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Not got your British Airways Executive Club status extension or tier upgrade? This is why

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As we covered yesterday, British Airways has now processed status extensions for the majority of British Airways Executive Club members.

Most, but not all.

There are two scenarios under which you may not currently have the status or expiry date you expect.

My british airways executive account status has not been extended

Is your Executive Club year-end 8th May or 8th June?

If you have an expiry date of 8th May or 8th June, your status has not yet changed.

There is a reason for this.  If you had an 8th May or 8th June expiry date, your membership card is still valid and runs until 30th June or 31st July respectively.

If BA had extended your card year this week, it would have meant extending people who were otherwise due to be downgraded on 30th June or 31st July at the higher tier.

This is what is happening, as BA told it to me:

If your tier point year ends on 8th May or 8th June AND you have retained your status or upgraded your status in your previous membership year, your card expiry date will be extended on Monday 29th.

If your tier point year ends on 8th May or 8th June AND you did not retain your status and are due to be downgraded, your card expiry date will be extended as soon as your downgrade is processed on 30th June or 31st July. 

This makes sense.  Imagine that you had a year end of 8th May, were Gold but only earned 200 tier points last year.  At present, your card shows ‘Gold member, card expiry 30th June 2020’.  On 1st July you were due to drop to Silver.

If your card had been extended this week, along with all the rest, you would have had your Gold status extended.  Instead, BA intends to wait until 1st July when you drop to Silver and then give you a free one-year extension.  Such a person would therefore, on 1st July, see that their Silver status runs until 30th June 2022.

Has your British Airways status not been upgraded as expected?

There is some confusion over how British Airways is applying the new, lower, tier point thresholds.  As a reminder, these are:

Bronze status – 225 tier points (was 300 points) 

Silver status – 450 tier points (was 600 tier points)

Gold status – 1,125 tier points (was 1,500 tier points)

If you qualify by segments flown, these targets have also been reduced by 25%.

It wasn’t clear whether these lower thresholds apply to your CURRENT membership year or only your NEXT membership year.

We now have an official answer from BA.

The reduced tier points thresholds will be applied on Monday 29th June.

If you have reached the thresholds mentioned above (225 for Bronze, 450 for Silver, 1125 for Gold) your tier will be upgraded automatically next week.

These people will ALSO benefit from the lower tier threshold for your next membership year, so effectively benefit from the lower threshold for two membership years.

All other BAEC members should see the reduced tier thresholds showing online too, with the lower target applying for the rest of their current year AND the following year.


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Comments (108)

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

  • Cheshire Pete says:

    I thought this actually the other day! No messin! I wondered if people who were about to lose a status might cause an IT issue. It shouldn’t have though as the flags for “retained” and did not should have been able to been processed with simple logic. Anyhow! Back to reality,,,,,,

  • SCN says:

    This seems a bit of a slap in the face for the ‘loyal’ BA status member.

    Scenario 1. Bronze achieved Silver February 2020. Year end September 2020. Status extended to September 2022.

    Scenario 2. Silver renewed Silver February 2020. Year end September 2020. Silver extended to October 2021.

    Not only loose out on an year of ‘unearned’ extension, but doesn’t seem to be much of a thanks to loyal earning customer.

    Have I got this right? Seems rather unfair that, customer who gains silver gets from February 2020 – September 2022 ( 31 months). While renewed customer gets February 2020 – September 2021 basically nothing (as had genuinely earned the 19 months)..

    Surely the fairest and obvious thing, which should have been done, was to award the renewing (loyal) customer the 12 months?

    Do you think this will be rethought?

    • Rob says:

      No. If you managed to retain Silver then your annual travel was not hugely interrupted so you don’t need compensating – this is the view.

      • Hassan says:

        Hugely flawed view. Will definitely question my use of BA long-term to be honest. Whether I re-qualified for the same status shouldn’t matter.

        I’ll definitely be ringing up BAEC customer service over the coming weeks and press them on the issue. This is creating woefully lopsided outcomes where people who re-qualify get absolutely nothing whilst people who managed to upgrade get status secured until 2023 in some scenarios!

      • JG says:

        Hence why BA are popularly known as Sh*tish Airways…

    • GaryC says:

      I may be wrong, but I believe in both scenarios you describe, the member would get Silver until October 2021, the end of the month following the end of the tier point year. If there are any “winners and losers” in BA’s cut-off dates, then the winners are people with June tier point year end (potentially extended until July 2022) and the losers are those with July year end (August 2021).

      But there has to be a cut off somewhere, and I think it’s silly to talk of “questioning use of BA” simply because you didn’t get something for free, and simply naive to think that a silver card (or any coloured card) marks you out as some special “loyal” BA customer, when silver can be had for around £1000. BA can hardly tailor a policy to every individual BAEC members circumstances, and broadly I think they’ve done the right thing.

      • Hassan says:

        “[…] broadly I think they’ve done the right thing.”
        – It’s easy to say when you’re not on the side of those who got the short end of the stick.

        “BA can hardly tailor a policy to every individual BAEC members circumstances”
        – This situation has created a mess (see the forum thread on another website, it’s over 90 pages long!) and woefully unequal outcomes for BAEC members, that’s what I am disappointed about. BA had promised extension to everyone via their email from a fortnight ago, and they failed to deliver as far as I am concerned.

        “and simply naive to think that a silver card (or any coloured card) marks you out as some special “loyal” BA customer, when silver can be had for around £1000”
        – You’ve completely missed the point.

        • GaryC says:

          My collection year ends in December, so I’ve got a free renewal until January 2022. By your reasoning I should be complaining because I’ve got 6 months less free renewal than others have received. No one has lost anything by this, but it does seem to have caused a regression in some people to the “muuuummmm it’s not fair, Joey has a toy I don’t” type of behaviour..

    • Mawalt says:

      I think this is an unfortunate side effect of BA’s membership year end. It will always advantage some people and disadvantage others. I guess it could be more “democratic” if the tier lasted for 18 months after achieving it, but if we know anything about BA’s IT systems, that is never going to happen.

  • Richard Thomas says:

    I have silver with year end of 8th August 2020, but it has not been extended, I wonder if they just haven’t got round to me yet.

  • DerekH says:

    Excuse me if I appear dim but my Silver shows tier points year ending on February 8 2021 And card ending March 2020. As it seems likely that I won’t be flying enough to get enough tier points between now and February next year, does this mean I’ll drop to Bronze in February next year?

    • Steve says:

      Yes. The card expiry date is always the month after your TP collection date.E.g My TP year end is 8 October but the card is valid until 30 November.

      As an aside to those saying it’s not fair on all, that’s life I’m afraid.

  • SCN says:

    Just seems very unfair that a new status customer (and many others ) get extensions to 2022.

    A renewed customer not only doesn’t get anything, which they haven’t earned AND a status only goes to 2021.

    Poor show BA

    • Mawalt says:

      But this is caused by the year end date, rather than whether they gained new or renewed existing status.

  • Josh says:

    I have a TP Collection Year End: 8 Oct 2020 and Card Expiry of Nov 2021.

    Still not changed to Nov 2022 yet! Or am I missing something?

    • Rob says:

      You HAVE been extended – otherwise your card would expire November 2020.

      • Josh says:

        Sorry, but your status is valid for the current membership year + the following year. But they’re extending everyone by a year which surely would then take me up to 2022? Status was earned in this membership year

        • Rob says:

          Did you earn a NEW status of level this year?

          If so then, yes, you should be pushed out to 2022.

          Did you RETAIN an EXISTING level of status this year?

          If so, you get nothing. Your travel hasn’t been disrupted (as you could retain your status OK) so you don’t get an extension.

          • Josh says:

            Yes, earned Bronze this TP year – now with 520 TP so would achieve Silver too.
            I lost my status at the end of the last TP year and have re-earned again since.

            So based on what you you said, I should be pushed out to 2022. Perhaps the achieving silver anomaly is causing an issue.

          • Rob says:

            If you’re on 520 TP then you will get Silver next Monday. See what happens then.

  • HW says:

    Do the reduced tier thresholds also apply to CCR cards?

  • JSlv says:

    My wife is a silver with TP collection ending 8th September 2020. Currently sitting on 1385 TP.
    Account still show Silver and card expiring 31/10/21. My understanding is that she would be moved to gold and expiration to 2022.

    • Rob says:

      Definitely Gold on Monday, let’s see about 2022 ….

      • JSlv says:

        I think it will go, as I have achieved Gold with 1550 TP back in March and have my card extended to 22.

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