Review : Is the British Airways Premium Plus AmEx worth getting?

A review of the British Airways (BA) Premium Plus American Express credit card, UK version.

If you’re serious about travel, airline rewards credit cards can help supercharge your purchasing power on the flights you crave. Play the points game correctly, and you could be jetting off in business or first class to your dream destination for way less than you ever thought possible.

The BA Premium Plus credit card awards 1.5 Avios points per £1 spent on the card, as well as the promise of a 2 for 1 companion voucher if you hit a certain spend threshold within a twelve month period. Are these benefits enough to make up for the hefty £300 annual fee? Well, let’s explore this…

N.B. The article that follows constitutes my own opinions and thoughts regarding the British Airways Premium Plus Credit Card, and should not be taken as financial advice. Make sure to do your own due diligence!

About the card

The British Airways Premium Plus card is issued by American Express. Unlike a normal AmEx card it earns Avios points only. This is distinct from the normal American Express cards, which earn Membership Rewards (MR) points which can then be converted out to various other points (including Avios).

The Avios points earned on your card are transferred out on a certain date each month straight into your British Airways Executive Club account. They will show up in your AmEx app until the designated transfer date, at which point they will then show up in your BA Executive Club account.

You will need to register for a BA Executive Club account if you do not already have one. The British Airways Executive Club app was recently renamed as the Avios app, but rather confusingly the desktop site is still the BA Executive Club.

The card comes with an annual fee of £300. This has recently increased from £250.

Currently you can cancel the card for a pro-rata refund, but it seems to be imminent that this will be withdrawn (AmEx has been threatening this for a while). In theory you can get the welcome bonus and then immediately cancel the card for a pro-rata refund of part of the annual fee once you’ve spent enough to trigger the bonus. Most would want to push on for the valuable companion voucher though.

The annual fee will be added as a single charge of £300 in your first statement, i.e., about a month after you took out the card. It is not divided into a monthly payment. Therefore unless you want to be paying interest on that £300, you need to make sure you have the money set aside to pay it off in one go.

Representative APR is 139.2% APR variable, this includes the £300 card fee. The representative APR for purchases is 30.7% variable.

Avios points are earned at 1.5 points per £1 spent. This is a higher rate than you will get on free credit cards like the standard BA AmEx card, which earns 1 point per £1 spent, as does the free Barclaycard Avios Mastercard.

One potential supercharger for your points is that the BA Premium Plus earns a whopping 3 points for every £1 spent with British Airways.

What is the sign-up bonus and how does it work?

Currently, the standard sign up bonus is 30,000 Avios if you spend £6,000 in your first three months of card membership. This is a recent increase in the spending requirements to earn the bonus.

Obviously you need to weigh up whether you are realistically going to spend £2,000 per month in the first three months in order to trigger the bonus.

The other big draw for the card, is the potential to trigger a 2 for 1 voucher if you spend £15,000 in a card membership year. This is known as a companion voucher. Remember, DO NOT use points earning or voucher targets as a reason to overspend! ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS pay your statements on time and in full, otherwise the value of any points earned will be obliterated by the interest charges you accrue.

BA has a limited number of reward seats available its flights, which are bookable with Avios. These can be snapped up very quickly for the most popular routes! You cannot use a companion voucher for a cash booking, only for an Avios reward booking.

The BA website will give you different pricing options to spend your points, with a mix of cash and Avios. The example below should illustrate this. The companion voucher would halve the number of points needed to pay for a trip for two, but you would still pay the taxes and charges for two people.

The screenshot below shows a reward flight for two people to Santorini (return). The Avios cost shown would be halved if the companion voucher was used. The voucher could also be used for a solo trip to halve the Avios cost.

If you sign up using my referral link you’ll benefit from a slightly higher welcome bonus than the standard. I’ll get some bonus Avios too (full disclosure), so we’ll both be happy!

What are Avios points and how much are they worth?

The widely held consensus is that an Avios point should be valued at one British penny. I always try to think of an Avios point as potentially being worth at least £0.01. For example, if my balance were 50,000 Avios, I would convert to £ by removing the last two zeroes (or divide by 100), and consider that I have a balance with the potential for at least £500 saving on the cash price of a flight.

You can convert Avios out to Nectar points, or spend them on hotels, hire cars, wine, and some other things, but when doing so you will typically get much worse value than if you spend them wisely on flights.

Having said that, not every Avios flight redemption will provide better value than the outright cash price, so proceed with caution. We will cover how to work this out in more depth in a future article.

British Airways is in a group of airlines (or alliance) known as OneWorld, which includes the airlines above and several others. There are a number of other airlines in the alliance. See BA’s website for a full list of One World partners with whom you can spend and earn Avios.

Although there are several airlines in the alliance, currently you can only use your companion voucher with BA, Iberia, and Aer Lingus. Now, If you could use it on Qatar Airways that really would be a game changer!

We’re reviewing the credit card here rather than doing a deep dive into BA’s partner airlines. Hence with the key perk being the companion voucher, BA, Aer Lingus and Iberia are the main airlines to consider in the context of the card’s value.

Benefits

The companion voucher – this is the major benefit of the card and is the deciding factor for most people who opt for the card. This is probably the most powerful and lucrative UK credit card benefit currently available.

Accelerated points earning – 1.5 points is earned per £1 spent, compared to 1 point per £1 on the free card. Assuming you hit the £15,000 annual spend on the card needed to trigger the companion voucher, you would earn an extra 7,500 points on top of what you’d earn from a £15,000 annual spend on a free card.

Regular offers – check the AmEx app regularly for various offers intended to seduce you into spending at certain retailers. These can be quite London-centric at times, or be for very high end things that I’ve never heard of!

Sometimes there are some really good cashback offers though. For example, we recently used an offer for £20 cashback at The Ivy. Nice enough, but I also got 5 points per £1 spent via the Avios app, as The Ivy tracks your card spend in the restaurant if you’ve already registered your AmEx card in the Avios app.

Exemplary customer service – As the British Airways card is issued by American Express, you benefit from their incredible US style customer service. It’s reasonably easy to get through to a person quite quickly when you need to (easier than most other banks at least). The agents I’ve spoken to have always been knowledgeable and able to handle my query easily.

When speaking to their customer services I always find it kind of delightful when they sign off by saying things like “Thank you for choosing American Express, have a great day ahead!”, or (my personal favourite) “American Express is always there for you!”.

Drawbacks

The annual fee of £300 per annum. This is pretty hefty by anyone’s standards. The spend threshold of £6,000 in three months to trigger the welcome bonus is also pretty high for most people.

Lack of other benefits. The companion voucher and the higher Avios earning rate are very powerful benefits for sure. However, the card lacks attractive perks like airport lounge access and travel insurance that other cards in the American Express range can offer.

Acceptance of American Express. This can be a problem if hitting your companion voucher spend threshold is going to be tight. AmEx is now a lot more widely accepted, and most major supermarkets and high street retailers accept it with no drama. However, often in smaller independent stores it’s not accepted. Garage services are another area where you can really miss out on points from a larger spend.

Foreign exchange fees. Using your AmEx card abroad will incur a 2.99% foreign currency fee, leading you to weigh up whether you basically want to pay 3% more for something to keep on track for that companion voucher target.

Income requirements and eligibility

You need to have a minimum salary of £35,000 to be eligible for the BA Premium Plus card.

Income is not the whole story however. Other factors are in play, such as your credit history and score. I highly recommend finding a good eligibility checker first. Ideally one that only does a soft search on your credit file. Check your eligibility for airline rewards credit cards with Money Saving Expert

To be eligible for the welcome bonus you need to have not held any Avios earning American Express in the previous two years. I had taken out the AmEx gold card a year before (which earns membership reward points, not Avios) but was still eligible for the BA Premium Plus welcome bonus.

App experience

The AmEx app is a very good and reliable user experience. I’ve never had any issues with it not working. It’s very easy indeed to see your points tally for the month and also to check your progress toward the companion voucher. You need to check the Avios app (see image below) for your overall total though.

I really can’t find fault with the American Express app experience at all.

The Avios app is where your main Avios points total is stored. You will log into this with your BA Executive club account. This app can be a little less reliable, although I think it’s had some updates recently and seems a little better.

Your Avios points total is clearly indicated here. When you’ve earned some new points, the next time you log in it will give you a pleasing and ever so slightly addictive party popper animation as your new points are added.

Premium Plus versus the free British Airways card

There are some key differences between the free card and the paid Premium Plus card. Let’s start with the free card.

British Airways American Express (free) credit card.

And now the premium card.

British Airways Premium Plus Credit Card.

• Welcome bonus 30,000 Avios for spending £6,000 in the first three months.
• Annual card fee £300.
• Companion voucher triggered at £15,000 annual spend (usable in all cabin classes).
• 1.5 Avios per £1 spent.

Conclusion

Is the British Airways Premium Plus card worth it?

The companion voucher is without doubt one of the most attractive credit card perks currently available on the UK credit card market, but with a couple of caveats.

For it to be worth taking out the card, we need to be able to ensure that we are going to get enough value from it to counteract the £300 annual fee.

Take into account that we roughly value an Avios point at 1p. In year one, provided you hit the £6,000 spend and trigger the 30,000 point welcome bonus (which we will value at £300 or potentially more), we have effectively cancelled out the fee by earning the welcome bonus. Remember that we will have to spend £6,000 within three months to get there though, earning another 9,000 Avios (potentially worth another £90+).

Then there’s the companion voucher. Assuming we spend £15,000+ within a year in order to trigger the voucher, the card is easily worth the fee in year one.

In year two without the welcome bonus, we would need to spend £20,000 (£20,000 x1.5 = 30,000 points) in order to earn the £300 worth of Avios needed to negate the fee. That’s a lot of money! BUT if we spend £15,000+ then we also earn the companion voucher, which should be easily worth the £300 card fee (as long as we use it wisely!).

Really then, from year two onwards we need to consider the companion voucher as the main motivation for keeping this card. Once you’ve triggered your welcome bonus in year one, if you’re not hitting enough annual spend to trigger the companion voucher, you really need to consider whether the card is worth paying £300 per year for.

Assuming you can spend enough to continue earning the voucher though, the companion voucher is the ace up the sleeve of the British Airways Premium Plus credit card. This makes it one of the most attractive available cards in the current UK credit card market.

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