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

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.

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 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.