Update: One or more card offers in this post are no longer available. Check our Hot Deals for the latest offers.
If you’re a fan of British Airways Avios points, then this is an offer you’ll want to take a look at.
The sign-up bonus for the British Airways Visa Signature® Card is gone and instead you’ll earn 4 Avios points per $1 spent on up to $30,000 in the first year of card membership. That’s a huge amount of spending, which makes it, at best, an impractical offer for most. But 120,000 Avios points can be super valuable.
But remember that every calendar year you spend $30,000+ on the card, you’ll earn a British Airways Travel Together Ticket. And with the card you’ll also get a discount on British Airways flights.
The information for the British Airways Visa Signature Card has been collected independently by Million Mile Secrets. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.
New Chase British Airways Credit Card Offer
Apply here for the British Airways Visa Signature® Card
With the bonus offer gone, you won’t need to worry about meeting minimum spending requirements. But you will need to spend a huge amount with the card to earn the full 120,000 Avios points. The card also has other perks, like 10% off British Airways flights when you book by March 31, 2020, through the website provided in your welcome materials. And it doesn’t have any foreign transaction fees.
After the first year (or the first $30,000 spent that year), the card earns the following on purchases:
- 3 British Airways Avios points per $1 you spend on British Airways purchases
- 1 British Airways Avios point per $1 you spend on everything else
The $95 annual fee is NOT waived for the first year.
Good Deal or Not?
In the past, this card came with a 100,000 Avios-point bonus after meeting tiered minimum spending requirements totally $20,000 in the first year. If you include the points you’d earn from the minimum spending that offer would have earned you the same 120,000 Avios points for $10,000 less in spending.
The spending required to earn the full bonus so large, it will probably kill the deal for most of you. To make the most of the offer you’d have to spend $2,500 per month on the card for the first year. For me personally, that accounts for most of my monthly credit card spending.
But what makes it a bad deal for me actually makes it a stellar opportunity for others. I have way more credit cards than most people and if it wasn’t part of my day job to write about them, keeping track of everything would be a part-time gig.
So it’s easy to see how only applying for one credit card during the year and earning a solid 4 points per $1 on every purchase would be appealing. You won’t have to worry about keeping track of annual fees on multiple cards, and you won’t need to remember which card earns a bonus in which category. So you’ll have fewer headaches.
And if you were planning on getting the card and spending enough to earn the Travel Together Ticket, then this offer makes more sense.
I’ve never used a Travel Together Ticket, but here is the jist of how it works. You can use it once to bring along a companion on an award ticket for just the cost of taxes and fees. But there’s a catch – it’s only valid for British Airways flights originating in and returning to the US. The problem with that is you’ll be hit with some of the worst taxes and fees on award flights to/from the UK.
You can easily end up paying $400 to $500 in taxes and fees per person in coach for an award flight and much more in Business Class. With so many low cost carriers flying to Europe it’s not hard to find a cheap round-trip economy ticket for close to that price. The one nice thing about the Travel Together Ticket is that your companion will fly in the same cabin as you. So it could be a decent deal for Business Class awards. Even though you’ll pay more taxes in Business Class, you could look at it as getting a steeply discounted Business Class flight.
If you’re looking at earning British Airways Avios points, consider earning Chase Ultimate Rewards points or AMEX Membership Rewards points because they both transfer to British Airways at a 1:1 ratio.
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