Aer Lingus announces AerClub – and it will be revenue based. Will British Airways follow?

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• Will says:

  18 Nov18 November 07:46

  If tier points go revenue based then that really would be a massive blow. As for avios earning, it’s certainly not welcome but it’s no big deal, I mean how of the readers here earn the majority of points through flying (if you did you wouldn’t need to read hfp)

• John says:

  18 Nov18 November 08:16

  The most important news today should be AAdvantage devaluation. Received an email yesterday with their plan to change in 2016. Increased miles needed for almost all long haul flights.

  • Rob says:

    18 Nov18 November 08:27

    See tomorrow. But AA is a minority interest – I would guess about 200 of the 15,000 daily HFP readers have a large AA balance. I don’t.

    • Sebastian says:

      18 Nov18 November 09:48

      Just had a look at the changes, obviously the yanks will be up in arms but the changes are all fairly reasonable, well from a redemption point of veiw. For instance, a business class flight from the U.S. to Europe is rising from 50k to 57.5k each way, while tax is staying the same. For me at least, that is still incredible value, especially when you can pick up 10’s of cards that not only give you 2 miles per $ but also a ludicrous sign up bonus as well.

      • Louie says:

        18 Nov18 November 10:06

        No, they are most definitely not ALL fairly reasonable. Using Etihad between the UK and Australia has gone up over 60% in both business and first and Australia to the Middle East in business is up by 78%. Now I appreciate that AA don’t give a rats about people wanting to fly west from Australia but to say the increases are all fairly reasonable is misleading in my opinion.

        • Rob says:

          18 Nov18 November 11:12

          Compared to BA redemption rates, and factoring in no fuel surcharges, they are not outlandish.

          However, the difficulty of accumulating AA miles and the lack of a BA Amex 241 equivalent means it isn’t that simple if you live here.

        • Brendan says:

          18 Nov18 November 11:50

          I think there are a lot of changes though that when put together really put a downer on things. When I first looked at the award chart changes I wasn’t too disheartened – 30k/40k becoming 42.5k/62.5k for J/F Europe-Middle East is a disappointment but not unexpected.

          But then I noticed that the off peak redemption dates for Europe-USA have been halved from 7 months of the year to 3.5 months and now exclude christmas and new year.

          Then I noticed that earning will be revenue based in the 2nd half of the year so cheap transatlantic flights (including cheap ex-dub J flights) will earn far less miles than before.

          Then I noticed that earning EQMs on partner airlines will be much much harder – 0.5 EQMs on the cheapest BA tickets. Only 1.5 EQMs on BA business class whereas AA marketed flights earn 2 EQMs (and my Viking error fare flights are BA coded)

          Plus the membership year ends a month earlier now.

          All in all it means there are a few tweaks to make it worse combined with making spending cost more miles and earning much harder for those not on paid business travel

        • Brendan says:

          18 Nov18 November 11:54

          Oh and I forgot – off peak awards from Europe to the Caribbean/Hawaii/Mexico have been removed completely and for sAAver award, Hawaii is not classified with the US so has gone from 30k to 40k miles each way in Y

        • RIccati says:

          18 Nov18 November 14:28

          Interesting issue is coming up. AA does throw a lot of mileage runs on the market.

          They are already selling seats for a few hundred dollars (certain routings, certain times of year). If those cheap TATL Economy flights will stop being attractive to mileage runners… then who will take those seats?

    • RIccati says:

      18 Nov18 November 10:29

      Hi Raffles, not such a minority interest about AA. I don’t keep balance either but use MR and SPG points to transfer to AAdvantage and redeem on AA and Etihad — that is of interest to all of us.

      Plus, what AA does surely affects BA award pricing.

    • John says:

      18 Nov18 November 13:14

      I’m glad I have just used 105k of my balance, however still have 60k left. Now have to rethink the value of AA MBNA card.

• Martin says:

  18 Nov18 November 09:04

  If they change to a revenue based status I can see many silver card holders opt for SH with LCC bearing in mind how much the BA CE product has changed and use Priority Pass when they cannot or will not renew silver.

  As an example Priority Pass prestige is £259 + Easyjet plus £170. This potentially would be worth considering.

• Jonathan says:

  18 Nov18 November 09:29

  Raffles are you of the opinion that it’s just the air miles which will be revenue based and the tier points would stay as they are?

  Also how would you see a revenue based system working with BA holidays? If they don’t split the air fare and hotel / care hire cost (I’m not aware they do any splitting / sub-totalling currently) then that could be an interesting avenue for gaining additional Avios points.

  • Rob says:

    18 Nov18 November 09:47

    No, the text implies status will also be revenue based with a minimum number of flights too.

• Myer says:

  18 Nov18 November 10:23

  Unfortunately if the whole scheme becomes revenue based, my Gold card would become Bronze!
  I tend to accumulate most of my Tier points on upgraded, or cheap Club Europe tickets, with a few trans Atlantic Club World flights.
  If it goes that way then BA will loose me as a customer, perhaps that is what they want, a slimmed down more cost effective Executive club.

  • Martin says:

    18 Nov18 November 10:29

    I’d be surprised if BA aren’t looking at the revenue spent by GCH to view pro’s and cons of a switch to revenue based. I’d be sure there would be many GCH with your same mindset

• aliks says:

  18 Nov18 November 10:36

  I looked through my avios earnings for the last 18 months and only 16% come from flights.

  Given that some of the flights were business travel on Qatar, I revenue based earnings probably wouldn’t make much difference to me.

• edd m says:

  18 Nov18 November 11:48

  Just analysing the language on the site: note it talks about ‘Tier membership points’ which will be earned ‘based on frequency and spend’ with Aer Lingus.

  1. ‘Tier points’ – the fact they’ve called them ‘tier points’ suggests the scheme will dovetail with BAEC… Which gives me foreboding of a revenue based model for us!
  2. Based on ‘frequency and spend’ – this is interesting as it doesn’t mention class of travel. Could speculate this is because the majority of AI is shorthaul which doesn’t have the cabin choice unlike BA and IB.

  It’s inevitable Avios are moving to spend based awards (they practically are already) but we can only hope BA Tier points remain tied to class of travel plus frequency. I guess BA are doing the maths… Someone who regularly flies full fare economy is probably more lucrative than another who occasionally does a cheaply business trip to Hawaii 🙁

• Adrian says:

  18 Nov18 November 12:58

  If BA does make further changes (harder to attain GOLD etc.) then I’ll just go back to buying the best seats at the best price from any airline. From what I have read this seems a likely outcome for some of AA’s customers, AA had what was regarded as the best scheme and as a result the loyalty of it’s customers, it was able to differentiate itself from it’s competitors, now they are much the same and only time will tell if this was economically sound practice or shooting themselves in the foot. BA has bigger issues for me in terms of hard product in that it’s worst than most of it’s one world alliance members. If BA had the best product out there then fair enough, but all the comments on here and on FT tell me they don’t. BAEC has me committed to BA for the moment so the scheme is working.

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