Can you combine a BA Companion Voucher and a Barclays Cabin Upgrade Voucher?
- Sam
- Jun 13
- 3 min read
If I have a BA Companion Voucher from my BA Amex and a Barclays Cabin Upgrade Voucher from my Barclaycard Avios or Barclays Avios Rewards, can I use both on the same booking?
Not on the same booking, no. But you can use both on the same trip if you are willing to make two separate bookings.
How the two vouchers actually differ
Worth a quick recap, because they do not do the same thing.
The BA Companion Voucher gets two people on a return flight in any cabin. You pay Avios for one seat and taxes and fees for both. Both passengers travel together on the same itinerary.
The Barclays Cabin Upgrade Voucher bumps you up one cabin on a Reward Flight. It covers either one person on a return trip, or two people on a one-way. The journey must start in the UK.
So they are doing two different jobs. The Companion Voucher is buy-one-get-one on the seat itself. The Cabin Upgrade Voucher is a discount on a better cabin. Both reduce the Avios cost of premium travel, just in different ways.
Why it's not allowed
When you book a Reward Flight on the BA website, the system only lets you apply one voucher to the booking. Once the Companion Voucher is on, the Cabin Upgrade Voucher cannot be added on top, and vice versa. If you wanted to bore yourself with reading Barclays T's&C's you'll find words to the effect of the Cabin Upgrade Voucher cannot be used alongside any voucher that is not theirs, thus ruling out the Companion Voucher.
What two bookings looks like
Since you cannot stack them on one booking, the way to get both vouchers working on the same trip is to split it.
You and your travel party end up on the same flights, on the same date, in the same cabin. The two bookings just aren't linked together. A typical setup:
Booking 1: You and one companion in Club World, using the BA Companion Voucher. You must be one of the travellers.
Booking 2: The remaining passengers in Club World, using the Cabin Upgrade Voucher. One voucher upgrades either one person on a return, or two people on a one-way. So if you want to upgrade two people on a return trip, you will need two vouchers.
A few things to keep in mind
Reward seat availability. You need enough seats in your target cabin to cover everyone across both bookings. BA usually only guarantees four seats in Club World, two in premium economy, and eight in economy when seats are first released 355 days before departure, so the bigger the group, the trickier this gets.
Who has to travel. The Companion Voucher requires you, the BA Amex holder, to be one of the passengers on that booking. The Cabin Upgrade Voucher does not require the person who earned the voucher to travel, but the booking has to come from your BA Club account, and the person flying needs to already be set up on your account as either a household member or nominated traveller.
To sum it up
You can do it, with some effort. Book your party in two halves on the same flights. Put yourself and one companion on Booking 1 with the BA Companion Voucher. Put everyone else on Booking 2 with Cabin Upgrade Vouchers. Two references, same flights, same cabin.
Close enough.
Sam
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