing so about linked financial products, which clearly, in this case, BA were not.

          • The Savage Squirrel says:
            18 Jun18 June 15:29

            hehe yes you’re certainly right about the announcement not being as carefully thought out as it might have (should have) been 🙂 Given no explicit numbered promises, no price increases, no worsening terms of service and that there were exactly zero days when a customer might have sensibly believed that the offer was up and running when it wasn’t, I just can’t imagine any set of facts that would amount to a claim of loss that has substance. Could be my lack of imagination though!

          • NFH says:
            18 Jun18 June 16:31

            Consumers absolutely could demonstrate loss. If they fail to hit the spending target, because spending from 1st April to 17th June 2025 was not included, and they consequently fail to hit the required tier points for a particular status, then they would lose out on the benefits of that status, which would include having to pay for seat selection, lounge access, additional baggage and other perks, for silver for example.

          • The Savage Squirrel says:
            18 Jun18 June 17:58

            @NFH

            No they can’t.
            Amex can argue that had the offer run from Apr 1st then the spend targets would have been significantly more onerous so you would have received nothing extra. Therefore the delay to launch has meant you suffered no loss (and in fact got a small bonus).

            You have absolutely zero way to refute that – and it may in fact be true.

            Any proposed complaint is dead in the water at that point.

            Still if you want to launch a complaint that a bonus offer that gives you an additional benefits with your product at zero extra cost or effort, and goes far beyond anything you were ever promised, is somehow detrimental to you and has caused you loss then crack on. I also have a brick wall for you to bash your head against.

Leave a Reply to Simon Adams Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please click here to read our data protection policy before submitting your comment

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 50,000 bonus points (worth 50,000 Avios) and £400 of dining credit with The Platinum Card

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Special offer: Get 30,000 bonus Hilton Honors points until 14th August 2025

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 credit card with points which convert to Avios

Get points worth 20,000 Avios with 'first year free' American Express Gold

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!