How do I earn Avios from Heathrow Rewards points?

This articles shows you how you can earn Avios points from Heathrow Rewards and how to convert your Heathrow Rewards points into Avios.

Heathrow Rewards, the loyalty scheme for shopping or parking at Heathrow Airport, is a long-established partner of Avios and British Airways Executive Club.  It is an easy way to pick up a few extra Avios.

How do I collect Heathrow Rewards points?

You can find full details of Heathrow Rewards on its website here.

Heathrow Rewards gives you 1 point for every £1 spent in shops at Heathrow Airport, either landside or airside.

Check the small print before you make your purchases at Heathrow as some items such as tobacco do not count.  Gift card purchases do not count if they are for the store where you buy the card – eg M&S gift cards bought in M&S do not count (and a friend recently tried this as a test) but third party gift cards bought in WH Smith seem to be OK.

You also earn 1 point per £10 of foreign exchange you buy, and 1 point per £1 spent on Heathrow Express tickets.

You can also earn points by booking hotels via the Rocketmiles portal.  There is often a generous first user offer – see here for example.

Heavy spenders will be promoted to Heathrow Rewards Premium.  Spend £750 in a calendar year and you will receive double points going forward and some Heathrow Express upgrade vouchers, amongst other perks.

When you have earned 250 points you can exchange them for airline miles or shopping vouchers.

Is there a bonus for joining Heathrow Rewards?

Occasionally, yes.

If there has been a bonus recently, we will probably have covered it on the site.  Click here to bring up all of our Heathrow Rewards articles in date order.

You may well already have a Heathrow Rewards account.  If so, and if there is a good sign up bonus currently running, consider persuading someone who shares a BA or Avios household account with you to open one too.

If you are flying soon, don’t worry about not receiving your plastic card in time.   You can use the Heathrow Airport app to add your Heathrow Rewards card to your smartphone wallet.  Alternatively, save your receipts and scan or post them to Heathrow Rewards and they will add the points manually.

How can I spend Heathrow Rewards points?

You can redeem your Heathrow Rewards points for Avios at the ratio of 1:1, with a minimum transfer of 250.

You can also send them to Virgin Flying Club, Aegean Miles+Bonus, Miles & More, Emirates Skywards, Royalskies (Royal Brunei) or Krisflyer (Singapore Airlines).

Alternatively, you can redeem for Heathrow shopping vouchers or Heathrow Express vouchers, or vouchers towards the official Heathrow car parks.

In 2017-19 Heathrow Rewards was running regular transfer bonuses into airline programmes.  We haven’t seen one since the pandemic started, but I recommend sitting on your points if you don’t need the Avios immediately.  It would be a shame to miss out on a 50% conversion bonus.

Is it worth converting Heathrow Rewards points to Avios?

Good question.  250 Heathrow Rewards points gets you 250 Avios or £2.50 of Heathrow shopping voucher or £5 of Official Heathrow Parking vouchers.

If you pay for the official car parks at Heathrow then I would redeem for that instead.  It is less clear cut whether it is ‘worth’ paying 1p per Avios by taking the miles rather than the shopping vouchers.  Cash is king, but Heathrow vouchers are not as flexible as cash unless you are passing through the airport on a regular basis.

In reality, your choice is likely to be swayed by a good transfer bonus, either for shopping vouchers or an airline scheme.

Conclusion

Heathrow Rewards is a good opportunity to top up your Avios points and, if there is a sign-up bonus running, it is well worth joining before your next shopping trip at the airport.

(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.