If you’ve not heard of the Barclays Avios upgrade voucher, this article aims to bring you up to speed and give you some examples of how you could use it.

If you’re already collecting Avios, you may already be familiar with the British Airways Companion voucher and hopefully read my article on how to redeem one successfully. But did you know about its distant cousin?

The Barclays Avios upgrade voucher (which we will now simply refer to as an ‘upgrade voucher’) is an incentive-based perk offered on the Barclaycard Avios credit card range.

The are two different types of Barclaycard Avios credit cards – Barclaycard Avios (free) and Barclaycard Avios Plus (£20 fee per month).

I have the Barclaycard Avios Plus card and although this article won’t run through the differences between the two cards it will explain how you can earn the upgrade voucher on both.

What is the Barclaycard Avios upgrade voucher?

The Barclaycard Avios upgrade voucher is a digital voucher that will allow you to redeem a British Airways Avios reward flight in the next cabin classification up from the one you are redeeming your Avios for.

To put it simply, you could book a long haul flight in Business Class using the Avios amount needed for a Premium Economy seat by using the upgrade voucher.

Or you could book a Premium Economy seat for the value of an Economy Avios redemption.

Although it is called an upgrade voucher, the name is doing a bit of heavy lifting. If you booked a Business Class flight using the upgrade voucher, although you would only need to redeem the Avios amount of the cabin classification below Business Class, you still need to pay the full taxes and fees of the cabin you have upgraded to.

Furthermore, you can only upgrade to the cabin classification above if there is Avios availability in that cabin. So if there is availability on a long haul flight in Economy but not Premium Economy, you can’t upgrade to it.

Crucially though, you only need availability in the cabin you are wanting to upgrade to in order to complete the booking.

How many people is the upgrade voucher for?

The upgrade voucher can either be used by one person on a return journey or by two people on a one-way flight.

How do you earn an upgrade voucher on a Barclaycard?

It is possible to earn an upgrade voucher through a Barclays Premier Current Account, but that involves being a high earner, so this article is purely looking at the Barclaycard Avios cards.

If you have the free card, you qualify for the upgrade voucher after spending £20,000 on the card in 12 months. On the paid for card you will qualify after £10,000 card spend in 12 months.

Once activated, the voucher is valid for two years.

When you qualify for the voucher it is not activated automatically. You also have the option to select the voucher or receive 7,000 Avios instead.

This is a personal choice, but if you have a use for it in mind, the upgrade voucher will always return you better value than just taking the points, especially if you have the paid card. You could earn 7,000 Avios just by doing an Avios boost and paying £66.

How should I use the upgrade voucher?

Once you’ve earned an upgrade voucher, how should you use it? Good question!

It’s probably a good move to have a plan of how you want to use the voucher before it is added to your Avios club account but I would have to admit that I did not and have spent some time working out what the best use of it would be.

Much like with the BA companion voucher, many people will look to maximise the value of the voucher but I am always of the opinion that using a voucher for whatever your own personal aims are is more important, even if it doesn’t extract the best value.

You will also need to consider whether you want to use the voucher for a short haul or long haul flight. If you went for short haul, you could get an upgrade to Business Class from economy which would be a relatively small dent in your Avios balance.

The downside to that is that in most cases you would need to fly from London and the Business Class product on a BA short haul flight is nowhere near as good as the long haul experience. You could get a flat bed on a long haul trip but not a short haul.

A Business Class ticket will give you access to the British Airways lounge before your flight, so that is a nice extra perk.

I have a further complication of often travelling as a family of three, so my upgrade voucher won’t cover all of us. But that is my problem, not yours.

Personally, I think a good redemption of this voucher is on long haul flights of a 7-9 hour duration. A good example is from London to Dubai.

I can get a shuttle flight from Manchester to Heathrow and then fly business class to Dubai off-peak, using the upgrade voucher for 42,500 Avios plus £187.50 in taxes and fees. A normal business class redemption for this route is 80,000 Avios one-way, so a saving of 37,500 Avios per person.

I could then catch an off-peak economy flight for the return by redeeming 25,000 plus £50 in taxes and fees per person. That’s an overall cost of 135,000 Avios plus £475 in taxes and fees for two people.

Without the upgrade voucher, that itinerary would cost 75,000 Avios more. A good saving!

Exactly the same figures would apply to any USA east coast destinations, such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It would also be the same for Montreal and Toronto in Canada and if you’re flying east, Doha and Riyadh.

Bear in mind that availability for Avios redemptions is normally easier to come by on those USA flights, so something to consider.

If you are Avios-rich you could go even further afield like Tokyo or Singapore, but demand for these seats is almost always high. It can be done but your need to be right on your game.

Other things to know

Edit: This section has been updated following feedback from users of the British Airways Executive Club Tier Points, Reward Flights & Advice Facebook group.

The voucher can only be used on British Airways flights with a BA flight code.

You can hold more than one upgrade voucher at once and can use up to two vouchers on a booking, but the rules are a little fiddly.

With one upgrade voucher you can upgrade a return Avios flight for one person, or upgrade a one-way Avios flight for two people.

If you use an upgrade voucher for a one-way flight for two people you cannot use it for a flight back to the UK. The upgraded booking must originate from the UK.

So in practice, you can either book a return flight booking from the UK to another destination and back for one person or an outbound flight upgraded for two people.

If you have two vouchers you can book return flights that are upgraded for two people. User feedback suggests that doing this sometimes trips up BA’s online system.

If you encounter this problem, it is suggested that you go back out of the booking you are making and then back in and it should fix the problem. Failing that, call BA and tell the operator that the vouchers weren’t working online, to avoid paying a telephone service fee.

You cannot combine an upgrade voucher with a BA companion voucher on the same booking. A party of three could get around this by making two separate bookings.

Although the voucher holder must make the booking on their account, they do not need to be named as one of the persons flying, so you can book for other people.

You cannot use the upgrade voucher to get into First Class.

A redemption with an upgrade voucher can only be made by using the highest Avios lowest taxes and fees option available. This is unlike the BA companion voucher which will let you select any Avios option available.

If you want to make a mixed class booking or an open jaw booking (whereby the return flight airport is different from the one flown to on the outbound journey), this can be done but you must call BA to do this.

What are your thoughts?

Have you got an upgrade voucher or are you planning to get one? Let me know how you are planning to use it in the comments section.

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