British Airways To Introduce A 1% Credit Card Booking Fee – UK Only

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Updated 18 November to reflect that the cap applies per ticket and not per booking.

It is has been reported that British Airways is set to scrap its current £5 flat fee for all UK credit card bookings in favor of a a 1% fee based on the total cost of the booking. The fee is capped at £20 but the cap applies per ticket and not just to the overall cost of the booking. How you feel about this move will depend completely on how much your flights normally cost but, regardless of whether you come out ahead or behind, this just highlights how BA loves to charge UK travelers.

This change is reportedly going to come into effect from 14 December 2016 but there isn’t anything up on the BA website to confirm this at the time of writing.

It’s always puzzled how BA somehow gets away with charging UK credit card holders a fee for daring to use a credit card when booking on BA.com:

If you choose to use a US credit card there’s no charge at all:

And if you select any other country, their credit cards don’t seem to attract a fee on BA.com either…..not even obscure places like Turkmenistan!

Ridiculous doesn’t begin to cover it…but then this is BA we’re dealing with so nothing surprises me.

As I mentioned earlier, how you feel about this change will depend on what your trips flights normally cost – HeadForPoints has reported that the £20 cap will apply per ticket and not per booking.

This means that it will be very easy for couples to be charged up to £40 and families £60, £80 or even more (depends how many of you are flying).

Of course there’s always the option to pay with a debit card…. but then you don’t earn whatever loyalty currency your card offers and Debit Cards generally do not offer the same level of trip protection and insurance as Credit Cards do.

Even if someone doesn’t care about earning loyalty points and has their own separate insurance they may still want to use their credit card – they may want to defer payment or to spread the payment out over a few months. This fee penalizes this group of travelers too.

All in all this fee is yet another way in which British Airways resembles a low-cost carrier…only this time its only British customers who are getting penalised.

Between management thinking it’s ok to use slides that scream “Show me the ******* money“, news that BA cabin crew are being balloted on strike action thanks to poor pay and poor working conditions and now this increased credit card fee that only affects UK flyers, it has not really been a great few days for BA.

How is this airline still the national flag carrier?