✈️ Get BA Silver Status equivalent with Royal Jordanian

Hello, Adventurous Travellers, and Happy Thursday!

This week's newsletter is packed with amazing offers and valuable information to maximise your Avios earnings.

Update (08/08/2024): Royal Jordanian now sadly only offer status matching up to BA Bronze level.

Let's get started:

• ✈️ Get BA Silver Status equivalent with the Royal Jordanian Status Match Offer: Match your hotel status by paying a small fee.

• 🚄 Heathrow Express Summer Discounts: Get 10 Avios per £1 spent + how you can get even more.

• 📅 British Airways Membership Years: Learn how BA membership years work and how the upcoming changes in 2025 will standardise them.

• 💸15 Avios per £1 Spent with Viator Offer: Book for this August for a nice Avios boost.

Royal Jordanian to Extend Their Status Match Offer: Match Your Hotel Status to Get BA Silver Status Equivalent

For a limited time, Royal Jordanian is extending its status match offer to include elite hotel statuses, which will allow you to get British Airways Silver-equivalent benefits.

Royal Jordanian is part of oneworld, which means that if you have status with them, you’ll be able to status match with BA.

To get silver benefits, you just need to input your Royal Jordanian number when booking with BA. Your Royal Jordanian Status will last 12 months.

Royal Jordanian has the following status levels. Here’s how they match to BA and oneworld:

• Silver Jay = British Airways Bronze = oneworld Ruby

• Gold Sparrow = British Airways Silver = oneworld Sapphire

• Platinum Hawk = British Airways Gold = oneworld Emerald

Once you reach Gold Sparrow status with Royal Jordanian, you will essentially hold BA Silver (via oneworld Sapphire) and enjoy all the silver benefits when you fly with BA.

NOTE: Royal Jordanian is not currently matching Platinum Hawk Status. You will instead match to Gold Sparrow.

If you have hotel status with any of the following, you can match it to get Gold Sparrow Status with Royal Jordanian and therefore, get the BA Silver benefits:

• Hilton (Diamond)

• Hyatt (Globalist)

• Marriott (Platinum, Titanium, Ambassador) 

• Accor (Diamond, Platinum)

• IHG (Platinum, Diamond)

• Wyndham (Diamond)

• Langham (Ruby, Sapphire)

• Shangri-La (Diamond)

• Melia (Platinum)

• Preferred Hotels (Platinum)

• Global Hotel Alliance (Titanium)

You can also match a lower status with some of these hotels to BA Bronze status. 

TIP 1: An easy way to meet the status match criteria is to join the Intercontinental Ambassador Programme (IHG), which gives you Platinum Elite IHG status and will enable you to match with Royal Jordanian and get BA Silver benefits. The programme costs $200 or 40,000 points for 12 months. We’ll cover all the benefits of the Intercontinental Ambassador Programme in a future newsletter. 

TIP 2: Remember that the AMEX Platinum gives you Hilton and Marriott Gold status. With this offer, you can match the status to Royal Jordanian Silver Jay, which aligns with BA Bronze. 

However, there is a cost to status match, although it’s minimal compared to what you’ll get as a Bronze or Silver BA status holder. The fee is $49 for Silver Jay Status and $149 for Gold Sparrow Status.

Once you have status with Royal Jordanian, remember you will get the benefits across all the oneworld Airlines when you fly with them.

How to Apply

1. Create an account with Royal Jordanian

2. Apply to match your status

3. Pay the application fee

4. Wait for your application to be processed

This is one of the best status match offers we’ve seen this year, especially if you can match to oneworld Sapphire. If you hold the right status with the hotels on the list, go for it!

Heathrow Express Summer Discounts and a Nice Avios Boost

Throughout August, you can bag yourself a one-way Heathrow Express ticket for £10 when you book in advance. You’ll also get 10 Avios per £1 spent, so you’ll get a cheap and fast ride to Heathrow + 100 Avios at a time of year when things are normally more expensive.

You better be quick; only 25,000 tickets can be sold at £10, and just 808 are released daily.

The offer only applies to one-way tickets in Express Class.

Remember you can double dip by paying for your ticket with an Avios earning credit card and getting between 1 and 1.5 Avios per £ spent. Make sure you also check the deals section in the AMEX app. Selected cardholders are currently being offered 10-15% off Heathrow Express journeys. You can also earn Heathrow Reward points on your purchase, which can be converted to Avios at 1:1.

£15 tickets are also being sold for travel until 31st December. 300 of these are available each day.

How do British Airways Membership Years Work?

Knowing how membership years work is important to move up BA Tiers. Tier points can be earned by flying through BA and partner Oneworld airlines.

However, moving up a tier requires a set number of tier points or eligible flights in a ‘Membership Year’. For example, you need 300 Tier Points to move from the Blue to Bronze tier, 600 for Silver and 1,500 for Gold.

Tier points are reset to 0 each membership year.

Membership years are not aligned with your signup date; instead, cycle on the 8th day of the month following your registration. 

For example, if you joined on 12th May 2024, your membership year would end on 8th June 2025. This would give you a slightly extended first year of almost 13 months. All other years follow a strict 12-month cycle. This is what you need to know right now. However…

Starting April 2025, British Airways will standardise membership years for all members, running from 1st April to 31st March. 

Once you earn a tier, you can enjoy the benefits for the remainder of the current year plus the whole of the following year, with an additional one-month grace period. This means that achieving a new status early in the membership year can extend the benefits for nearly two years.

Note: Your ‘Lifetime Tier Points’ will also be tracked. Once you reach 35,000, you will be gifted lifetime Gold status.

15 Avios Per £1 Spent with Viator This August

You can always earn Avios by booking tours and activities through Viator if you click the BA Shopping portal. You’ll usually get 4 Avios per £1, and there’s often an offer to earn 8 Avios per £1.

This August, you can earn 15 Avios per £1 for bookings made for THIS AUGUST. You’ll get 10 Avios per £1 for bookings made for after August.

There are some great offers on the BA Portal at the moment. Our favourites include:

• 60 Avios per £1 with NordVPN

• 30 Avios per £1 with Trusted House Sitters

• 25 Avios per £1 with JustPark

• 20 Avios per £1 with Post Office Travel Insurance

• 13 Avios per £1 with Ray-Ban UK

Final Words

That’s all for this week! We hope these tips help you maximise your travel rewards and have better experiences.

Safe travels, and always aim for the upgrade!

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Bye for now!