How do British Airways Executive Club membership years work?

How do British Airways Executive Club membership years work?

British Airways Executive Club is a frequent flyer program that aims to reward your loyalty to British Airways. In this article we’ll look at the way in which membership years work and how that affects your ability to earn tier points and achieve elite status.

If you don’t already know, tier points are used to track your loyalty to British Airways and your elite status. The more flights you take, the more you accrue, and the more you accrue, the higher you get within the British Airways Executive Club elite tiers.

However, your tier points reset on an annual basis, meaning that in order to gain elite status you must complete the eligibility requirements within one membership year.

How it works at the moment

This is where things get slightly complicated. Membership years are not 12 months from the day you signed up. Instead, your first year of membership is between 12 and 13 months long. This is because British Airways Executive Club membership years cycle on the 8th day of the month following your sign-up month.

So, for example, if you had joined on 10th May 2022, your first year end would have been 8th June 2023, giving you just under 13 full months of membership for your first year. For every subsequent year, however, your membership will cycle on that day (8th June) and not the anniversary of your actual sign up date (10th May).

This is important because tier points reset on first day after your membership cycles. So, to use the above example, your membership automatically renews on the 8th June but your tier points will reset to zero on the 9th June; the first day of your new membership year. Any flights undertaken on the 8th June will count towards the old year, whilst flights on the 9th count towards the new.

How it will work from April 2025

British Airways will change the way that Executive Club membership years operate from 2025.

From 2025, all membership years will run from 1st April to 31st March.

This has certain benefits, such as ensuring that family members will all earn status together. At present, it is possible for people to take the same flights as each other but have different status levels due to how the flights fall across membership years.

The downside is that, by picking a year end which falls across Easter in some years but not others, it will cause issues for people who rely on long haul Easter travel to retain their status.

During 2024 and early 2025 there is a complex transitional period in place. You can learn how it works in this article.

Earning British Airways status

If, during your membership year, you accrue enough tier points to cross the threshold of an elite status (Bronze, Silver or Gold), you will enjoy the benefits of that status for the rest of your remaining membership year, plus the entire membership year following. You also receive a one month grace period.

Let’s look at an example from 2025, when years align on 1st April. Let’s assume you earn 300 tier points on 15th June 2025. You would have Bronze status for:

• the remainder of the current membership year, to 31st March 2026
• all of the next membership year, to 31st March 2027
• and a one month grace period, to 30th April 2027

This article looks at whether you can get an extension to your British Airways Executive Club membership year.  This article looks at whether you can change your British Airways Executive Club membership year end.

(This article is part of our ‘BA Q&A’ series which explains how British Airways Executive Club works.  You can see all of our ‘BA Q&A’ articles here. )

(Head for Points is the UK’s biggest frequent flyer website with 2.5 million monthly page views.  Want to learn more about earning and spending Avios?  Click here to read our latest news stories and click here to join the mailing list for our weekly or daily email newsletters.)

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

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You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.