BIG NEWS: BA moves to revenue-based tier status for Bronze, Silver, Gold and Gold Guest List

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• Roger Grey says:

  4 Jan4 January 16:15

  At least it will be ok for HFP – after all, it’s the company executives that you pander to. A mere leisure traveller who earns his Avios through BA, Barclaycard/Amex and Sainsbury’s doesn’t even feature on your horizon. I’ve always said that BA Executive Club is totally useless for me; HFP will now be the same. Kindly stop sending me the weekly digest.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    4 Jan4 January 18:02

    I don’t think HfP panders to anyone let alone ‘company executives’

    if you think HfP is useless to you then that’s your perogative.

    If you want to unsubscribe from the emails then do that properly and not via a comment that Rob and Rhys are unlikely to see.

  • stevenhp1987 says:

    4 Jan4 January 18:11

    As a leisure traveller I would disagree with this.

    HfP is extremely useful and the examples you state (Barclaycard/Amex and Nectar) are regularly featured here.

  • Mike says:

    4 Jan4 January 19:06

    Roger, you sound like an angry BA exec troll, furiously typing with one hand while knocking back a large glass of cheap Sauvignon from the Wine Flyer with the other. 🤣

  • Tilly71 says:

    4 Jan4 January 19:33

    @RogerGrey
    So you earn loyalty points to use on BA earnt outside of flying actual BA and you think it’s useless?

  • patrick says:

    4 Jan4 January 21:50

    Why is this person here and why is he/she/they making random requests directed at no one? Has drink been taken?

  • Bedminster Girl says:

    7 Jan7 January 00:05

    I too am a mere leisure traveller earning my Avios in the same way, and have done very well. HFP has been useful in many ways, and the time and effort put into the digests and spread sheets have been much appreciated. HFP will evolve and continue to be useful to many people. Thank you.

• CJ Glass says:

  4 Jan4 January 16:38

  Having read some of the comments on here now understand why BA has made this decision, and it doesn’t bother me at all. I never saw points as a game, just a perk. It remains a perk. Useful, but not really necessary.

  • Danny says:

    4 Jan4 January 17:32

    Yes and this shows BA has lost you. They want you to feel excited to be part of their Avios ecosystem… But you aren’t… Because the way it has now evolved means status isn’t particularly achievable… While the benefits of status have been eroded as well, meaning it isn’t worth the effort to chase it now anyway.

• Garethgerry says:

  4 Jan4 January 16:42

  As hotels mainly charge per room .

  On a BAH holiday , can the lead person book say a double room for themselves one that a that can be occupied by 2 people , and get all points. The partner books flight separately. Then sort it out at hotel

  Similarly for family, book a 2 room suite for themselves, both other flights independently.

  • LarryFlyer says:

    4 Jan4 January 16:50

    Yes.

    • Phil says:

      4 Jan4 January 16:56

      Does this carry any IROPS risk as the passengers are on different booking refs? E.g one might get moved a cabin (up, or down!) or removed entirely from a flight etc. basically, not be treated as a party.

      • LittleNick says:

        4 Jan4 January 18:00

        Yes there’s risk to it but probably worth it if that was my approach

      • JDB says:

        4 Jan4 January 18:02

        Yes, that’s always a risk on separate bookings even if there is a TCP indicator.

  • Tilly71 says:

    4 Jan4 January 19:37

    Potentially yes, but lots of potential issues could arise from booking separately. If you and your partner/family are happy to be split up on the same plane. You may/will have to pay additional fees to the hotel once family are added especially if you booked AL inclusive. All this just get a few perks most come free flying Business class anyway.

• Dace says:

  4 Jan4 January 18:51

  I think the comment section here shows to some degree why BA have done this. Simply put, too many people became status holders and in turn, it reached a stage where ‘when everyone has status, no-one has status’.

  Of course, BA encouraged people to become status holders/TP Runners with their various schemes/offers. However, let’s be frank. They were struggling to cope at the publicity of such articles as ‘£3k BA Gold Card’ – along with other various bloggers/influencers etc, was diluting both the brand and the product.

  Of course, they’ve gone ‘hardcore’ on the jump, which quite frankly is insane from a PR perspective – unless the idea is ‘no publicity is bad publicity’/they think this sends a clear message that BA Gold moving forward.

  But let’s be real, £3k Gold in 2025 was/is ludicrous and a serious jump was always on the cards.

  • FlyingTayto says:

    4 Jan4 January 19:03

    Those £3k Golds are partly their own fault by extending the Double Tier points for BA Holidays.

  • Ziggy says:

    4 Jan4 January 19:03

    If BA really cared about too many people having status, they wouldn’t have introduced (and renewed on multiple occasions) the 2x Tier Points offer on BA Holidays. They coild see what that was doing to the status holder numbers.

    If BA really cared about a situation arising where if everyone has status no one has status, every single BA outstation wouldn’t just have a single check-in line for CC
    GGL/Gold/Silver/Bronze. They’d be told to care about the higher tier(s).

    • Roy says:

      6 Jan6 January 15:47

      Flying back from IAD today, they were using two adjacent gates, with separate queues and desks for Group 1, Group 2, Group 3, Groups 4-6 and Groups 7-9.

      And a very confusing, quickly spoken announcement when boarding commenced: “Groups 1, 2, 4-6, 3 and 7-9 will be boarding from separate gates. Please see the signs”. (Yes, they read it out in that bizarre order, based on the way the queues were physically laid out).

  • Tilly71 says:

    4 Jan4 January 19:40

    I think even the daily mail published an article on how to get BA gold for less than 3K. That’s when you know it won’t be around for long

    • Rob says:

      4 Jan4 January 19:56

      One thing worth remembering is that people who ‘bought’ status via some route were clearly not flying enough to earn it directly. QED, they are not a major contributor of overcrowding or anything else. They do it because they want an easier life on the few trips that they do take, but if you apportion what they spent to get the status over each trip it is probably a decent slug of cash.

      Let’s take an extreme example. Someone gets Gold for £3k (£3k spent on flights that would not otherwise be taken) and times it to get the maximum 3 years of Gold and Silver out of it. This person flies BA once a month in economy over those three years.

      They’ve basically ‘paid’ £42 per sector for the benefits of status. BA is still making money on this basis. If the person would not have flown those 72 sectors on BA at all, BA has made a LOT of money from this deal.

      Anyone flying twice per month would earn Silver based on sectors so people CAN’T be using their status much more than this, otherwise there would have been any need to ‘buy’ it.

      • Ollie says:

        5 Jan5 January 05:13

        By the way QED = Quod Erat Demonstrandum i.e. that which *was* to be demonstrated, to indicate the completeness of an argument at the end. It doesn’t really make sense in the middle of an argument. “Ergo” would probably make more sense here.
        Q.E.D.
        (sorry!)

      • Roy says:

        6 Jan6 January 15:54

        £3,000 of revenue, not profit. It will be a lot less than £42 per segment because that £3,000 also has to pay for the actual fights that were taken to achieve status!

        • Rob says:

          6 Jan6 January 16:15

          Has to pay the marginal cost (since the flight would not otherwise take place) which is low.

        • Roy says:

          6 Jan6 January 16:30

          Not just the marginal cost (fuel, APD, etc). Also need to discount that additional revenue by the probability that that seat would have been sold to someone else if not to the TP runner – which should be a non-zero probability if their yield management is half decent.

  • Throwawayname says:

    4 Jan4 January 19:50

    Forget about giving status too easily. As I wrote in a previous comment, they literally sold me (not even a BAEC member) an upgrade to business ex-LHR for £40.

    An one-time entry to the BHX Clubrooms is more than that, and obviously doesn’t give you anything on the actual plane.

    Of course the lounge was overcrowded and generally rubbish, I got what I paid for!

  • Dave Winch says:

    4 Jan4 January 19:59

    But the point that both you and BA seem to be missing is that even those who spent 3k to get Gold (who were a tiny minority), then continued to pay over the odds and put up with substandard BA service as a result for a load of other flights. If they didn’t then the cost the airline virtually nothing, as they weren’t using the benefits…

    They were also likely to be the most loyal advocates for the brand, likely to defend the shortcomings on everything from cleaning to brunch.

    At a stroke BA has alienated 95% of them. Smart marketing.

    • Andrew J says:

      4 Jan4 January 20:43

      Exactly this.

• Gerry says:

  4 Jan4 January 20:31

  And obviously, if BA thought status became too easy, it could’ve increased TP threshold for Gold to 2000 TPs with minimum 10 flights on BA metal or sth like this – which could be sold as an increase due to inflation… Not rip the whole program apart.

  Again, I want to stress that 1500 TPs for Gold hasn’t been static. Flights earning the same number of TPs have become more expensive, POUG/AUPs more expensive, introduction of 5 TP fares in economy, removal of 210 TPs for the babybus LCY-JFK (when it still existed…).

  Anyone here remembers that if members based in continental Europe for many years had a long threshold for BA Gold (1200 TPs or sth like this…).

  • Gerry says:

    4 Jan4 January 20:31

    *lower threshold

  • Davey11 says:

    4 Jan4 January 20:35

    That’s far too simple a suggestion, not many billable hours for the consultancy firms in that

  • Throwawayname says:

    4 Jan4 January 20:52

    800 rings a bell (I looked into it when I was considering my options after CSA cut UK flights and before I decided to double down on *A).

• Fraser says:

  4 Jan4 January 20:47

  As a relatively new Silver BA member who fly’s alot for business to Asia and USA.
  I’m trying to figure out if it would be better to take up membership with Qatar or stick with BA.

  I can earn gold status with Qatar no problem.
  But the new BA threshold means it’s totally unattainable.

  Does Gold Qatar status (Oneworld) gain you the same perks and access to the lounges in the UK and USA?

  Any help would be great

  • yonasl says:

    5 Jan5 January 09:20

    That’s correct. You simply lose the BA specific perks such as guaranteed last minute seat or being bale to book any flight with avios paying double the price. But you get the same OneWorld perks.

  • Tim S says:

    5 Jan5 January 15:43

    The problem with switching allegiance is that, unless I misunderstand, you can’t accrue on the new card whilst taking the benefits of the old card. The card number that you attach to the booking is the card number that they check when you turn up at the desk/lounge.

    So you’ll have a year with no status.

    QR Gold = BA Silver, a quick read shows that the perks are the same, but it isn’t BA Gold.

    • Clive says:

      5 Jan5 January 19:00

      I agree with Tim that switching does present the problem of building up status with the new airline, which sadly means that my final Gold year will be wasted. I haven’t yet decided between QR/OW, SkyTeam or Star Alliance. I’m waiting for Rob’s next offerings, and whether there will be a better status match with SkyTeam than the current offer, which is expensive.

• Garethgerry says:

  4 Jan4 January 22:39

  Teir points have become just to easy. Earning Teir points on other airlines of no benefit to BA, even if it doesn’t cost them.

  I don’t know what the cost both fixed plus marginal per lounge visit is, but it’s not zero. Assume it’s similar to a pay lounge, so many visits loose Ba money

  Never mind what is said, it only makes sense for BA to let either people on business fares in the lounge. Or people who have spent £7500 minimum mainly on business fares getting the occasional “complimentary” visit when flying economy.

  Gold for £3k if its to be believed , was a big mistake by BA, I don’t understand it, panic after covid. All things come to an end, just accept it.

  Lower thresholds for non UK residents was equally annoying and unfair.

  If they had stopped all the double TPs, reduced TPs on the 160 TP club Europe which people exploited, these never were that high historically. If theyd Increased thresholds. Differentiated CW and CE between fully flexible and cheaper fares. Result would be same.

  They had to do something, which lots wouldn’t have liked, what ever it was.

  • Clive says:

    4 Jan4 January 22:49

    Whatever they might have done, I’m sure that you are right in saying that lots wouldn’t like it. But it’s still a major achievement to alienate quite so many former loyal members – to whatever extent – not only by what they have done, but also by the way they have done it. Just take two points (of many): some of us had already made bookings post 01 Apr 25 on the rules applying at the time; and we simply can’t calculate accurately how many TPs we will earn under the new scheme. Not a sensible way to treat customers in a highly competitive industry.

    • chris says:

      5 Jan5 January 04:42

      bingo. well said
      downright insulting….”as your needs evolve”….”recognize your loyalty”…”to celebrate” — if language like that in not gaslighting, nothing is.

    • JDB says:

      5 Jan5 January 07:07

      They weren’t really ‘loyal’ though, were they? Scraping to gold for £3k was just a cheap commercial transaction, nothing to do with ‘loyalty’. It was ridiculous, partly because too many took advantage and then overused the faux status, meaning status was hopelessly devalued so those who were actually loyal and/or spending the big money were rightly very cheesed off.

      • Rich says:

        5 Jan5 January 09:27

        It’s exactly this point – if they got any member feedback as claimed it surely would have been the trashing of Gold in the national press by the bloke who bragged about achieving it for £3k.

        Although let’s face it, most readers would have read the itinerary and lengths he went to and thought he was a tad weird.

    • Garethgerry says:

      5 Jan5 January 10:25

      Yes you can if booked before this was announced, multiply old teir points by 13.3333

      • Clive says:

        5 Jan5 January 19:04

        Yes Gary, but I’d only booked two of the flights needed to retain Gold, with outline plans for the others – which would have involved spending far more than £3K, but far less that £20+K – and again, I can’t predict now what flight princes might be in Jun, so can’t plan with any precision.

  • Gerry says:

    4 Jan4 January 23:42

    Gold for £3k is unrealistic and a completely made up number.

    • babyg_wc says:

      4 Jan4 January 23:57

      How to achieve gold for 3k has been blogged about multiple times and published in main stream papers..

      • Rob says:

        5 Jan5 January 04:51

        A five night Asian holiday in Qatar business class (booked as a BA codeshare) is 560 x 2 = 1,120 tier points. You’re within touching distance for £2,500 during a sale.

        Even doing it the boring way, it is 10 weekend breaks to Club Europe destinations earning 160 tier points return – or 5 if booked via BA Holidays with a 5-night stay in each.

  • Jay says:

    5 Jan5 January 00:25

    Gold for £3k was also UL help, who sold AUH/DXB-CGK 560TP flights for £5xx. Some AA US routes to add.
    BAH double points promo gived also helping hand but not normal rates to/from OTP and SOF or any other 160TP roundtrip destination.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    5 Jan5 January 02:13

    £3k gold tier runs are a thing and happened well before Covid. Though perhaps costing a little bit more these days.

    But the construction of them was such that they were really for hard core flyers only and were hardly relaxing due to various fare rules that had to be met.

    The numbers of people doing such runs from somewhere in Europe to Hawaii via 3 intermediate stops and back again really are a minute number.

    Last summer I got 700 for around £ 1,800. I didn’t do it just for the TPs but because it was half the price to fly ARN-HEL-LHR-DFW-SFO-JFK-LHR-HEL-ARN than it was to fly LHR-SFO-LHR. I happen to like flying and had the time to do it but it was BAs pricing that permits such routings.

    • NorthernLass says:

      5 Jan5 January 10:05

      I (unapologetically) got gold for a smidgeon over £3k) with 3 BAH bookings last year. They were the kind of trips I take anyway, e.g. family trip to Spain and Portugal, long weekend in Athens, nothing convoluted about them. The only element of manipulation, if you like, was picking the cheapest travel dates which BA readily advertises on its website. Yes I would probably not have achieved this without the double TPs but they were entirely the kind of trips thousands of BA customers book and take all the time.

  • Tim S says:

    5 Jan5 January 15:48

    Of course points on partner airlines are of value to BA.

    If I can’t accrue points on my OW card when flying QR/CX/QA to Asian destinations that BA don’t reach, I am never going to get enough TP to reach silver. (I assure you, I wont)

    So I have no incentive to put all my travel with OW and will likely choose an alternative airline when flying to USA.

  • Ziggy says:

    5 Jan5 January 21:08

    “Earning Teir points on other airlines of no benefit to BA, even if it doesn’t cost them.”

    For travel between Europe and Japan, British Airways is in a joint business agreement with JAL, Finnair and Iberia.

    For travel across the Atlantic, British Airways is in a joint business agreement with AA, Finnair, Aer Lingus and Iberia.

    For travel through Doha and on into Asia, British Airways is in a joint business agreement with Qatar Airways.

    With all of that in mind, I have two questions:

    1) Are you suggesting that that everybody BA is effectively cutting out of the Executive Club is spending most of their money with (and earning most their Tier Points through) Cathay, Qantas, Alaska Airlines and Malaysia Airlines, or …

    2) Did you not realise that when you book a fare with a lot of BA’s partners you’re often giving BA money even if it seems like BA has nothing to do with the booking.

• Dino says:

  4 Jan4 January 23:54

  As many people have said, Gold is no longer something most people can aspire to. People will get it through company paid for flights or very high end leisure travellers for whom money is not really an object.
  BA clearly wants to reduce the no. of gold card holders in particular with the new tier levels.

  Corporates choose BA because of its network from London and desire for direct flights. Product doesn’t need to be the best to win business on this basis. Equally, I see little reason for BA to significantly improve the product. On the North American routes they aren’t much worse than the alternatives and they are never going to compete with the ME carriers for product. The ME carriers will receive government funding to do whatever is required to compete. BA’s competitive advantage will be shorter journey times, regardless of product.

  This is a cost cutting exercise and nothing else really. I doubt BA expects future Gold members to book materially more and similarly, with the gold tier so high, those who no longer qualify are not going to spend to pursue it. Those ex Gold who now decide to go for silver will probably get the 2.5k tier points from BA Amex, so not a huge uplift for BA on what they would have spent previously. £3k for BA Gold may have been achievable, but i suspect most current gold members spent more and closer to £5k or so, which with the new BA Amex tier points would be what is required for the new BA silver.

  • Throwawayname says:

    5 Jan5 January 00:34

    The question is whether/how much of their long haul network can be sustained by a mixture of those people and connecting passengers who, absent a decent FFP, are only going to be choosing them if they’re the absolute cheapest option (product is mediocre at best, reliability isn’t exactly amazing, there’s obviously nothing convenient about connecting at LHR…).

  • Paul says:

    5 Jan5 January 00:34

    Every time the ME3 players are mentioned it is always followed by “they get government support” Well that may be true but so does BA in the form of its revenue sharing alliances with, IB, AY, JL and above all AA! So to does VS with its strategic tie up with DL. While these legalised cartels may not be direct financial assistance they are anti competitive. They have seen collusion on schedules, pricing and even see routes abandoned. HEL for one but recently routes to the USA. DL dropped LAX and BA have dropped routes and flights. These alliances are not in the public interest as there is simply no requirement to compete. Fares have soared across the board. In one example I saw today BA were charging £595 one way to Athens in early June. The return CE fare was almost £1200. For an economy seat and lousy catering!

    • Throwawayname says:

      5 Jan5 January 01:06

      Who’s paying that sort of money? I’m not the biggest fan of Lufthansa, but they can definitely get you to Greece and back from your local airport (LCY for those in London) for less than £500 in business class.

      • Tom says:

        5 Jan5 January 05:01

        Many people, myself included, would be unwilling to take an unnecessary connection on Lufthansa on what should be a 3 and half to 4 hour flight – BA know this and price accordingly. My second choice after BA to a Greek island would probably be EasyJet, not almost doubling the length of the journey.

        • Tom says:

          5 Jan5 January 05:03

          I mean length in terms of time, no KM, obviously.

        • Rob says:

          5 Jan5 January 05:34

          I did three one-stop connections on Lufthansa and Austrian before Christmas to hit the 6 segments I needed to keep my Lufthansa Senator status. All three trips could have been doing direct. One was ok, one was a disaster (missed connection, arrived 4 hours late), one was delayed and involved Austrian meeting me with a car at Vienna Airport and chauffering me across the tarmac to my connection via a pitstop to see an immigration official.

        • Xmenlongshot says:

          5 Jan5 January 08:02

          I was looking at flights around then for a family of four. I ended up going for Lufthansa at £2k return in business which would have been the Economy price with both BA but also Aegean. Business for the latter two was between £4-5k total. I can see how people prefer to go direct but two extra hours each way for the sake of £2k seemed ok

        • Throwawayname says:

          5 Jan5 January 12:46

          I get the thing about the length of the journey, but it only really applies to high frequency routes. If you want to fly LHR-ATH, you could even go standby (Aegean definitely allow it on the higher fares), so there’s definitely value in that (at least assuming that you don’t have to spend extra time getting to LHR vs your local airport).

          However, basically every UK flight to Greece that doesn’t go to ATH isn’t even daily. Taking a 15:00 departure (because there’s no other choice on that day) means losing (most of) a day’s holiday to it and, with the 2-hour difference, not getting there until late in the evening. Having to leave at 13:00 instead doesn’t make such a huge difference. To take a more extreme example, overnight connections are despised by most everyone, but you can leverage them so that you can make the most of the day of departure and then land on the island in the morning…and, even after paying for an airport hotel, you should have a lot of change out of the £500 premium apparently charged for the ‘convenience’ of having to dedicate a day to getting there.

          (As usual , things are more complicated for anyone travelling with small children, mobility issues etc)

      • Throwawayname says:

        5 Jan5 January 12:18

        Wow, Rob, you’ve been exceptionally unlucky. I fly with them more often than I would like and cannot even remember the last time I missed a connection (definitely haven’t had any since the pandemic).

        Luggage has also been great, there was only one single time that I had a delay with them…in 1997 (though Brussels Airlines did delay my luggage a couple of times in recent years)! Admittedly I try to avoid the 35-50 minute connections that are sometimes suggested for VIE/ZRH, but the reliability and my familiarity with the hub airports help me minimise downtime (e.g. by setting up Teams meetings for when I know I will be in the lounge etc).

    • JDB says:

      5 Jan5 January 08:16

      @Paul – I’m not sure how you can draw any similarities between direct and indirect subsidies received by ME airlines who also enjoy 24 hour airports, endless capacity and good weather at their bases, cheap non unionised labour, no historic pension liabilities etc vs the JV alliances. I don’t know why you cite Athens as a high fare route when it’s not anyway part of one of these agreements. It has been a super popular route since I worked there 40+ years ago, unsurprisingly as a tourist destination but there’s also a large Greek diaspora in the UK. It’s always been expensive and Olympic still went bust. It’s a super competitive route with plenty of operators. That’s the market price and isn’t high by recent standards. You will find popular routes like Nice have similar fare structures.

      You really ought to examine what it actually means to be a European legacy carrier and the burdens placed on them. For subsidies think also US airlines and their super uncompetitive domestic flight system that generates huge cash. European legacy carriers are under attack from both sides.

      • Tom says:

        5 Jan5 January 09:05

        “ European legacy carriers are under attack from both sides.”

        Yep, which is why the way this change has been made in such a way as to push away so many existing customers to those competitors is monumentally stupid.

        • JDB says:

          5 Jan5 January 09:52

          I don’t think you will find they end up pushing away as much business as all the hysteria might suggest (there was almost as much fuss re the move to revenue based Avios earning and how that would kill the business) and there are plenty of beneficiaries who obviously aren’t making so much noise.

          The calmer more considered views will filter through.

      • George says:

        5 Jan5 January 10:36

        “European legacy carriers are under attack from both sides.”

        So BA are struggling financially? There’s nothing to suggest that. They’re doing quite well in fact

        • JDB says:

          5 Jan5 January 10:53

          IAG is doing well but is preparing for tougher times and doesn’t have the financial flexibility to offer the sorts of luxuries many wish for and they are doing particularly well by virtue of shortage of aircraft and high loads. Financials are not as good at other airlines – SAS just emerged from bankruptcy as did ITA. AF/KL – hmm. LH margins very poor. TAP recovering but has to be sold. It’s a really tough world for these carriers if you dig around the financial reports.

    • Track says:

      5 Jan5 January 16:44

      Athens summer pricing £595 for one-way Economy even (not CE) became a standard.

      Almost like BA cottoned up to Virgin Voyages cruise departures and pricing accordingly…

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