Chase are making some earning changes to their Chase British Airways credit card. If you have this card you should have received (or will receive a letter from Chase), stating that after April 30th the following changes will take place:
- The card will earn 3x Avios per dollar spent on British Airways purchases (up from 2.5x)
- The card will earn 1x Avios per dollar spent on all other purchases (down from 1.25x)
How these changes will affect you is pretty dependent on where you do the majority of your spending. It’s actually still possible to earn 1.25x Avios (in fact even more) on all purchases without using the Chase British Airways. The only downside is that by doing this you will lose out on being able to earn the travel together ticket (which requires $30,000 in spend on this card).
How To Still Get 1.25x (or more) On Non Bonus Spending
There are a few different options to earn 1.25x or more Avios, here they are:
- Use the AmEx Everyday Preferred. This card earns 1x MR points on all purchases, but if you make more than 30 purchases a month you receive a 50% bonus meaning that you’d earn 1.5x Avios per $1. To make things even better, American Express often offers transfer bonuses to Avios (as high as 50%) which means you could actually earn up to 2.25 Avios per $1 spent. This card does come with an annual fee of $95, which is the same as the Chase British Airways card. There is also the regular AmEx Everyday card which gets a bonus of 20% which would be 1.2x Avios on all purchases (plus any transfer bonus) but comes with no annual fee.
- American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card. Card earns 1x points on all purchases, when you transfer 20,000 points to an airline partner you receive a bonus 5,000 miles (e.g 20,000 SPG points = 25,000 Avios). The downside to this is that you’re restricted to transferring in batches of 20,000, the upside is the annual fee is only $65.
Final Thoughts
I always find it weird when cobranded cards don’t offer the best earning rates for their own currency. The Chase British Airways card doesn’t even earn the best rate on purchases made with British Airways (that honor goes to the AmEx BRG card which earns 3x MR, during a transfer bonus this could be worth up to 4.5x Avios). For me the Chase British Airways card is worth getting for the sign up bonus, but it’s definitely not worth keeping and not worth putting any spend on long term.
Keep in mind the sign up bonus on this card is still 50,000 points after $2,000 in spend within three months, the annual fee is currently being waived (offer has been extended until at least the end of April, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they extend again).
Hat tip to One Mile At A Time
Right when I got approved for this card.. 🙁