Guides

After our piece the other week on the 10,000 bonus Avios for adding a free supplementary card to your BA Amex, we got a sensible question from a few readers: If I am added as a supplementary cardholder on someone else's Amex, does that count as having "held" the card? Will it stop me getting a sign-up bonus when I apply for my own? Short answer: no. Why not The Amex 24-month rule applies to primary cardholders only. A supplementary card sits on someone else's account. You are

Congratulations. You've earned two Companion Vouchers from your BA Amex, or you're thinking about pushing for a second, and let's say that you want to book three seats for you, your partner, and a child (other groups of three are available). The logical solution seems obvious: use one voucher for two people (you + partner), use the second voucher for solo travel at 50% off (the child). Three seats, two vouchers, sorted. Except British Airways explicitly prohibits this. You ca

Amex's rules around who gets a welcome bonus aren't complicated. They're just a bit annoying. Income decides which cards you can apply for. The 24-month rule decides which welcome bonuses you'll actually receive. Our Amex eligibility checker handles both, for all nine UK personal Amex cards, in under a minute. How our Amex eligibility checker works Type in your personal income. Tell it whether you've held an Amex in the last 24 months. If you have, tick which ones, mark any s

Your companion voucher is about to expire. You're not going to use it. Maybe life got in the way, maybe you couldn't find availability, maybe you just ran out of time. So can you extend it? Or give it to someone who will use it? Almost certainly not, and no. But there's more to it than that, so let's go through it properly. In this article: Can I extend my companion voucher? What qualifies for an extension? How do I apply for an extension? What if I don't qualify? Does the vo

Some Avios routes on BA are gone within minutes of midnight. Others sit there for weeks. This is an attempt at a guide to telling them apart. BA releases reward seats at midnight GMT, 355 days before departure. The guaranteed allocation on day one is eight in economy, two in premium economy, four in business class. On some routes those four business class seats last weeks. On others they are gone before most people know the window has opened. Below I've split the main BA long

If your tier dropped overnight, sorry. But plenty of you still have lounge access today that has nothing to do with status, mind. If you're flying in Club or First, your boarding pass does the job. And to the lucky few who requalified, well done. Either way, here's a handy tip for all of you. Did you know there's a live page that shows you how busy each BA lounge at T5 is in real time? Here's how busy the BA lounges are in T5 Here's the link, ba-uk-occupancy.livereachmedia.co

If you have to abide by school holidays, you already know the problem. You are locked into the same travel windows as everyone else, and the Avios price reflects it. BA treats every school holiday as peak. There are two ways around it though, depending on which school holiday you are trying to escape. Half terms: fly Aer Lingus or Iberia BA, Iberia, and Aer Lingus all use Avios and all run peak and off-peak pricing, but their calendars are not the same. Aer Lingus keeps it si

This is, without a doubt, one of the most frequent questions we get on our Instagram right now, so let's clarify it once and for all. In this article: What is the British Airways Companion Voucher? Why does this matter? How does booking each leg separately actually work? Which call centre should you ring? What if I have enough Avios to book the return at full price? Does BA waive the change fee? Can I book the return before the outbound? Does the voucher only work on British

Guess what is back? It's Bargain Bin time!! I've been digging through Virgin Atlantic’s wonderfully chaotic dynamic pricing to find the redemptions that are good value… and a few that absolutely aren't! Those are at the bottom of the article if you feel the need to projectile spit your tea/wine/water over your phone/tablet/laptop/however you read our wonderful updates. As always I have used vseats.io for this article. This is not an ad, it's just my preferred way to find the

Right, this is it, this is the last status match post I'm doing for a while (unless something truly extraordinary happens). I'm conscious how many posts I've done on the subject, but you may want to send this one to that BA loyalist in your life. In just under a week, 31st March 2026, a large number of BA's Bronze, Silver and Gold members are going to lose the perks they've had for years as its become too difficult to retain with the changes they've made. This means no more l