Do I earn Avios if I book a flight for someone else?

Do you earn Avios if you book a flight for another person?

Today I want to look at whether you can earn Avios points if you book a flight for someone else.

As you probably know, Avios is the reward currency used by British Airways Executive Club and several other frequent flyer programs (Iberia, Aer Lingus, LEVEL and Vueling).

If you are a frequent flyer one of the easiest ways to earn Avios is adding your Executive Club membership number to your bookings with British Airways. This will automatically credit your account every time you fly on an eligible flight.

Unfortunately, Avios are only earned by the person who flies and not the booker. This means that if you book a flight for someone else, they are able to earn Avios if they add their Executive Club number to the booking.

You as the booker do not receive anything.  It makes no difference if you paid for the ticket or not.

If you are buying a ticket for a family member – who doesn’t need to live with you – it is possible to create a British Airways household account enabling you to pool the Avios earned with yours for free.  You can learn how to create a British Airways household account in this article.

This is a great way of letting children earn Avios, since the only way under-18s are allowed to join British Airways Executive Club is as part of a household account.  This article explains more about how children can earn Avios.

(This article is part of our ‘BA Q&A’ series which explains how British Airways Executive Club works.  You can see all of our ‘BA Q&A’ articles here. )

(Head for Points is the UK’s biggest frequent flyer website with 2.4 million monthly page views.  Want to learn more about earning and spending Avios?  Click here to read our latest news stories and click here to join the mailing list for our weekly or daily email newsletters.)

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

There are also good bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These are available to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.