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‘How to get elite British Airways status quicker than you think’

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Note:  I was travelling all day yesterday, so I thought I would do myself a favour by giving this article an airing.  I originally wrote a version of it for another publication but it will be interesting for newer HfP readers.  It is written in a ‘simpler’ style to most Head for Points articles because it was produced for a broader readership.

Having elite airline status used to be about the finer things in life – skipping the queues at security, heading straight into a luxurious lounge for some free champagne and food before waltzing onto the plane when you felt like it.  This is still true, of course, to some extent.

Today, however, airline elite status also brings more mundane benefits – free seat selection (British Airways charges up to £200 return for the best seats in long-haul Business Class), a reduced chance of having your hand baggage taken away at the gate and a reduced chance of being thrown off an oversold flight.

What most people don’t understand is that elite status is easier to get than you think. I am focusing mainly on British Airways here, but the same principles apply to other airlines.

British Airways requires 600 tier points in your 12 month membership year for a Silver card in the Executive Club.  This brings lounge access, free seat selection and extra baggage allowance.  When you see that a short haul Economy flight only earns 5 tier points each way, however, you may give up immediately.

Don’t.  Look further.  A one-way long-haul business class flight on BA is 140 tier points.  Just two return flights and a couple of short haul trips will get you that Silver card.

But that’s too many for me.  It is 140 tier points per flight so the benefits double when you fly long-haul Business Class on a partner airline and need to change on the way. Fly to Asia on BA’s partner Qatar Airways and you change planes in Doha. 

Fly to Los Angeles with BA’s partner American and you could change in New York.  Suddenly you’re doing two flights each way, so 2 x 140 tier points.  That is 560 tier points in one return business class trip.  Your Silver card is virtually in the post.

You can even earn status via short haul flights if you are smart.  The longest flights on the British Airways short haul network, to places such as Malta, Marrakech or Tenerife, each 160 tier points return in Business Class.  Because these are generally leisure routes, operating out of Gatwick and not Heathrow, they are often inexpensive if booked in advance.  Four weekends away over 12 months and, again, your Silver card is sorted.

British Airways Gold Card

If it is airport lounge access you crave, you can get it via a premium credit card.  American Express Platinum comes with two Priority Pass lounge cards.  American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is free for a year and gives all applicants two lounge passes for free.  HSBC Premier World Elite credit cards come with free airport lounge access.

These are usually for third party lounges, but they are often better than airline-run ones.  The calmest lounge in BA’s Terminal 5 at Heathrow is arguably the independent Plaza Premium one.

Even if you fly low cost, you don’t have to miss out on perks.  easyJet Plus membership scheme (£215 per year) gets you seat, boarding, fast track security and baggage perks.  Combine it with lounge access via your credit card – Luton, Stansted and Gatwick North all have independent lounges – and an easyJet flyer will have a similar experience as a British Airways passenger at Heathrow who has a Silver card.

Here are some other tricks:

If you have status with one airline, other airlines may match it to tempt you to switch. statusmatcher.com is a good website where people post successes and failures.

Airlines have lots of partners.  Greek airline Aegean, for example, is the easiest of the 26 in Star Alliance to get status with, although you need to take four flights with Aegean annually.  An Aegean top tier status card is valid across Star Alliance.

BA lets its top Gold Guest List members give Gold status to one friend per year, and Silver status to two friends.  Got any heavy travelling friends?  Time to buy them a beer.

Finally, don’t get status conscious.  If you always fly Business or First Class, you don’t need elite status.  You get the perks anyway (OK, BA will still charge you for seat selection in Business!).  Feel free to pick the highest quality and most convenient airline for each flight you make.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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:

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

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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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

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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.

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (115)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Lady London says:
    16 Feb16 February 12:11

    It’s Sunday so I’ll go for it.

    Why is it you lot don’t jump on Ash /Ashish in the same way ? Thoughts pop into my head with his requests, that have a few times repeated, of a bird in the next with his beak constantly open “feed me” “feed me”. It seems when he does work something out he “blurts” it as well.

    Look at the way the request is written. Yes could be someone clever writing this in a way to fool us. But why are your replied targeting someone who is a woman, old and likely of low income? 3 sorts of discrimination there when you didn’t target the one that posts as Ashish.

    Are elderly poor female people to be targeted? The government would like us to. Don’t fall for their intergenerational warfare ploys.

    I say this as one who will also be royally shafted by the changes in the pension system.

    Perhaps you wouldn’t help a stranger but it’s not a bad idea to look around your family and help someone if it doesn’t cost you anything

    • Doug M says:
      16 Feb16 February 12:46

      I try not to dive in, but one thing that’s absolute on the Internet is the loss of context, and ‘how’ something is said. Maybe they were light hearted remarks, who knows. I was mildly amused how this was jumped on, whilst the comment asking if someone could use a cancelled Amex for lounge access got nothing in terms of the legitimacy of that.

      • TGLoyalty says:
        16 Feb16 February 13:01

        I guess because one is cheeky in the sense of they want to trick there way into a lounge with a card they used to hold.

        The other is someone asking for something from any random stranger just because they are retired. Also even if it was useful for them as a couple on one actually needs the status not both.

        travelling isn’t a necessity so I fail to see why being on low income would make it ok to ask?

        • Doug M says:
          16 Feb16 February 13:15

          Or, you could argue one is advice on how to steal a service not being paid for, and the other is a request for generosity from a stranger.

        • Lady London says:
          16 Feb16 February 21:48

          Thank you for your charitable answer @Doug M

        • Shoestring says:
          16 Feb16 February 21:52

          I am the first to say I have made a silly ass of myself, on occasion

          not that the other party got the joke

        • Lady London says:
          16 Feb16 February 23:25

          Yes Shoestring and possible your son(s) might not have got either

    • Kev M says:
      16 Feb16 February 14:08

      Good grief! Only in the minds of snowflakes could comments about the request being cheeky etc be construed as 3 kinds of discrimination. Completely bizarre.

    • F99 says:
      16 Feb16 February 16:12

      How do you know she’s old?

      • sloth says:
        16 Feb16 February 18:15

        cos its Moira Stuart surely…

      • Lady London says:
        16 Feb16 February 21:55

        Look at it. There are all sorts of clues that this is genuine, and from a retired older person likely to be of limited means.

        Interesting that commenters also were able to discern this. One said ‘travel is not a basic necessity’. Shouldn’t older people have dreams too?

  • Robin Henagulph says:
    16 Feb16 February 12:42

    BA Club seat selection available at no cost 7 days before flight.

    • TGLoyalty says:
      16 Feb16 February 13:05

      If you are bronze? I thought it was T-24 otherwise.

      • Anna says:
        16 Feb16 February 14:05

        Yes for bronze, however I’ve found a couple of times now that on a domestic connection our seats have been allocated well in advance of the travel dates (months) and once that’s happened, you can change them. I’ve no idea how or why this happens!

        • Anna says:
          16 Feb16 February 14:07

          Also, the booking doesn’t have to be on that member’s account – any booking with a Bronze pax on it seems to be able to reserve seats 7 days in advance (according to my Easter booking which was made on my account but my Bronze OH is also travelling).

  • NFH says:
    16 Feb16 February 13:58

    It’s terrible grammar! In the title, please change “quicker” (comparative adjective) to “more quickly” or “faster” (comparative adverbs). “Quicker” is the comparative of “quick”, not of “quickly”. The comparative of “quickly” is “more quickly”. You need an adverb, not an adjective, to qualify a verb.

  • kenboy says:
    16 Feb16 February 14:34

    This is not an offer that most people will be interested in taking up. If you can afford business class, you don’t need the benefits. You’re better off sticking with economy & paying for the extras like seat selection.

    • riku2 says:
      16 Feb16 February 14:53

      what about people who travel for work but their employer only pays for economy? by choosing flights that give the most TP they will get lounge access and other benefits that they would otherwise miss out on – or have to spend their own money for seat selection and lounge access because their travel policy will not cover those items.
      I do realise though that most of the readers here are earning points via credit cards and not travelling for work but some of us do travel for work with our employers paying.

    • jkay86 says:
      16 Feb16 February 15:59

      I’d have to disagree with you there- my work doesn’t involve any air travel but as a migrant worker I make a number of Europe-Asia/Oz/USA flights each year to visit family, inevitably at the back of the plane. The benefits of having status are immeasurable- being able to find a lounge to sit before boarding, a shower, something to bite/drink and priority boarding/check-in all go towards making the journey much less stressful. Makes me work hard every year and strategising (thanks to HfP) to earn those TPs

    • ChrisC says:
      16 Feb16 February 16:41

      Well this isn’t an offer as such it’s an advisory piece,

      And yes you are right if you fly in Club or F then you get lounges access. But you have to pay for seat selection (not in F).

      Now you might not be bothered about seats or extra baggage allowance but other people are and it can be a considerable costs so it can be cheaper to do a couple,of short haul trips to get the TPs to save on fees on later flights,

      My advice to people is to look at what the costs are of getting status against the benefits,

  • BS says:
    16 Feb16 February 14:43

    Well for someone like me this works well.

    I travel long haul around 6 times a year almost exclusively in Y. At the beginning of my TP year every other year I pay for one business class flight on Qatar (~£1700 compared with £700 for Y), which gets me almost 2 years of silver with the lounge and seat selection benefits. I haven’t worked out if I actually get ‘value for money’ on my one luxury flight, but I do enjoy it!

    • Anna says:
      16 Feb16 February 14:50

      I think this is a great strategy, I’ll definitely be doing the same once our travel dates are more flexible. I do like J or F in long haul, though, but don’t think it’s worth it for short haul, which is where Silver status would come in handy.

    • Lady London says:
      16 Feb16 February 21:43

      Do your benefits are costing you about £150 per flight. For the comfort I call that about even. Plus the gaming aspect of plotting and strategizing which is fun.

  • Anna says:
    16 Feb16 February 14:53

    If you have 2 parents with Silver status, would accompanying children be allowed in the lounge, or would they need their own status?! (Talking teenagers here, not cute babies who might win over the reception ladies!)

  • makrxx says:
    16 Feb16 February 16:03

    I’m based in London for work but fly home to Singapore 2-3x a year. I often fly in Y though because cash fares are so cheap and I often can get it for £400+, sometimes even below that on Lufthansa/Air France.

    And because of the routing I tend to fly Star Alliance a bit more but getting Star Alliance Gold is a fair bit harder it seems. So to get BA Silver, my best bet will be finding a cheap cash fare for J, perhaps on Qatar, where I’ll get 140 x 4 = 560 which makes me just 40 points short for BA Silver. Am I getting this right? (Currentely have no status with BA)

    • Peter K says:
      16 Feb16 February 16:11

      You also need 4 BA flights (segments) as well for silver.

      • AJA says:
        16 Feb16 February 17:22

        The flight segments can be on any of the following:

        BA operated + BA flight prefix
        BA operated + other flight prefix
        Other carrier operated + BA flight prefix
        IB operated + IB flight prefix

        • makrxx says:
          16 Feb16 February 22:13

          Thanks both. Seems like Stockholm – Singapore is consistently cheap on J, under £1,300…

          So I have a BA account but have never used it before (i.e 0 Avios). My year end for my Tier Points is the 8th Jan. Is it possible to email BA to have my account ‘deleted’ before creating a new one so I can strategise my dates better?

          • AJA says:
            17 Feb17 February 08:48

            I am not sure if it’s possible to delete your account and then reapply. It’s not something I’ve ever thought necessary.
            I do know your year is set for life. BAEC will not change it.

  • TW says:
    16 Feb16 February 17:23

    Any idea why, over this weekend, a lot of fares on ba.com are blacked out/not listed for some European routes for this March-April-May? Is this a common occurence as I haven’t seen this before?

    • Lady London says:
      16 Feb16 February 23:36

      Could it be that British Airways has somehow secured an advance copy of Virgin’s pricing for multi-segment routes like Newcastle-Amsterdam-Portland and is furiously taking £10 off every fare to match them before Virgin publishes their prices?

      Or, could it be BA has a sale?

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