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Should the BAPP Amex let you earn tier points permanently, perhaps instead of Avios?

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The news yesterday that British Airways will start offering Executive Club tier points for British Airways Premium Plus American Express spend generated a huge amount of feedback. Our article had over 350 comments by the end of the day.

As I said yesterday, I feel that it’s the right idea but wrongly executed, although a fair attempt at a first stab.

Let’s look into this in more detail.

Should the BAPP Amex let you earn tier points permanently, perhaps instead of Avios?

I had four issues with the offer. You need to understand that my key starting points when looking at any loyalty deal are whether it is easy to understand and how it plays on human psychology.

The spend threshold starts too high

You need to spend £15,000 within six months to start to benefit from this offer. This is too high and will simply lead to too many people tuning out.

It would make more sense to start earning tier points at £5,000 of qualifying spend for 50 tier points. Most people would earn something this way, and once a member had a handful of tier points it would – psychologically – encourage them to look into ways of earning more.

Remember that it costs BA NOTHING to give out tier points if the member does not go on to earn or retain status. It’s a different dynamic to Avios, where giving someone a handful of Avios which are never used requires IAG Loyalty to accrue for them on its balance sheet for three years.

The number of tier points should be uncapped

You can’t be half pregnant. If you’re going to give out tier points based on card spend, you should allow people to earn status entirely on card spend.

If someone wants to spend £60,000 to earn a British Airways Executive Club Silver card from scratch, assuming they also fly four segments, they should be able to (and the same for spending £150,000 to earn Gold).

Anyone who isn’t flying enough to earn status is unlikely to be flying enough to cost British Airways a fortune in lounge access etc. Some people who gained status via this route would also move travel to BA from other airlines to benefit from it.

Running a six month offer only benefits people with certain membership year end dates

Another issue with this trial is that, even if you were keen to take part, you may find that the way your year end falls counts you out. If you could spend a consistent £5,000 per month on your BA Premium Plus American Express card but your BA year end is 8th March, you’d trigger 100 tier points in your current 2023/24 year (which may be wasted) and 100 in the following 2024/25 year.

Should the BAPP Amex let you earn tier points permanently, perhaps instead of Avios?

There are issues for people who have stopping using a BA Amex because they have spent £9,999

Some people have spent £9,999 on their cards and are holding off spending more so they don’t trigger their annual 2-4-1 companion voucher unnecessarily early – although I published the obvious solution for that problem here.

I spent nothing on my BA card between February 2023 (when I was above £9,500) and the last week of October 2023 because I wanted to ensure the 2-4-1 voucher would be valid for October half term in 2025.

If BA is going to give out tier points on card spend, it ALSO needs to address the issue of people deliberately holding off using their card to avoid triggering their voucher early.

An idea: should British Airways offer Avios OR tier points?

Ever since interchange fee caps cut the money that credit card companies have to fund travel rewards, I have been pushing the idea of giving out elite status instead of miles.

(Iberia has been offering the equivalent of British Airways Bronze status with one of its credit cards for some years now – all you need to do is pay a €100 annual card fee. IAG isn’t against the concept of ‘selling’ status.)

What would happen if you were given a choice with your British Airways Premium Plus American Express?

  • earn 1.5 Avios per £1 (as you do now) or
  • earn 0.75 Avios per £1 and receive 1 tier point per £100 spent?

Why would BA do this? Because it makes financial sense – and financial sense is something that BA understands.

The airline targets a 10% operating profit margin from flying, although it is currently doing better. Bear this in mind.

Let’s assume that BA started to offer the two options above and I chose the second – 0.75 Avios per £1 and 1 tier point per £100 spent on my Premium Plus card.

Should the BAPP Amex let you earn tier points permanently, perhaps instead of Avios?

To earn British Airways Executive Club Silver status at 600 tier points would require £60,000 of credit card spend. I’d also receive (60,000 x 0.75) 45,000 Avios, instead of the 90,000 Avios I’d get at the standard rate of 1.5 Avios per £1.

Let’s assume Amex pays BA the same amount of money either way. Instead of paying BA around £750 for issuing 90,000 Avios, it pays BA £750 for issuing 45,000 Avios and giving me a Silver card.

Basically, BA will have been paid £375 for giving me a Silver card.

Because the airline targets a 10% profit margin on flights, BA makes the same profit on this as if I’d spent £3,750 on flying.

This is a big win for the airline.

Let’s assume I try to earn Silver from scratch by flying. A good ‘tier point run’ would cost around £2 per tier point. You can beat this – Heathrow to Sofia in Club Europe is currently as low as £210 return in March / April / May for 160 tier points, and you’d get another 80 tier points with a connection by starting outside London. Stay five nights in Sofia, book via BA Holidays, and you’d earn double tier points.

At £2 per tier point, I could earn Silver by spending (600 tier points x £2 per tier point) £1,200 on flights. BA would make £120 of profit this way based on a 10% margin. Instead, it would be getting £375 of profit by letting Amex buy me a Silver card.

Even someone with no real idea of what makes a good tier point run should be able to pick up a Silver card by spending far less than £3,750, generating less than £375 of profit for BA.

‘Selling’ status this way is actually good business sense for the airline.

This offer isn’t for you? That’s fine

Clearly this offer wouldn’t be for everyone. That’s fine.

BA doesn’t want it to be for everyone due to lounge capacity etc. After all, when everyone’s a princess, no-one’s a princess (a lesson I learned from reading ‘Olivia and the Fairy Princess‘ to my daughter when she was five – I can sense the blank looks from readers who don’t have a young daughter ….)

There are so many British Airways Premium Plus American Express cardholders – I am guessing 100k-ish – that BA would only want a couple of percent to earn status purely via card spend.

The extra revenue generated from this couple of percent of cardholders who went for it, gung ho, would be worthwhile for both American Express and BA, however.

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Category

British Airways American Express, British Airways and Avios

Comments (118)

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

  • rotundo says:
    22 Nov22 November 08:45

    “Anyone who isn’t flying enough to earn status is unlikely to be flying enough to cost British Airways a fortune in lounge access etc.”

    This one is not obvious to me – think someone who flies cheapest economy short haul every couple of weeks, or an avios-rich traveller who does a lot of redemption flights – these people would have a really hard time getting Silver from flights.

  • Tony says:
    22 Nov22 November 08:48

    As soon as BA.com sees you booking a Tier Point run for 5 nights in Club it doubles the fare!!

  • Gillian Wilson says:
    22 Nov22 November 08:57

    It seems this one is targeted as parent doesn’t have it 🥺

    • Rob says:
      22 Nov22 November 08:59

      It’s not targeted.

      Please don’t tell me that, despite the article saying it’s not in the app and me posting 10 times in the comments yesterday that it’s not in the app, they are looking in the app 🙂

  • Bluekjp says:
    22 Nov22 November 09:11

    Rob, you were a loyalty expert on the side of the punter. You have now moved over to the other side. Your thoughts are entirely on the side of the financial benefits to the airline now and how much sense it makes to them.

    • zapato1060 says:
      22 Nov22 November 09:21

      I got the contrary from what I read.

    • G says:
      22 Nov22 November 09:38

      Here here. Rob and the team have cushy access from BA/IAG and aren’t really on – our- side anymore (i.e. the maximising value crowd).

      Sad

      • Rob says:
        22 Nov22 November 09:55

        The point I am making is that my idea makes financial sense as well as reader-sense.

        Any idiot can sit here spouting off ideas all day which aren’t commercially viable (hey, let’s launch BA long haul flights from Newcastle, let’s give 200,000 Avios as a sign-up bonus even though you can’t make decent money off credit cards these days, let’s give out caviar in Club Europe etc etc).

        If I put an idea forward, it’s because I know it’s one that is financially viable for the airline / loyalty programme and therefore could be adopted.

        Good luck getting Avios to adopt an idea which doesn’t make financial sense to them.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
      22 Nov22 November 09:53

      Knowing what AMEX/BA thinks they are getting from this offer aids understanding of why it benefits (or not) us the consumer and why it’s been offered.

      Writing from the perspective of the other side does not mean you’ve turned over to them or agree with them.

      • SBIre says:
        22 Nov22 November 13:20

        Exactly!

        • camille55 says:
          22 Nov22 November 14:03

          @ G – in case anyone didn’t tell you, BA & Avios (and every other business) exist for the purpose of making money. You can only maximise value if those businesses profit today ….and then re-invest to try and profit more tomorrow.

  • laughingplace says:
    22 Nov22 November 09:21

    Is status really worth it? I’m not so sure, especially not Bronze.

    It does boggle me somewhat that people go out their way to earn / keep status.

    Who cares about which check-in you go to, never had a problem with that. As for lounge, if you have a PP or similar, again no issue there. Only seat selection that helps but that isn’t worth spending £££ to get status.

    • WorldTraveller says:
      22 Nov22 November 09:25

      Extra luggage allowance and ability to use your status with other oneworld airlines too. And priority check in is significant as Heathrow often has huge queues in economy check in. And BA lounges are universally better than any priority pass lounge. The only exception is Amex centurion which you can only access in the UK from Heathrow t3 with Amex platinum.

      Also seat selection is particularly useful in economy where you can select an emergency exit seat for free.

    • G says:
      22 Nov22 November 09:39

      Bronze isn’t worth persuing. Only if you acquire it naturally by flying.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
      22 Nov22 November 09:55

      That would be a PP card that at some airports is as useless as a chocolate tea pot?

    • QFFlyer says:
      22 Nov22 November 13:08

      My response isn’t BA specific, but QF are part of Oneworld so it’s relevant, I think.

      First class lounge access, priority security, advance access to reward seats and the ability to request the release of additional reward availability are the primary reasons for me (the latter is QF specific, admittedly).

      I agree Oneworld Ruby I wouldn’t bother chasing, but I have it for life (Qantas Lifetime Silver) through my normal flying anyway, lifetime Gold will come in the next 2/3 years. Would I chase it? Not lifetime no. Annual status while I’m flying heavily, yes (if I’m short – I’m not talking chasing the whole 1,200 status credits just for the sake of being Platinum, but if my normal flying takes me to 1,000, I’ll definitely be doing a few domestic back-to-backs before my year end).

  • yonasl says:
    22 Nov22 November 09:21

    I don’t know how people do their math. If you only have the BA Amex card you need to spend £10,000 to get a 241 voucher. You will then need to spend another £100,000 to get a proper amount of avios to fly Club somewhere special.

    So the only way to get a fair amount of avios is flying and maximising hotel.com offers and similar. If you do that you are already getting many TPs too.

    I do not know who has the capacity to spend £25,000 in 6 months for just 200 TPs (other that people expensing that).

  • Andrew says:
    22 Nov22 November 09:27

    Shouldn’t you be using incremental margin in your maths and not average? For one more passenger the margin would be much higher than 10%.

    • Rob says:
      22 Nov22 November 09:59

      You’re then entering a big wormhole over whether the seat I don’t occupy would be sold to someone else or not etc ….

  • Stephen E says:
    22 Nov22 November 09:40

    I’m so cold on this. I’m BA gold anyway from business travel and if I was only silver, the tier points make little difference in hitting gold. This won’t get you to gold, and it doesn’t help families with one gold member and others that aren’t.

    I’d be much more excited if BA did things to incentivise me to keep spending on my BA Premium plus card beyond £10K. As it is, as a couple with 2 children, I have the situation of every other year having a balance of £9995 until the end of a year so I earn my voucher and then can quickly earn the next voucher so that I have a pair with dates close together that I can use as a family booking. I alternate with my wife and switch to other cards (Virgin and HSBC Premier) depending on the timing and offers.

    Things that would be a good improvement:
    1. let us grab our 2for1 voucher at any point during your card year after hitting £10K. So you hit £10K and you have until the end of the year to “activate” the voucher to start the 2 year time limit. I could then keep spending without the voucher validity running out. Would save all the hassle of switching cards, swapping our PayPal account etc. i would literally cancel all but one other card (Virgin MasterCard) if this single feature was brought in. My annual BA card spend would increase by about £15-20K.

    2. I can easily hit £30K spend in a year, so what about a Gold checkin voucher and lounge access vouchers when you hit £20K or £25K? I could then take the family through Gold/First checkin with me when we are travelling only economy or business (many routes don’t even have first). Or even just a lounge access voucher for Galleries? Virgin give you vouchers when you hit 1500 tier points, but BA don’t so going much beyond Gold tier points isn’t worth it.

    As it is, my non-business travelling wife would have to earn a lot of extra tier points to hit gold to take all our family through Gold checkin. Gold isn’t worth much when you’re travelling with more than one other person who isn’t. My only air travel without business travel is with family.

    3. Free WiFi on a flight? I’m still amazed that WiFi is a £20 additional charge on a flight with an £8000 business class seat, but what about that as a freebie?

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