If you die, these benefits may be paid if you meet the Scheme’s rules:

1. Your spouse or civil partner may get a yearly pension for life, if you paid for this cover.
2. Dependents’ Child Allowance (DCA). Your children under 16 (or up to 23 if still studying or seriously incapacitated) may get an allowance. Up to two yearly DCA’s are payable equivalent to 1/6 of your pension. If three or more dependent children exist at the date of your death, the two yearly DCA’s would initially be split evenly between all children.
3. If you have a deferred AVC balance, it will be paid as a lump sum. The Trustee has discretionary power to decide who should receive it if you have not yet drawn your pension. This lump sum does not form part of your estate and isn’t taxed as inheritance. If you are already drawing your pension, the AVC fund will be automatically payable to your legal spouse.
4. A lump sum may be payable, unless a survivor’s pension is due. This amount is roughly the difference between your contributions plus interest and the total payments made to you.

It is important to keep your Notice of Wish up to date, as the Trustees will refer to this document when making their decision on how to distribute any lump sum death benefits. If you have registered you can use the portal to update your Notice of Wish and obtain an instant illustration of what your loved ones might receive.

If you’re not married or in a civil partnership when you die, the Trustee Directors can choose to pay the Adult Survivor’s pension to a ‘surviving dependant.’ This could be a partner or someone else who relies on you financially to a substantial extent. The full details are in the ‘Surviving Dependants Pension Registration form’. Upon death, the Trustee Directors will also need proof of financial dependence, like joint bank statements, mortgage accounts, or bills from the three months before your death.

If the person you want to receive your Adult Survivor’s pension is significantly younger than you, the pension may be reduced depending on the age gap.

The Lump Sum Death Benefit Allowance (LSDBA) is the maximum amount of tax-free cash that can be paid from a defined benefit pension scheme as a lump sum to your beneficiaries if you die before age 75. If the lump sum paid on death is within this allowance, it is usually free of income tax; if it exceeds the LSDBA, the excess may be taxed. This allowance helps limit how much tax-free money can be passed on from your pension after death.

If you die after age 75, any lump sum death benefits from APS and NAPS are usually taxable as income to the beneficiary at their marginal income tax rate. This means the money your beneficiaries receive will be subject to income tax.

Please contact the BA Pensions team for a divorce pack, which includes a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) or a Cash Equivalent of Benefits (CEB) if you are pensioner. You can find more information about how divorce may affect your benefits by visiting Support > Forms and Guides > Divorce Guide. Please note, your spouse or civil partner will automatically continue to qualify for any Adult Survivor’s pension from the Scheme until the marriage is legally dissolved.

Once the Scheme receives all the necessary documentation, we will confirm the implementation period has commenced and the Scheme has four months to implement the Pension Sharing Order/Earmarking Order. However, we try our best to settle the benefits as soon as possible.

We may be able to pay your pension before the minimum retirement age if you become too ill to work or if your life expectancy is seriously reduced by ill health. In these circumstances (and as long as you provide satisfactory medical evidence) you may be able to draw a reduced pension before age 50 (APS) or 55 (NAPS). Please contact the team as soon as possible if you would like a quote for drawing your pension early under ill health.

If you are suffering from a life-threatening illness it may be possible to receive all of your pension as a tax-free lump sum (calculated on reduced terms) whilst continuing to provide a pension for your dependents should you die. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will only allow such payments if you have a short time to live. We will ask you to provide written confirmation from a registered medical practitioner that you have less than 12 months to live.

If you have registered for the online portal you can view your latest AVC balance on your personal dashboard. You can also switch how your existing AVCs are invested online, or alternatively complete a paper form which can be found under Support > Forms and guides. If you have not registered for the portal, please contact the BA Pensions team for details of your latest balance.

When you retire, your AVC account can usually be taken as lump sum (subject to Lump Sum Allowance limits) or used to buy extra pension (an annuity). You can ‘Get a quote’ via the member portal or request one. All quotes contain details of the lump sum option. If you would like a quote for an annuity, please contact the BA Pensions team.

To access your AVCs independently from your main scheme pension under the Government’s flexible access rules, you’ll need to transfer your AVCs out of the Scheme to another pension arrangement. You can choose to transfer all or part of your AVC account and you may also transfer your main Scheme pension. If you are already drawing your pension, you cannot transfer part of your AVCs, you must transfer the full amount. Before making a transfer, we will always ask you to seek free guidance from PensionWise to ensure your new arrangements meet your needs and to understand any tax implications.

Absent friends contains details of former colleagues who have recently passed away. You can find the last four months here.

You can start, stop or change charitable donations directly from your pension at any time by visiting our Pension Giving website and completing the online donor form. If you have a question about a specific donation you have made, please contact the team at Charitable Giving at info@payrollgiving.co.uk or you can call them on 01271 343 850 (office open between 9am-5pm). There is also an online chat facility in the bottom left of the website.

Once you begin drawing your pension, it will be paid for the rest of your lifetime. If you retired from British Airways due to medical incapacity and are below your Normal Pension Age, your ill health pension payments will be reviewed regularly. Full details of the review process will be provided in the ill health review letter sent to you on your review date.

If you reached age 65 (men) or 60 (women) and retired from British Airways after 5 April 1978, you likely have a Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP). This was introduced when the Government created the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS), later known as the State Second Pension (S2P). Employers who opted out of SERPS (called “contracting-out”) received National Insurance reductions but had to guarantee their pension schemes would pay at least the equivalent SERPS pension at age 65 (men) or 60 (women). This guaranteed amount is the GMP. The GMP is part of your main Scheme pension and affects your pension increases after age 60 (women) or 65 (men). Your Scheme does not have to increase GMP built before 6 April 1988. For GMP built between 6 April 1988 and 5 April 1997, your Scheme adds increases annually, capped at either the Government’s specified rate or 3%, whichever is lower. Other parts of your pension will continue to increase according to your Scheme’s rules.

Your pension is payable to you for your lifetime. To reduce the potential of fraud occurring or overpayments being made, we may ask that you complete and return this certificate to confirm you are being correctly paid. This type of request is very common practice by pension schemes in the UK. To ensure your pension is paid to you continuously please complete and return the form to us as soon as possible.

Former staff can obtain further details regarding concessions by contacting staff travel via former.staff@ba.com. BA Pensions are unable to help with staff travel queries.

If you have registered for the member portal, you can easily update your bank details if future payments are made to a UK account. If you are not registered, and would like your pension to be paid into an overseas account, you will need to send us the ‘Change of Bank’ form which is available to download from our website.

You can find a list of the pension payment dates for the year under In Retirement > Payments section of our website.

We sometimes need to temporarily suspend your pension payments for security reasons. If your pension payments are returned to us by your bank or correspondence we send to you is returned by the Royal Mail or your email provider, we will withhold your pension payments until we are able to re-establish contact with you and/or you provide us with new bank details. Contact us straightaway on 0208 538 2100 between 9am and 1pm to discuss arrangements for your pension payments to restart.

If you have registered for the Member Portal, you should obtain a copy of these documents via the portal.

Specific details including a breakdown of how your pension increases, can be found in your last annual pension increase letter. However, a summary of the annual increase rates over the past five years can also be found In Retirement > Payments.

How much Income Tax you pay depends on the tax rate that applies to you (tax rates are set by the Tax Office). We must use the tax code the tax office gives us and we cannot adjust it unless the tax office tells us to, so if you have any questions about your tax code you should contact the tax office directly; by telephone on 0300 200 3300 or visit their website at www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/email-taxcode-wrong.htm.

You can register for the online portal by clicking on the red ‘Register’ button. It takes only a few minutes. There is a step-by-step video to help you register which can be found here

Option 1: Register with a completely different email address.

 

Option 2: It may be possible to register your second using 'plus addressing' (add +1 before the @ symbol). For example if your email address is example@gmail.com, you can use example+1@gmail.com for your second pension record and so on if you have more than two memberships.

 

We understand that 'plus addressing' is widely adopted standard that is supported by most major email services, but not all. It does not work for btinternet.com or aol.com, and it may not work for some others.

 

Test to see if it works first: Send a test email to yourself with +1 immediately before the @ character in your email address. If the email arrives, then 'plus addressing' is supported, an you can use 'plus addressing' to register your other memberships. If you receive a delivery failure message, then unfortunately, this approach will not work for you.

 

Linking records is in our development plans and will be coming soon.

If you have registered for the online member portal you can easily update your personal details including home address, telephone number, email address and password. Simply log in to your account and navigate to My Account > My Details > Personal Details. If you are not registered for the portal, please download, print, and complete the relevant form available under Support > Forms and Guides and send by post.

Most members will be able to register for the member portal as long as they have a National Insurance number, which is required for registration. However, there may be some limitations on the benefits you can view or the calculations you can run (if applicable). If a calculation doesn’t work for you, a message will prompt you to contact us. You can still update your personal details through the portal, which is quicker and easier than ever.

You can currently receive your pension anytime from the Normal Minimum Pension Age (NMPA) that is defined in legislation. Currently, this is age 55, unless you are experiencing ill health, in which case you may be able to access it earlier. From 6 April 2028 NMPA is increasing to age 57 unless you qualify for a Protected Pension Age (PPA). Broadly all members who were flying staff before 1 April 2007 will qualify for a PPA of 55 years but there are some exceptions to this.

Your pension becomes payable in full from your Normal Pension Age (NPA). If you choose to take your pension earlier or later than your NPA, the amount will be adjusted according to the Scheme rules. You can ‘Get a quote’ via the member portal or by contacting us.

If you are approaching your Scheme NPA, we will automatically write to you three to four months before with full details of your options. If you are over your NPA or wish to draw your pension earlier than your NPA, please create and download a retirement pack online at least two to three months before your intended retirement date or contact us to request a quote if the retirement pack is unavailable for you online.

Most registered members can use the Pension Calculator to model different options at various ages. However, in some cases, the BA Pensions Team may need to carry out additional checks to ensure statutory increases are correctly applied, which means the online calculator won’t be available. If you’re unable to use the Pension Calculator, please contact us. We’ll arrange for your quote to be sent to your document library as soon as it’s ready and we’ll email you when it’s available to view. If you are not registered for the online portal, please contact us, and we will post the quote to you.

If you have a small pension of around £500 a year or less, and you are a man aged 65 or over, or a woman aged 60 or over, you may be able to exchange your pension for a one-off cash lump sum. If your pension does not include a Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) entitlement, you can currently exchange it for a lump sum at any time after age 55.

To accept your retirement quote, please complete and return your forms and necessary ID documents to us by post or email. Our contact details can be found on the Retirement pack.

You can delay receiving your pension until after your NPA. If you do this, late retirement increases will be added to your pension, which will include an allowance for the standard pension increases you will not be receiving, to compensate you for the delayed payment.

If you have not yet drawn your pension and are considering transferring your benefit to another approved pension provider and would like a Transfer value, please contact the BA Pension’s team for a transfer quote. The quote will be valid for three months from the date of the transfer statement. We aim to send out quotes within 10 working days but during busy periods, it can take longer. Our response times may also extend up to six weeks if we require additional guidance from the Scheme Actuary. In such cases, we will always let you know.

Once you have received your transfer quote, you, the receiving Scheme, and in most circumstances, your financial adviser will need to complete the relevant forms. These forms can be found under Support > Forms and Guides > Transfer Packs.

While timescales can vary for each transfer, the process typically takes between 3 to 6 months to complete from the time we receive your completed forms. If you have registered for online communication, you can track progress using the activity tracker on the member portal.

If you have a deferred pension entitlement which was built up over two or more specified periods, you can consider a partial transfer option. In all cases, any pension earned before April 1997 must be included in a partial transfer out. Further details about the partial transfer option can be found within our transfer pack.