Is the Chase British Airways Card Worth It for 50,000 Points? Maybe.

Also see:

Get 6X British Airways Avios Points Everywhere on $20K in Spend – Why I Caved

The tiered sign-up bonus for the Chase British Airways card ends on October 5th, 2017 – in one week! Until then, you can earn:

50,000 British Airways Avios points after you spend $3,000 on purchases within the first 3 months from account opening
An additional 25,000 British Airways Avios points after you spend $10,000 total on purchases within your first year from account opening
A further 25,000 British Airways Avios points after you spend $20,000 total on purchases within your first year from account opening for a total of 100,000 bonus Avios

Committing to spend $20,000 on a single card is a lot to ask. And it’s certainly not for most peeps.

Fly to Amsterdam with British Airways Avios points and ride a bike

But it can be worth it to see this as a 50,000 point sign-up offer to spend $3,000 within the first 3 months – that’s much more reasonable. And forget about the other tiers.

50,000 points for that amount of spending it a respectable sign-up bonus. Especially because this card is NOT subject to the Chase 5/24 rule.

And a thank you to Ben for helping to unravel the numbers of this deal even more!

Pick up 50,000 British Airways Avios points

If you open this card and spend $3,000 within the 3-month timeframe, you’ll earn at least 1 point per $1 spent in addition to 50,000 British Airways Avios points. So you end up with 53,000 points for spending $3,000 – which means you earn ~18 cents per $1 (53,000 / 3,000). That alone is an incredible rate of return.

Remember, you can still book flights outside the US under 651 miles for 4,500 Avios points each way. So 53,000 Avios is enough for nearly 12 short one-way flights, or 6 round-trips (53,000 / 4,500).

I have personally booked Sydney-Melbourne on Qantas and Vienna-Budapest on Air Berlin (RIP). And you can still fly cheaply around Asia on JAL and Cathay Pacific. Or around Europe on Finnair or British Airways.

Viva Oneworld

Or short flights on any of these airlines:

American Airlines
British Airways
Cathay Pacific
Finnair
Iberia
Japan Airlines
LATAM
Malaysia Airlines
Qantas
Qatar Airways
Royal Jordanian
S7 Airlines
SriLankan Airlines

It’s also extremely easy to wring value from these short flights. I always want my points to be worth 2 cents each. So before redeeming 4,500 points, I want to make sure they’re worth at least $90 – which is beyond doable.

SYD-MEL flights are $110 to $294 each way – and all of them meet my 2 cents per point requirement

If your 12 one-way flights are even $100 each, that’s worth $1,200 – which is a very good value from one sign-up bonus. That’s if you just wanted 50,000 Avios.

Why would you stop after earning 50,000 points?

Quite simply, opportunity cost. If you’re not locked out of most sign up offers (unlike me), your $20,000 in spending can unlock many money sign up bonuses. Assuming each one is $3,000, that’s another 5+ offers you could unlock ($17,000 / 3)!

Also, your incremental return does decrease. Though you get ~18 cents per $1 for the first $3,000, that rate plummets afterward. You get:

~5 cents per $1 to earn 32,000 Avios for $7,000 more spending
3.5 cents per $1 to earn 35,000 Avios for $10,000 more spending

Those are still fantastic earning rates for non-bonused spend. But if you can do better in a 5X or even 3X category to earn transferable points, it might be worth skipping the extra spending on the Chase British Airways card.

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