Free airport fast track security with Mastercard

Mastercard has launched a new initiative to its cardholders in Europe, which offers airport fast track security, dining discounts and more.

You can check more details and sign up here. If you are eligible, you are entitled to complimentary fast track service at select airports globally, the list of which can be found here. The following UK airports offer such benefit:

  • Aberdeen
  • Bristol
  • Edinburgh
  • Glasgow
  • Liverpool
  • London Gatwick
  • London Luton
  • Newcastle
  • Southampton

With quite a few other locations across Europe and China.

You can pre-book the fast track security for free if you manage to create an account. In addition, even more airports have restaurants that offer dining discounts, which means you can get say 20% off your bill by scanning a QR code.

Airport transfer is another advertised benefit, although I doubt you can get it for free. These benefits are provided by Dragon Pass, and it’s in fact a well-established business model in China, so they are expanding their credit card partnership to other territories.

Here comes the problem – the website doesn’t tell you which cards are eligible, and there’s no way to tell except for trying it yourself. So far only two UK-issued Mastercard have successful reports:

However, it seems that even if you have the right card, you have to be very lucky to be accepted. I have no clue what the trick is. I thought it might be related to the BIN (first 6-digits), but even cards with the same BIN end up differently.

The UK cards appear to come with three complimentary fast track visits per year. Interestingly, there are successful reports from Chinese cards too, with even more generous offer:

  • Bank of China – four complimentary visits annually
  • China Merchants Bank – unlimited visits
  • SPD Bank – unlimited visits with one guest

Amusingly, upon registration the website suggests that the card issuing country is Belgium or Spain, which is obviously wrong. It’s unclear which cards are actually intended for this program, but their backend system is definitely buggy.

If you have a Mastercard, whether issued in Europe or not, you may want to give it go and be in for a surprise. I’ve tried all my UK and US cards and nothing works unfortunately 🙁

(H.T. Headforpoints)

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