The BA Amex Changes Twice: Fewer Avios in October, a New Tier Point Rule in 2027

British Airways has published two dated changes to its American Express cards on its own website. The Avios cut on 7 October 2026 has been reported since July. The Tier Point rule dated 1 April 2027 has not, and it is the one that decides whether the card can still defend a status tier.

From 1 April 2027, British Airways says cardholders earn "1 tier point for every £10 of eligible spend, up to 3,000 tier points" each collection year. That ceiling represents £30,000 of eligible card spend. What makes it interesting is not the number but what it replaces.

What the 2027 rule actually replaces

British Airways publishes the current position on its own Tier Points and American Express page, and the two structures are not the same shape at all.

Run the rates against each other and the first thing to notice is that they are identical. 2,500 Tier Points for £25,000 is 1 Tier Point per £10. So is 3,000 for £30,000. British Airways has not improved the rate at all.

What it has done is remove a cliff. Under the current offer, £14,999 of card spend earns nothing whatever, because the first step does not unlock until £15,000. From April 2027 the same £14,999 earns 1,499 Tier Points. For most cardholders, who are nowhere near £25,000 a year on one card, that is the entire change, and it is a real improvement disguised as a 500-point ceiling rise.

Two smaller changes point the same way. The enrolment requirement goes, and with it the annual failure mode of forgetting to opt in and earning nothing for a year of spending. And the earning window stretches: this year's offer stops on 1 February, two months before the collection year ends, so February and March spending currently earns no Tier Points at all.

What 3,000 Tier Points is actually worth

The British Airways Club runs on Tier Points, collected between 1 April and 31 March and reset at the end of each collection year. The thresholds are 3,500 for Bronze, 7,500 for Silver, 20,000 for Gold and 65,000 for Gold Guest List.

The shape of those columns is the story. Card spend is close to decisive at Bronze, useful at Silver and marginal at Gold. If you are defending Gold, £30,000 through the card moves you a seventh of the way and no further, because 3,000 is a ceiling rather than a rate. Once you reach it, further card spend earns no Tier Points at all. It is a fixed block, and the rest has to be flown.

What is left to fly for

British Airways awards 1 Tier Point per £1 of eligible spend on its own flights, where eligible spend means the fare plus carrier-imposed charges but not government or airport taxes. On top of that sits a fixed extra award per flight, set by haul, cabin and fare type since 1 April 2026. A Euro Traveller Plus fare earns 75 extra Tier Points per flight, a Club Europe Business fare 175, a Club World Business fare 500, and a First Fully-Flex fare 1,250. Basic Economy fares are excluded from the extra award, though they still earn the standard rate, a distinction we looked at in detail in which basic fares still earn miles and status.

British Airways publishes a worked example on its own Tier Points page: 10 Club Europe Business return flights to Madrid produce 8,066 Tier Points, of which 4,566 come from eligible spend and 3,500 from the fare-type extras. Check the second figure and it holds exactly, at 20 individual flights times 175 extra Tier Points each. That works out at roughly 807 Tier Points per return trip.

Take that as the unit and the picture sharpens. Gold at 20,000 Tier Points needs about 25 of those return trips. With the card ceiling maxed, it needs about 21. So £30,000 of card spend is worth roughly four return business-class trips to Madrid a year: real, but not transformative, and it costs £30,000.

Long haul rebalances things. A Club World return contributes 1,000 extra Tier Points before a penny of the fare is counted, and on a £2,000 eligible fare the spend adds another 2,000. One long-haul business return therefore matches the entire annual card ceiling on its own. That is worth knowing before deciding the card is the efficient route to a tier.

Two caveats on that arithmetic. It uses British Airways' own Madrid example, which the airline bases on 2025 return fares in one cabin on one route, and the ratio between spend-based and extra Tier Points changes considerably with fare type and haul. And it assumes the current published rates hold. Treat it as a sense of scale rather than a forecast.

The Avios cut, and why one half of it is much sharper

The 7 October change is two cuts wearing one date.

Most coverage has led with the headline rate. The larger move is underneath it: booking British Airways flights on a British Airways card stops earning a premium and starts earning the base rate. For anyone who routes their BA spend through the card precisely because of the 3 Avios rate, that is a 58% reduction on the spending they were most deliberate about.

The Accelerating Business Card takes the same cut from 1.5 to 1.25 on the same date and stops earning On Business Points, and gains up to £200 of statement credit each calendar year on Avios Hotels and Avios Car Hire bookings. The free British Airways American Express Card, at 1 Avios per £1, carries no change notice at all.

Set against the December 2025 increase of 8% to 14% in Avios redemption prices, the direction is consistent: fewer Avios in, more Avios out. That is a slower squeeze than a single devaluation, and easier to miss.

What British Airways has not said

Three gaps are worth naming rather than guessing at, because each one changes the answer for somebody.

The 2027 Tier Point notice appears under the Premium Plus card, and only there. The free card's entry on the same page carries no Tier Point line, and neither does the Accelerating Business Card's, which lists its own two changes and stops. On the face of what British Airways has published, this is a Premium Plus benefit, but the airline has not said so in as many words.

British Airways also defines eligible spend for flights, as the fare plus carrier-imposed charges, and does not define it for card spend on either page. Whether the two definitions match is unstated, and on a £30,000 target the difference is not academic.

And neither notice carries a publication date. British Airways states both changes plainly and gives no indication of when it decided them, which is why the Tier Point rule has gone largely unreported while the Avios cut has not.

One practical consequence of that quietness: at the time of writing, American Express UK's own Premium Plus Avios page still advertises 1.5 Avios per £1 and 3 Avios on British Airways spend, with no mention of 1.25 or of 7 October 2026. Two surfaces belonging to the same product disagree, and only one of them is current. If you are deciding whether to apply before October, read the airline's page rather than the issuer's.

What to do about it

If you hold the card mainly for Avios, October is a genuine reduction and worth reflecting in what you charge to it between now and then. If you hold it mainly for status, October barely matters, and April 2027 is a modest improvement rather than the cut the framing suggests: the same rate, a slightly higher ceiling, no enrolment, and no dead zone below £15,000.

The 2026-27 collection year is the one that still needs managing under the old rules. If you are going to pass £15,000 on the card before 1 February 2027, enrolling by 25 January is worth 750 Tier Points at minimum, and forgetting costs all of them.

Either way the useful exercise is the same one we recommend before any collection year turns over: work out where your already-booked flying leaves you, subtract the card contribution, and see what the gap really is. Our guide to credit-card shortcuts to elite status is the place to compare that against what other programmes let a card do, and the annual fee test is the one to run if the answer is that the card is doing less than it was.

The hard part is rarely one programme's rule in isolation. It is holding the flights, the stays and the tier targets together across a year and across every programme you are in at once, which is the problem Miles Mosaic exists to solve: 31 programmes on one screen, and a forecast of whether the flying you have already booked will hold each tier. If that is the question you are actually asking, will your trips keep your status is the better starting point than any single card.

For readers collecting Avios from outside the UK, the earn-rate cut applies to the cards, not the currency. Avios itself remains reachable from several bank programmes, and we compare it against the regional alternatives in KrisFlyer vs Asia Miles vs Avios.