With very little fanfare (unless BA Gold card holders have been emailed directly about this), two new benefits have been added today.
Technically, these new benefits have been given to all top tier cardholders with any oneworld alliance airline. You will benefit if you hold any of these cards:
airberlin topbonus Platinum
American Airlines AAdvantage Executive Platinum
British Airways Executive Club Gold
Cathay Pacific Marco Polo Club Diamond
Finnair Plus Platinum
Iberia Plus Platinum
Japan Airlines Mileage Bank (JMB) Diamond and JAL Global Club (JGC) Premier
LAN’s LANPASS Comodoro
Malaysia Airlines Enrich Platinum
Qantas Frequent Flyer Platinum One and Platinum
Royal Jordanian Royal Plus Platinum
S7 Priority Platinum
Here are the two new benefits:
An extra checked baggage allowance, above the standard limit for the cabin class in which they are traveling – either one additional item where the piece concept applies, or an extra 20 kg (44 lbs) where the weight concept applies – when they fly on any oneworld member airline.
Use fast track lanes through security when flying from select key airports worldwide on select oneworld member airlines.
The second one is very vague. I assume Terminal 5 at Heathrow will be included, opening it up to all oneworld elite members, but there is no list.
Full details of these new benefits can be found here.
(Thanks to View from the Wing for this, since BA seems to have kept it quiet!)
Maybe it also includes some reason why ‘the rest of us’ have been unceremoniously dumped out of paid-for Row 64 seats on 747s in the last week or so as well…..
There actually aren’t any UK airports listed on the page on Oneworld.com announcing these benefits, however LHR and EDI already offer Fasttrack security to Oneworld Sapphire and Emerald, so I don’t see what will change with this unless they remove Sapphires?!
The list of airports offering Fast Track is listed here on the Oneworld website. It is not extensive though but a useful benefit nonetheless.
http://www.oneworld.com/ffp/emarald-privileges/#fastTrackForm
Very useful, though more a polish of OWE than anything specific to BA Gold.
The baggage thing had needed aligning.