There’s anxiety over companion vouchers playing out across the UK points community. Thousands of people are sitting on a perfectly valid British Airways Companion Voucher, staring at the £300 annual fee on their BA Premium Plus Amex, and deciding to keep paying it “just in case”. The belief is simple: cancel the card and you won’t be able to book when that elusive Club World seat finally appears. The reality is more nuanced, but still far calmer than many assume. In most cases, you can use a companion voucher after cancelling your BA Amex, and the sky does not fall in.
Once a Companion Voucher has landed in your British Airways Club account, it stops being an American Express problem and becomes a British Airways one. The voucher sits there with a fixed expiry date, waiting to be used. Cancelling the card after that point does not automatically claw it back, downgrade it, or invalidate it. This is where many people end up overpaying. Keeping the card for two extra years “just in case” can easily mean £600 in fees to protect something that already lives safely in your BAEC account.
Cancelling isn’t risk-free – but the risk is often overstated
That said, it would be dishonest to present this as entirely risk-free. American Express will explicitly warn cardholders not to cancel, and there are a small number of anecdotal reports of vouchers disappearing after cancellation. These cases are rare, inconsistently documented, and often short on detail, but they exist. The honest framing is that cancelling after a voucher has posted is usually fine based on long-standing practice, not a contractual guarantee. Low risk is not the same as no risk, and readers deserve that distinction.
When cancelling is guaranteed to hurt
The one genuinely dangerous moment is cancelling too early. Shut the card down before the voucher has actually posted to your BA Club account and you can lose it, even if you’ve already hit the spend target. That remains the biggest and most consistent pitfall. Once the voucher is visible in your account, you are in a far safer position.
Some of the confusion comes from BA’s rolling rule changes. 2021 and 2022 introduced major shifts: solo use with a 50 percent Avios discount, and a clear split between Premium Plus vouchers and those earned on the free card. Premium Plus vouchers retained access to all cabins and gained enhanced Club World reward availability, while free-card vouchers became economy-only. A later change, announced in December 2022, expanded the use of newer vouchers to include Iberia and Aer Lingus.
None of these changes alter what happens if you cancel the card. Cabin eligibility, airline access, and solo-use rules are fixed at the moment the voucher is issued. Holding onto the card does not improve your odds of seeing better availability later, even though many people behave as if it does. You don’t need the card to search, book, check in, or fly. The voucher is tied to your Executive Club number, not the plastic in your wallet, which is why you can use a companion voucher after cancelling and still book normally when reward space opens.
The Amex payment rule that causes outsized anxiety
One small technical detail causes outsized anxiety. BA requires taxes and charges on reward bookings to be paid with an American Express card. In 2023, the wording was clarified from “the BA Amex” to “an American Express Card”. In practice, nothing changed, but the clarification matters. Any Amex will do. You are not required to keep the BA-branded Premium Plus card alive for this reason alone.
Downgrading instead of cancelling
For those who want an extra layer of comfort, there is a middle ground. Downgrading from the paid BA Premium Plus card to the free BA Amex allows you to stop paying the £300 annual fee while still retaining an American Express card linked to your BA Club account. That keeps things simple when it comes time to pay the taxes and charges on a Companion Voucher booking, without committing to another year of premium fees.
It’s also fair to acknowledge that some people are keeping the Premium Plus card deliberately. If you’re stacking vouchers year after year, especially now that the spend threshold to earn one has risen to £15,000, the annual fee may be part of a wider strategy. That’s a conscious choice, not a defensive one.
But many others are simply sitting tight, waiting for the perfect redemption, paying hundreds of pounds largely out of fear. For those readers, the maths is uncomfortable. The risk of cancelling (or downgrading) is small, the cost of hesitation is very real, and most people find they really can use a companion voucher after cancelling without paying £300 a year for reassurance alone.
Now read The Complete Guide to Booking BA Avios Reward Seats and Open-jaw: The Secret Way To Get An Avios Redemption
Leave a Reply