British Airways Visa Review: Big Bonus, Terrible Surcharges – NerdWallet

The undeniable highlight of the British Airways Visa Signature® Card is its large sign-up bonus. The offer is even more generous for cardholders who can reach certain spending thresholds. Chase phrases it like this: “Earn 75,000 Avios after you spend $5,000 on purchases within the first three months of account opening.“

With this card, you can earn one Travel Together Ticket each calendar year you spend more than $30,000 on your card. A Travel Together Ticket could be incredibly valuable — maybe even worth thousands — when redeemed for an otherwise costly ticket, such as a first-class international fare. You’ll still have to pay taxes and other fees on it, though, and you’ll have to redeem the ticket within two years. This feature might not exactly be a deal-sealer for someone who’s already shelling out more than $30,000 in card purchases each year, but it’s a nice perk.

Like any travel credit card worth its salt, this card doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees for purchases made outside the U.S. That could add up to some solid savings for frequent travelers.

Here’s something you really want to pay attention to if you’re new to this airline’s loyalty program: British Airways adds notoriously high carrier surcharges to certain award tickets, which can increase your costs by hundreds of dollars when redeeming Avios for travel. The exact cost of these charges varies by route and fare class. Say you booked a round-trip flight from San Francisco International Airport to London’s Heathrow Airport on British Airways. For an economy ticket costing 32,500 Avios, you would also pay about $321.33 in “taxes, fees and carrier charges,” as of April 4, 2022.

That means when you’re getting ready to book what you think is going to be a nearly free trip with Avios — surprise! — you might have to pay hundreds of dollars in fees, depending on the route. (In some cases, the charges could even make a reward flight more expensive than simply paying cash for the same ticket, which means your rewards would have negative value.) And these fees persist despite flyers’ displeasure with them.

The British Airways Visa Signature® Card can help with those surcharges. Cardholders are eligible for up to $600 in statement credits each year to pay for flight taxes and fees when booking tickets on British Airways using Avios. The credit varies depending on what type of fare you book, and you can use this statement credit benefit up to three times per year.

• Business or first class: $200 statement credit per use.

• Economy or premium economy: $100 statement credit per use.

The credits make taxes and surcharges a little easier to accept, but they generally won’t cover the entire bill for your award flights. Consider the earlier example of a 50,000 Avios trip with $373 in taxes, fees and carrier charges. Even with the $100 credit, you’d still have to pony up $273 for the trip.