Should British Airways Executive Club introduce Lifetime Silver status?

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• Richard Smith says:

  21 Oct21 October 10:34

  The analysis of people who travelled extensively in their careers and are now funding their own travel is absolutely spot on in terms of what we (I am one of them) are looking for”

• dougzz99 says:

  21 Oct21 October 10:40

  I think Silver is too easily achieved. 600 TP really isn’t a lot. On an annual basis you achieve Silver at 40% of Gold, so at current levels would a reasonable threshold for lifetime Silver not be 14K TP?
  Given what Silver get you over Bronze, yet what Gold gets you over Silver the annual targets seem pretty skewed, with Silver the absolute sweet-spot.
  None of this will matter when TP follow Avios down the £ route rather than per flight.

  • Chris W says:

    21 Oct21 October 10:44

    I agree. Especially with the BA Holidays double TP promotion that’s gone on for years now, Silver is too easy to earn

  • Harry T says:

    21 Oct21 October 11:27

    Agreed, silver is easy to attain even for casuals.

    • AJA says:

      21 Oct21 October 11:52

      Silver is only easy to attain if you consistently travel in Club or currently take advantage of the BA Holidays offer. It still takes at least 4 flights to achieve status. Outside of the BAH offer Silver still requires you to do 2 longhaul return trips in CW plus one shorthaul one-way flight in CE or 15 one way flights in CE to 40TP destinations.

      The thing is that if you do travel in Club you already get the dedicated check in, fast track security and lounge access where offered.

      Therefore the only tangible benefits of Silver are free seat choice at time of booking and an extra Avios per £ spent over Bronze status.

      Personally I think BA have set the level correctly.

      On the subject of lifetime Silver even at 15000 TP that would not be huge numbers.

      Rather than Lifetime Silver I’d like it if you got permanent Bronze status with the BAPP card and only needed to earn 320TP on top to get Silver. Or earned Silver status when you spend £13k on the card in your card year. That would incentivise people to continue spending on the BAPP card beyond the £10k to get the companion voucher.

      • dougzz99 says:

        21 Oct21 October 13:16

        I’m not aware of another OW program where Silver equivalent is so easily achieved. Silver off a spend of £13K, or +320TP, I think that’s pure fantasy.

        • AJA says:

          21 Oct21 October 16:33

          I agree. That was wishlist talking. And as likely as BA offering Lifetime Silver. I’m not expecting either my wishlist or Silver For Life to happen any time soon.

      • Points Hound says:

        21 Oct21 October 21:09

        @AJA – “Silver is only easy to attain if you consistently travel in Club or currently take advantage of the BA Holidays offer”.

        Utter nonsense. Fly BA from the regions to London weekly for business and you can get silver flying nothing but economy, so it is very easy to obtain for many.

        • Chrisasaurus says:

          22 Oct22 October 06:46

          Well now – “easy” is relative and that’s a fair number of flights still, certainly far above the average number flown across the customer base

  • Jack says:

    21 Oct21 October 15:35

    It is not easily achieved whatsoever and requires a lot of traveling and spend to earn . Only those who fly often in business can afford it same with the BA double tier points offer . I am fed up of people saying status is easy to earn it isn’t at all

    • dougzz99 says:

      21 Oct21 October 19:18

      It is easily earned in context. This is a frequent flyer program, frequent! You can’t expect to fly once or twice a year in economy or premium and have a worthwhile status. In context and with relevance to other FF programs BA silver is easily earned.
      An Asia return on Qatar in business is 90% of the way to Silver, that’s not much flying for a decent status.

    • marcw says:

      21 Oct21 October 20:04

      It’s fairly easy if you have a strategy. If you have no strategy, then it’s not.

• Andrew Barker says:

  21 Oct21 October 10:49

  Speaking as someone who recently got GfL but all through leisure travel through the years and have also been GL for the last few and will indeed have now till July 25, I would say I have little or no incentive to continue my loyalty to BA now. Once the double tier points for holidays disappear I will not continue to achieve the 3000 TP needed. Therefore i would suggest BA offer GfL the opportunity to get GL at 1500 TP as i would achieve this and it would cement my continued loyalty to BA.

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    22 Oct22 October 06:50

    Not sure I follow though – you would fly on another airline without status despite being gold with BA? Why ever did you want status if that’s the case?

    (Or do you have status elsewhere too in which case I think this is something of an edge case)

• James says:

  21 Oct21 October 11:32

  Interesting the point about business class being filled with more leisure travellers on attractive deals. Post Covid I’ve been really struggling to find anything I could say was realistic for me to pay.
  Those Qatar days were truly amazing. Even then I appreciated it but now the idea of flying ex-uk to Phuket for under 1k in business return seems pie in the sky.

  It would be nice to see some £1500 deals out of Europe maybe.

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    22 Oct22 October 06:51

    Two years of mammoth inflation and even your £1k flight already costs £1.2k now anyway

• Bernard says:

  21 Oct21 October 12:19

  Silver for life demands are like people who think they’re ’entitled’ to upgrades. Never ceases but good commercial reasons why it will never happen.

  The tide is running the other way from what I’ve heard from those close to things. Full lounges and lost seat booking money from too many ‘lite’ silvers and golds may mean benefits like seat allocation are cut back.
  I heard that they’re also looking at whether some card holders are abusing their privileges by trading avios for lounge guesting.

  • Tom says:

    21 Oct21 October 12:38

    As others have said, this is a partly self-inflicted wound in BA’s case. Silver was already possibly the easiest oneworld Sapphire status to earn (pre-COVID it could still be done with one QR business trip to Asia and one BA round trip within Europe, that’s hardly rewarding your frequent flyers!). Piling the double TPs offer on top after repeated extensions was asking for trouble. I agree with those who suggest Silver should be moved upwards to 750 TPs anyway.

    I agree Lifetime Silver is probably not in BA’s interests (speaking as someone with about 20K TPs who would probably be given it).

  • dougzz99 says:

    21 Oct21 October 13:19

    Not sure who’s demanding Silver. I thought it was a general discussion. Silver for life will only become a thing if BA think it benefits them, they’re not doing anyone favours.

• RK says:

  21 Oct21 October 14:59

  As a leisure traveller, I disagree vehemently.
  Silver is not easy to attain out of your own funds.
  It is a minority group here with frequent travelling.. you need to think about the bigger picture as a whole.

  • dougzz99 says:

    21 Oct21 October 19:20

    As per my post above. Silver is a decent status. How little flying/GBP would you see as reasonable for a status that offers fast track, seat selection, lounge access etc.?

• Lady London says:

  21 Oct21 October 15:13

  All I’m seeing is schemes doing is making it harder to earn an amount that can be counted for any benefit at all. Whilst the benefits on offer in not just the midrange, but also now affecting the upper end of midrange, are being lessened, require hugely more points than they used to, or the benefits being taken away completely.

  The only improvements in benefit provision are at the top end and the only improvements in earnings relative to how much of what has to be done to earn, are also at the top end only. Such as Lufthansa’s First Class only lounge, and the only gainers on BA’s earnings chart being the very top end of spend anf everyone else loses.

  So the middle is being cleared out, and is no longer being incentivised. Airlines, and hotel chain policies (with less success) will revert to 30+ years ago when benefits were enjoyed by far fewer.

  Data available lets them analyse and choose segmentation much more finely than all that time ago.

  Meanwhile as Rob says, – apart from big spenders, and you will often note better benefits only offered in markets where there is high growth in numbers of people with high disposable income eg China and Middle East for those – apart from those, airlines and, where they can, hotel groups, are still fighting over the pool of corporates whose aggregate spend is attractive. What happens to that pool – returned growth, static or decline – is unclear yet but for now they’re hanging on, keeping earnings and benefits high.

  The rest of you can go hang and this is probably a correct strategy.

• QFFlyer says:

  21 Oct21 October 15:17

  I think BA LTG is reasonably achievable. LTS would be nice, but (in my mind, once I get to retirement) if I were only flying once or twice a year, it would be J/F, any more and I’d have Silver (or OWS) anyway.

  Moot point as QF Lifetime Gold will only take me a couple more years, and the bar for Lifetime Platinum is so laughably high, at 75,000 SCs, that it’ll never happen, so I’ll resolve myself to waving goodbye to First lounges eventually.

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