It’s one thing collecting reward points on a credit card, it’s another collecting enough to actually do something meaningful with them. But play the game properly and you can come out as a winner.
I certainly felt like I’d done alright when I successfully accrued enough points to take the whole family to Japan and back from the UK for just £200 each with British Airways. The £200 is the return cost of fees and taxes per person for an economy seat.
To put the saving into perspective, if I tried to book a practically identical trip for the family this October (on pretty much the same days that I traveled in 2024) but paid in cash, I would need to fork out £5,221.31.
In short, if it wasn’t for the points I would never have gone to Japan!
British Airways uses Avios points as its travel currency and that is what I collected over a period of about two years in order to achieve my goal. The good news is that I could have reached my target a lot quicker if I had followed my own plan more efficiently.
I actually booked flights for three people on my previous trip to Japan, but in this tutorial, just to keep things simple, I’m going to show you how to do it for two people.
The following strategy is what I believe to be the quickest method to hit the goal and can be replicated to travel to almost anywhere, not just Japan. Grab a cuppa and let’s dive in.
But just before we do, here’s a quick disclaimer.
This guide to collecting Avios points is not financial advice. I am not a financial advisor and anything published on this website should be considered as a guide only.
Step 1 – Join the British Airways Club
In order to collect Avios you first need to be a member of the British Airways Club (previously known as the British Airways Executive Club).
It’s free to join and once you are a member you will be given a BA Club number and can start collecting Avios.
You can join the British Airways Club here.
Step 2 – Apply for the American Express Preferred Rewards (Gold) card
There are a fair few travel reward credit cards on the UK market, but if you want to reach your goal in the fastest possible time – and with the minimum financial risk – this is the first card you should get.
DO NOT apply for a British Airways American Express Card before having the American Express Preferred Rewards (Gold) card. If you do, you will restrict your ability to earn an additional sign-up bonus, which will give you valuable extra points.
The American Express Preferred Rewards (Gold) Card has a £195 annual fee but is FREE for the first year. Using this strategy, there is no need to keep the card for longer than 12 months, so there is effectively no fee. I actually kept this card for two years, paying the fee once, but in the pursuit of earning points in the fastest time possible, there is no need to keep it for longer than a year.
The Gold card offers a sign-up bonus of 20,000 American Express Membership Reward Points (MRP) when you spend £3,000 on the card in the first three months. Recently, there was an enhanced sign-up bonus offer of 30,000 but that has now ended. However, if you have a referral link you can earn 3,000 extra points on your sign-up bonus. Contact me if you would like to be sent a referral link for the extra points.
Update: American Express has just put a new promotion on this product for new card holders, offering 28,000 Membership Reward Points as a sign-up bonus, so now is a good time to apply. In this tutorial though, we will continue on the basis that you are only earning the base line 20,000 points. You can still get extra referral points on top, if you have a link.
Step 3 – AFTER receiving your new card request a supplementary card for someone else
This is a really useful hack that will get your extra points for very little effort. If you request a supplementary card for a partner (or anyone for that matter) on application, you WILL NOT get any bonus points.
However, once you have received the card, if you call up to request one, or request one on the app, Amex will give you a bonus of 3,000 MRP just for adding the additional card. Even if the other person doesn’t use the card, you will still get the bonus points. Printing points!
STEP 4 – Start spending on the gold card and hit your sign-up bonus
American Express Membership Reward Points are very useful and can be converted into a wide variety of travel points for different airlines, including Avios. A MRP converts into Avios at ratio of 1:1 so very easy to keep track of.
For every pound you spend on the American Express Gold card you earn 1 MRP. So if you spend £3,000 on the card in the first three months you will have already earned 3,000 MRP before receiving your sign-up bonus of 20,000. If you sign-up using my referral bonus you will also earn an extra 3,000 MRP when you hit the spend threshold, giving you a grand total of 26,000 MRP. Chuck in the extra bonus points for adding a supplementary card holder and we’re only just shy of 30,000 MRP.
£3,000 spend = 3,000 MRP
Sign-up bonus = 20,000 MRP
Referral bonus = 3,000 MRP
Supplementary card bonus = 3,000 MRP
Total = 29,000 MRP
STEP 5 – Apply for the British Airways premium Plus card
Once you have hit your sign-up bonus on the AMEX Preferred Rewards Gold Card it is already time to move cards! The Gold card does have some perks, such as four free airport lounge passes, so worth keeping hold of until you’ve either used them or reach your card anniversary, at which point I would cancel this card in order to avoid paying the £195 annual fee for the second year.
The next card I would now apply for is the British Airways American Express Premium Plus card (BAPP). AMEX has two British Airways cards – the free card and the Premium Plus card. Both cards allow you to earn Avios points when spending on the card, as opposed to AMEX MRP. But as it’s Avios that we are trying to collect, that is all good.
The British Airways Premium Plus card comes with a not-insignificant £300 annual fee, which has to be paid on the first statement. This alone could tempt some people to go for the free card instead. DO NOT do this. The benefits of the AMEX BA Premium Plus card are significantly greater and if you meet the spend thresholds, you will soon get a solid return on that £300 annual fee.
Because the card’s name is a bit of a mouthful, I will refer to it as BAPP for the rest of this article.
The BAPP comes with a sign-up bonus of 30,000 Avios when you spend £6,000 in the first three months. This is double the spend required to hit the sign-up bonus that was on the Preferred Rewards Gold card but, providing you can afford the spend, is worth the graft for the rewards on offer.
Aside from the sign-up bonus, the BAPP card also has a key perk – the British Airways 2-4-1 Companion voucher. This voucher is considered to be the most valuable credit card travel perk in the UK market and is absolutely key to our strategic goal of getting to Japan.
What is a British Airways 2-4-1 Companion Voucher?
The British Airways 2-4-1 Companion Voucher (which we will now refer to as the BA companion voucher) allows you to redeem two return Avios flights for the price of one. So if a flight from A to B costs 50,000 Avios return, you will only need 50,000 points for two people to travel. You are basically doubling your Avios total by having one. You still need to pay fees and taxes for both travellers but with half the amount of Avios that you would need for a redemption without the voucher.
If you are a solo traveller, you can still benefit massively as you can use the voucher to halve the amount of Avios required to book a one-way or return flight.
The BA companion voucher can only be redeemed on flights with British Airways, Air Lingus and Iberia.
To earn a companion voucher on the BAPP card, you need to put £15,000 spend through the card in the first 12 months. That’s an average spend of £1,250 per month, although you will still need to spend £6,000 of the overall total in the first three months in order to hit your sign-up bonus.
The BAPP card earns you Avios at a rate of 1.5 Avios per pound spend. This means that if you hit your £6,000 spend threshold in the first six months, you will have earned 9,000 Avios in addition to your 30,000 sign-up bonus.
How can we add some extra points to this? You’ve guessed it – request a supplementary card! That will add another 3,000 Avios to your total. Happy days.
Qualifying for the BA Companion voucher is very important, so let’s assume that you’ve been spending away and within 12 months of taking out the card you have hit the £15,000 spend threshold to activate the companion voucher.
Just the spend alone will have earned you 22,500 Avios. Add to that the 30,000 sign-up bonus and the 3,000 supplementary card bonus and we are now looking at a very decent figure.
£15,000 spend in first year = 22,500 Avios
Sign-up bonus = 30,000 Avios
Supplementary card bonus = 3,000 Avios
Total = 55,500 Avios
The free BA Amex card still gives you access to a BA companion voucher, if you hit the £15,000 annual spend threshold, but not all vouchers are created equal.
If you earn a BA companion voucher on the free card it is only valid for one year from the date of issue. Many of the best flight redemptions need to be done 355 days in advance (I will be doing a separate blog post on this), so that does not give you very long to redeem your voucher if you were looking to take advantage of such a deal.
The BA companion voucher on the BAPP card is valid for two years, thus giving you a lot more time to plan your trip and be ready to redeem as soon as the flight you want goes on sale.
Also, the voucher on the free card can ONLY be redeemed in Economy class, whereas the BAAP card voucher can be redeemed in any class.
Step 6 – Convert you American Express MRP to Avios
Now that we have a significant amount of MRP and Avios, it is time to put them altogether in the Avios account.
In this example, we have collected a total of 29,000 MRP on the Amex Preferred Rewards (Gold) card. These points can be converted into Avios on the American Express website, by logging into your account.
The minimum amount you can transfer is 1,000 points, but as we’re doing 29,000 there’s no problem there. Once the conversion has been completed it can take typically 24-48 hours for your new Avios balance to be updated.
It’s a good idea not to convert MRP into Avios until close to the time that you plan to use them, but you must have an American Express card that collects MRP open when you do. If you plan to close your gold card when opening an Amex BA card, make sure you convert your MRP to Avios first before closing the account. Otherwise you will lose all of your MRP.
Step 7 – Count up your points, you’ve met your goal!
With 55,500 Avios already in the bag from your BAPP spending, the conversion of 29,000 MRP into Avios now gives you a grand total of 84,500 Avios.
Congratulations! This is enough Avios to redeem a return flight to Japan from the UK.
And with a BA companion voucher at your disposal you can take someone with you for the same amount of Avios.
A one way flight from London to Haneda, Tokyo is valued at 40,000 Avios peak and 35,000 Avios off peak. So a round trip is 80,000 Avios peak and 70,000 off peak.
All you need to do now is redeem your points and voucher to have booked the trip of your dreams.
That will be the easy bit right? Well, not quite. In my next blog I’ll show how to redeem your points and voucher and explain why if you want to go somewhere really cool like Japan at a popular time of year, you are going to have to complete something akin to a military operation to make sure you get what you want.
Read next
- Smart Avios hack reduced my holiday cost by £500
- American Express launch tempting new welcome bonus offers
- Five ways to boost your Avios balance quickly
- How to redeem a British Airways Companion Voucher
- Why now is a good time to get an American Express Gold Card
Richard is an experienced NCTJ-qualified journalist, specialising in sport and travel. He works as a Sport Content Editor for Reach PLC and also produces travel articles on an ad-hoc basis for the business’s national titles.
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