The British Airways Visa Signature® Card (review) is one of the better airline co-branded credit cards out there, as it offers lots of benefits for those who fly British Airways with any frequency.
In this post, I wanted to focus on what will be the biggest benefit of the card for many — the 10% discount when you purchase British Airways flights.
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The British Airways Card 10% flight discount
The British Airways Visa benefit that can have virtually unlimited value is the 10% discount on revenue flights. For many people, this will more than cover the card’s annual fee after just one ticket.
Let’s take a closer look at how this benefit works.
British Airways Visa 10% off terms
If you’re going to take advantage of the British Airways 10% discount, the really good news is that:
- This discount is valid for travel in all cabins, including economy, premium economy, business class, and first class
- The entire fare is discounted 10%, including taxes, fees, and carrier imposed surcharges; so it’s not just the base fare that’s being discounted
- To take advantage of this, just use promotion code CHASEBA10 at the time of booking
- This is valid for bookings and travel through the end of BA’s flight schedule, and there’s no end date for this promotion
- You can use this benefit an unlimited number of times
There are some restrictions to be aware of:
- Travel must originate in the United States and be for travel to London (and beyond, if you’d like) on British Airways
- You must travel roundtrip or open jaw; one-way tickets aren’t eligible
- You must be traveling on British Airways metal, so codeshare flights on American, Finnair, Iberia, etc., don’t qualify
- This is valid for up to eight people traveling on the same flight, and the cardholder must be one of the passengers
- The discount doesn’t apply to the taxes, fees, and carrier imposed surcharges on reward flights (so this is only for revenue tickets)
- You must pay for your ticket with the British Airways Visa (and you’ll even earn bonus Avios for the purchase); you can still credit the miles to any frequent flyer program you want, as you don’t have to credit to British Airways Executive Club
- You have to book directly through British Airways to get this discount, so couldn’t combine it with the Amex International Airline Program, for example
Tutorial: How to use the British Airways Card 10% off benefit
How do you actually book a ticket and apply the discount? First you’ll want to make sure that you have an active British Airways Visa, and log into your Executive Club account that’s linked to the card.
To apply the discount, go through the process of booking a ticket as you usually would. Let’s use a reasonably priced ~$1,935 roundtrip business class ticket from Miami to Rome via London as an example.
First you enter the origin and destination on the ba.com homepage.
On the next couple of pages you’ll be asked to select your outbound and return. Again, make sure you just select options that include travel on British Airways, or else the discount won’t work.
After you’ve selected your outbound and return itineraries, you’ll be brought to a page that summarizes your flights, and immediately below that you should see a section that states “Apply an eVoucher.”
Click the “Promotional code” button, and then type out the CHASEBA10 promo code, as that’s what will trigger the discount.
Once you’ve applied the code, you’ll be brought back to the main page, which reflects the discount of $194.17. That’s exactly 10% of the entire ticket cost.
The new price will now be displayed, which is $1,741.75. Not bad, eh?
Tip: Combine this with the British Airways AARP discount
You can potentially get even bigger savings on the cost of a British Airways ticket by stacking the British Airways Visa 10% discount with a further $65-200 off, thanks to AARP. As of now this is valid for tickets booked through January 31, 2023, though it’s highly likely that this will be extended (it has been several times before).
Specifically, British Airways offers AARP members discounts on British Airways flights, as follows:
- Save $65 off the cost of an economy or premium economy ticket
- Save $200 off the cost of a business class or first class ticket
Anyone can join AARP for $16 per year (or $12 per year with auto-renew), and that even applies to non-seniors. While the British Airways Visa 10% discount only applies to British Airways flights, the AARP discount also applies to codeshare flights on partner airlines.
How do you stack the two promotions to score $65-200 off, plus 10% off?
After you’ve joined AARP you’d need to start your itinerary search through this page, where you will be directed to enter your AARP information.
Then you’ll be redirected to the British Airways website “verified” as an AARP member. You’ll see that the search page looks exactly the same, except it shows “AARP member discounts on BA” at the top right.
You’ll then go through exactly the same search process you go through usually (outlined above), except you’ll automatically see the AARP discount applied to each eligible itinerary presented.
For example, the business class outbound itinerary that showed as costing $939 one-way now shows as costing $839 one-way, reflecting the $100 discount per direction.
Then once you get to the reservation summary page you’ll see that the price shows as $1,741.75. Okay, oddly this is about a $195 discount rather than a $200 discount, and it’s identical to the 10% discount, but that’s a minor detail.
After you are on that page you can enter the CHASEBA10 promotion code to get 10% off, which will lower your price by a further $174.17.
Now that ticket costs only $1,567.58, which is excellent — you’ve saved nearly $400!
Bottom line
The British Airways Visa is a fantastic co-brand airline credit card. Not only does the card have a great bonus, but it offers all kinds of ongoing perks that will for many justify the annual fee, assuming you travel on British Airways with any frequency.
On award tickets you can get up to $600 per year in statement credits toward the surcharges you pay, and on cash tickets you can score up to 10% off. In many cases you can do even better than that by combining the 10% discount with the AARP discount.
If you have the BA Visa, have you benefited from the 10% flight discount?
