Your guide to the BA ‘On Business’ small business loyalty programme (Part 1)

It is three years since we did a deep dive into the British Airways On Business loyalty programme for small businesses.

This isn’t because we are lazy, but because the programme was off-line for over a year after what we are told was an attack on its database, which is maintained for BA by a third party.

Everything is now up and running again, and my own flights seem to be crediting OK. With my fingers crossed we will dive in.

This article runs in two parts, with the second half scheduled for tomorrow.

How does the British Airways On Business programme work?

Whilst the Avios programme will be familiar to all Head for Points readers, you may not have come across On Business.

On Business is the other British Airways loyalty programme. Instead of rewarding flyers, it rewards your company when you travel.

The On Business programme is explained at this website.  It is fundamentally the same as Avios in structure. You earn On Business Points for every cash flight your company books. Points can then be redeemed for flights or for upgrades.

You can collect both Avios and On Business points on the same flight. You collect Avios as a flyer and On Business points as a company.

A key reason to collect On Business points is that reward availability is generally better than Avios reward availability.

The key downside is that reward flights in premium cabins are disproportionately expensive (vs the cost of economy flights) compared to redeeming Avios. You will get most out of On Business if you are happy redeeming for seats in economy.

Signing up for On Business

The sign-up page is here.  If you are signing up, you will qualify for a special sign-up bonus of triple points for your first six one-way flights within 12 months of joining.

You must provide the name of your company and its VAT registration number when you sign-up.

The VAT requirement is waived if you apply for the British Airways American Express Accelerating Business Credit Card. This is an additional reason for getting the card if your turnover is under the VAT threshold or you are applying on behalf of, say, a charity which is exempt from VAT registration.

If you say on your application form that you were referred by member OB10171896 then you receive 1,500 bonus On Business points after crediting your first flight.  (And so do I, so thank you.)

The following classes of firms cannot join On Business:

• travel agents, ticket brokerages, air fare consolidators
• companies with a corporate incentive agreement with any On Business partner airline

How to earn BA On Business Points

Points earning in On Business is 100% revenue based.  The more you spend, the more points you earn.  It is that simple.

The programme has three tiers which you move through based on your annual spending:

• On1 – up to £29,999 spend – 1 point per £1
• On2 – £30,000 to £299,999 spend – 1.25 points per £1
• On3 – £300,000+ spent – 1.5 points per £1

Qualifying spend comprises of flights taken on British Airways, Iberia and American Airlines.  Points are based on the ticket price excluding taxes, charges and fees – but including carrier surcharges.

You receive points irrespective of where you book.  

You will not receive any points if you book a flight as part of a British Airways Holidays or similar package with inclusive hotel or car hire.

As soon as you hit the threshold for the next tier, you are moved up.  You retain that tier for the rest of the current calendar year and all of the following year.

Note that, when you have multiple flights on one booking, the earning system can get a little chaotic.  This is because BA has to make a notional split of the cost of your ticket between each individual leg.

You can credit flights from ANYONE to your On Business account. Whilst you can register travellers with On Business so it knows they work for you, this makes zero difference to your ability to earn points from someone. If your next door neighbour has booked a BA flight, ask kindly if you can add your On Business number ….

Earn On Business points with a credit card

In 2021, American Express relaunched the British Airways American Express Accelerating Business Card. This is the dedicated British Airways credit card for sole traders and small businesses.

You receive 30,000 Avios when you spend £5,000 in the first three months. You qualify for the bonus as long as you haven’t had any American Express Business cards in the past 12 months.

You can also earn up to 30,000 bonus Avios per calendar year if you spend £60,000 (an average of £5,000 per month) on the card. This is paid at 10,000 Avios for every £20,000 spent.

You also earn bonus On Business points (an extra 1 On Business point per £1 spent, excluding taxes and charges) when you buy qualifying British Airways flights.

It’s important to note that you don’t earn On Business points from day to day spending. You earn Avios at the attractive rate of 1.5 Avios per £1 spent. This rate is even higher when you trigger the bonus Avios at £20,000, £40,000 and £60,000 of annual spend.

Our full review of the British Airways American Express Accelerating Business Card is here.

You can find out more about the card, and apply, here.

The representative APR is 106.1% variable, including the annual fee.  The representative APR on purchases is 27.2% variable.

Points have a hard expiry, however active you are

On Business points have a ‘hard’ expiry date of two years from the December after you earn them.  Unlike Avios, this expiry date cannot be extended – you must spend your points within 2-3 years.

If you do not have on-going activity on your account, they expire even sooner – exactly on the 3rd anniversary of your last earning activity.

Let’s look at how you can use them up ….

How to spend British Airways On Business points

The On Business redemption chart is skewed towards economy redemptions.

A business class flight needs roughly 5-6x more points than an economy one.  Avios only charges 2x the economy points for business class on short-haul and 3x on long-haul, assuming you take the best value ‘Avios and cash’ option.

Most small companies should forget about redeeming for long-haul premium classes.  Your company would need to spend roughly £40,000 net (ie excluding taxes and charges) with BA to receive one Club World return to the Middle East.

Before we look at the numbers, you should note a few things:

• You can only redeem on British Airways, American Airlines and Iberia.  You do not have access to full oneworld reward inventory.

• Reward availability is often better than when using Avios. This, for me, is the main benefit of On Business and I NEVER spend On Business points if Avios seats are available. Save them for a day when cash prices are high and Avios shows nothing.

• There is no ‘Reward Flight Saver’ low taxes option with On Business.  This is not a major issue on short haul as the actual taxes and charges are not huge – an economy return to Hamburg is £70 for example. On long haul, return business class flights will have around £900 of taxes and charges. One way flights TO London will be cheap as there is no Air Passenger Duty, eg Luxembourg to Heathrow one way in economy has just £10 of charges added.

• You cannot redeem flights until two different travellers have collected points on your account. This is presumably to stop ‘one man bands’ joining up. However, as you can credit BA flights from anyone to your On Business account, this isn’t a difficult rule to get around.

What is the On Business redemption chart?

There is no published redemption chart.  You need to plug routes manually into the widget on the On Business home page in order to get pricing examples.

Back in 2021, Head for Points published the full On Business redemption chart for economy flights for the first time anywhere – see here.  This will save you a substantial amount of time in working out how far your points will take you. We will update this chart soon to cover new routes.

There are no peak or off-peak dates. Every day is the same price.

Here are a few examples.  These are all return flights but one-way bookings are allowed:

• Hamburg – 2,200 points Euro Traveller return; 10,400 points Club Europe return

• New York – 9,000 points World Traveller return; 48,000 points Club World return

• Tokyo – 10,000 points World Traveller return; 58,000 points Club World return

Note the huge gap between economy and business class pricing, especially for Hamburg.

If you want to see how it works across all four cabins, here is a New York example for a return trip:

• World Traveller – 9,000 points
• World Traveller Plus – 22,000 points
• Club World – 48,000 points
• FIRST – 68,000 points

Roughly …. and this is very rough …. I work on the basis that 1 On Business point has the same burning power as 4 Avios when used for economy flights and 2 Avios when used for Club World flights.

Part 2 of our British Airways On Business review will run tomorrow. It looks at the value of using your On Business points for upgrades.

You can find out more about the British Airways American Express Accelerating Card, and apply, here.