British Airways has made a small but welcome change to the rules for household accounts. From 12 November 2021, not everyone named within a BA Club Household Account has to live at the same address. The British Airways Club lets you pool Avios through a Household Account, making it easier for families and groups to reach big redemptions together. In this guide, we explain how Household Accounts work and how to use them alongside your main BA Club membership.
The rules previously stated that everyone named in a household account had to live together at the same postal address, which often excluded grandparents and felt rather anachronistic in the 21st Century.
Admittedly some BA Club members already broke the rules out of principle, to include family members who lived at different addresses in the household account, by associating them to a single address. Now, these “rebels” will no longer have to live with the guilt, denial or the minor inconvenience of editing forms on BA.com that were pre-populated with the wrong home address.
New to the British Airways Club? Start with our beginner's guide to the programme, including how Avios, Tier Points and status work, then come back here for Household Account specifics.
Why open a BA Club Household Account?
There are two main benefits to having a BA Club household account:
- You can pool together the Avios points earned by a group of people. This lets you redeem Avios points for BA reward flights that require more Avios than any one individual has in their personal BA Club account.
- Children under 18 in your group can earn Avios when they fly. Under 18s can only have their own Avios-earning membership within a household account.
For families that frequently take overseas holidays, or who have peripatetic lifestyles, eighteen years is a long time for children not to be earning Avios on paid flights. As soon as they get a British Airways Club number as part of a Household Account, they will start earning both BA Avios and Tier Points. The individual accounts within a household account are never fully merged, so adults can use the points accumulated by children or put them towards family reward flights. Curious about how British Airways Tier Points work? You can find a full breakdown on our dedicated page here.
Once a child turns 18, if they want to earn and spend Avios independently of their parent(s), then they can simply be removed from the household account, at which point their BA Club account will operate independently, complete with whatever Avios balance remains from their underage travels.
Of course, you don’t need to fly BA to join The Club or to earn Avios. Each member within a household account will earn Avios and Tier Points if they fly with other Oneworld alliance airlines too. Adults can also boost their Avios balance by using British Airways American Express credit cards, or an eligible American Express Membership Rewards card, to earn Avios on their everyday shopping.
Extra Avios can also be earned through a variety of BA partners, most notably Nectar. The popular Nectar loyalty scheme allows its members to earn points when they shop at many stores in the UK, including Sainsbury’s. Nectar points can easily be exchanged for Avios and vice versa.
So for families in the UK, setting up a Nectar account, a BA Club Household Account and using payment cards that earn extra points on everyday spending can deliver significant savings on holiday travel.
How to create a BA Household Account
You can create a British Airways Club Household Account here. Each adult listed will receive an email that includes a link to click to confirm their membership. Once the account is set up, memberships for children can be created and added. A household account can have a maximum of seven people within it, who no longer have to all live at the same address.
Once you have a household account, you can create a family and friends list too. The nominated ‘head of the household’ can add an additional five people to this list, whose names can be updated every 6 months. The household account can spend Avios on reward flights for these five people but their BA Club accounts won’t be merged with the household account.
Other ways to share BA Avios points
A household account may not work for everyone as there are some restrictions. The most notable of these is that, once you have set up a British Airways Club Household Account, the “head of the household” can only book reward flight tickets in the name of a member of the household account or family and friends list.
So here are a few other ways that you can share your Avios:
- If you are a Blue, Bronze or Silver member of the Club you can transfer points between accounts for a small fee, which depends on how many points are being transferred.
- You can buy and gift up to 200,000 Avios a year to a Club member (if they want to top their balance they can also buy Avios for themselves). This page has all the details.
- British Airways Club Gold members can transfer 27,000 Avios to an individual they choose, for free, every year. In total, they are allowed to transfer out up to 162,000 Avios a year.
- You can book a reward flight for someone else directly from your BA Club account, without a household account. You don’t need to pool your miles with anyone else to be able to redeem your points for their ticket. If you have a Companion Voucher you can get two tickets with anyone else for the Avios you’d normally need for one redemption (plus taxes and fees).
- If two of you are travelling together you could “split” your Avios rewards by each booking one-way redemptions. One person would use their Avios balance to book a one-way flight and the other person would book the return leg from their account.
However you choose to share your Avios, you can always rely on Reward Flight Finder to find available BA reward seats, for you and your companions, up to a year in advance.
