Getting Approved for the Chase British Airways Credit Card

I’d like to use this post to talk about the benefits as well as the process of getting approved for the Chase British Airways Credit Card. As someone who applied for many cards in the past two years; my Chase credit card options are limited. And that is due to the very restrictive “5/24 rule” that Chase implements. However, the British Airways credit card is not subject to that rule. THANKFULLY!

Chase British Airways Credit Card Details:

• Earn 50,000 bonus Avios after you spend $3,000 on purchases within the first 3 months from account opening.
• Earn 25,000 bonus Avios after you spend $10,000 total on purchases within the first year from account opening.
• Earn a further 25,000 bonus Avios after you spend $20,000 total on purchases within the first year from account opening.
• Earn 3 Avios for every $1 spent on British Airways, Iberia and OpenSkies purchases².
• Earn 1 Avios for every $1 spent on all the rest of life’s little purchases².
• Automatic enrolment in the Executive Club for new Members.
• Every calendar year you make $30,000 in purchases, you will earn a Travel Together Ticket – good for two years when you redeem Avios for a flight on British Airways.
• No Foreign transaction fees

Getting Approved for the Chase British Airways Credit Card:

I applied for the card in early April and obviously I’m way over 5/24. I knew I wasn’t going to get instantly approved. However, the message I received after I applied was somewhat comforting. The message said “We’ll let you know our decision by U.S. mail. This could take up to 30 days.” As a rule of thumb, getting a pending result after an application with “30 days” wording is a lot more promising than “7-10 business days”. I don’t know exactly why, but the general trend is if you get the 30 days message; you’re more likely to be approved. Ofcourse, I didn’t wait the 30 days :). About 3 days later I called the Chase reconsideration line at 1-888-270-2127. 

I was asked to confirm my identity by answering a few questions. After that, a quick conversation went as follows:

Representative: I see that you’ve been very responsible with your credit the past several years.
Me: Yes, I never missed a payment before and I always like to pay off my balance each month.
Representative: That’s great, I see that. Now I see that you have a large amount of credit line with us. How much would you need on your British Airways Credit Card.
Me: I think $10,000 should be fine if possible.
Representative: Ok, in order to do that, I will need to move some credit over from your other credit cards with us. Would you be willing to do that?
Me: OFCOURSE! 🙂
Representative: Great. Which card would you want me to move credit from.
Me: Any one, maybe the IHG card actually.
Representative: Sure. hold on please.

This was a snapshot of how the conversation went in order to get approved for the British Airways credit card. I was then transferred to another person to confirm my identity further and that was it. I would say the whole phone call took about 15 mins.

Chase British Airways Credit Card Bottom Line:

I got this card because I like cards with 100,000 bonus offers :). Also, British Airways Avios is a distance based program. This means I can fly New York to Miami for 7,500 Avios each way in economy which is much better than 12,000 AAdvantage miles. I’m also going to aim to put the $30,000 spend on the card next year in order to earn the Travel Together Ticket. The Travel Together Ticket may not offer the best value because it has to be used on British Airways own flights which charge a ton of fuel  surcharge. But we’ll see. I think it’s a not bad deal to fly 2 people roudtrip across the Atlantic for ~125,000 Avios and ~$2,500 in First Class!

If you have any questions please comment below, tweet me @pointspointers or email me at pointspointers@gmail.com