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

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• SXPARKIN says:

  5 Jan5 January 12:40

  BA Holidays 16 page Greece Supplement in the UK Sunday Times today – on page 3 ( pushing what assuming our Leisure travellers mainly) to…. ‘Miles of Style in BA.CE…and ‘relax in the exclusive private lounge….then ‘ get settled in your supremely comfortable seat…’and enjoy a wide range of delicious food’…What amazing timing let alone choice of wording….I will comment no further.

  • Tom says:

    5 Jan5 January 13:20

    Team that bought this ad probably had zero idea the changes were coming. IAG seems comically siloed from what I understand of it.

  • Paul says:

    5 Jan5 January 13:28

    Whoever wrote that never flew club Europe to Santorini!

• Throwawayname says:

  5 Jan5 January 12:50

  Are we certain that the well-known consultancy haven’t been paid in specie for their work on the opioids?

  • Lady London says:

    5 Jan5 January 22:53

    🙂

• Paul says:

  5 Jan5 January 13:22

  It strikes me that what is coming is the unbundling of lounge access for CE and CW tickets, much like QR and AY. There is no point to continuing to offer lounge access on a CE fare if you truly want to make the lounge space less cramped. This may further disappoint those who think that they will continue to enjoy premium bells and whistles without the need to gain status.

  The refurbishment of T5 lounge complex is making use of that vast empty space between CCR and the First lounge May also be redundant.

  For me I am going to sit back and wait. I only fly premium but I am not routing my funds to BA unless there is some return.

  • Dev says:

    5 Jan5 January 13:34

    Cull the elites, unbundle the product, upsell the individual parts for more… and voila, pax have more choice and flexibility than before whilst on paper, the Individual parts of the product are worth more than sum of their total under the old system.

    That’s probably the narrative that McKinsey have sold them.

• Alexthenotsogreat says:

  5 Jan5 January 13:33

  As an update for anyone with partner flights (e.g. QR, AY) already booked for travel post-April, but not marketed by BA/IB/AA and therefore not covered by the FAQ.

  BA customer services have now confirmed to me quite explicitly that these WILL be scaled up in line with the FAQ example. As BA however doesn’t know when the ticket was booked, they said the adjustment will need to be done manually by contacting them after the flight.

  • David S says:

    5 Jan5 January 13:39

    To be met with the “our call volumes are higher than normal, please call back later”.

  • Danny says:

    5 Jan5 January 14:02

    You’ll be lucky to get it seen to within 2 months, going by how long it takes them to respond to feedback.

  • Tim S says:

    5 Jan5 January 16:45

    wow that’s gonna be a faff, isn’t it.

    Will find out in May how this works. (BA don’t fly to MNL)

  • sigma421 says:

    5 Jan5 January 19:44

    Alaska did a similar thing this year after they mucked around with their elite tiers. It requires manual retro crediting

• Greeny says:

  5 Jan5 January 14:19

  Doesn’t anyone know how many people are affected by these changes? how many gold guest, gold, silver, gold for life etc. internet says 13 million BAEC members

  • Andrew J says:

    5 Jan5 January 14:32

    BA know.

  • SBIre says:

    5 Jan5 January 14:51

    This is old but interesting https://www.headforpoints.com/2015/04/16/how-many-ba-passengers-with-status-use-terminal-5-in-a-day/

    • Garethgerry says:

      5 Jan5 January 15:15

      Very interesting,

      Reading it Rob was asking for something to be done.

      He was explicitly saying IF EVERYONE HAS PRIORITY NO ONE DOES.

      It’s taken BA 9 years to listen to him. Now everyone is moaning. Blame Rob 🤣🤣🤣

      • Tim S says:

        5 Jan5 January 16:55

        The missing figure in that article is how many people have no status (Blue BA card or no card at all).

        On the basis of 10.5M pax at T5 in a year (a figure Google gave me), there’s 28,000 per day

        if 8K have status, 20K don’t

        • Jonathan says:

          5 Jan5 January 17:38

          Is that BAEC status or does the 8500 passengers include status holders from other OW programs ?

        • Garethgerry says:

          5 Jan5 January 17:39

          That’s still a very high percentage having status.

  • GUWonder says:

    5 Jan5 January 15:54

    I would guess that it’s probably somewhere in the range of 3-8% of active BAEC accounts that have some elite status with BA.

    • GUWonder says:

      5 Jan5 January 15:58

      Probably more on the lower side of that range, even as those with higher elite status are more likely to be flying than those with lower or no elite status.

    • Greeny says:

      5 Jan5 January 18:39

      2300 people took part in a ballot in This is Money 81% felt betrayed by the changes although that was the question. It’s feels to me based on responses on here that this is a fair reflection of people feelings

      • George says:

        5 Jan5 January 20:04

        Betrayed ? By a business.

        Good god

• GUWonder says:

  5 Jan5 January 15:51

  11 months ago, NWIFlyer/Rob on FT told the site moderators and maybe forum ambassadors about him wanting to drop a “grenade” on Raffles. His intemperate attitude is part of why the forum ambassadors and moderators are today nitpicking on what Raffles/HFP says.

  Take KARFA for example; she’s been in disbelief about these changes even back when BadNewsFairy clued in the site on these chances back in September of 2024. The 2024, 2025 and 2026 deliverables as part of so-called project phoenix were already set well before the changes got publicly announced by BA during the Christmas/Hannukah holiday break. While BA will probably pull a Delta and pair back a bit to pretend as if they are responding to agitated customers, it will still be moving in the direction it already has charted well before BadNewsFairy shared the info on FT in September of 2024.

  • GUWonder says:

    5 Jan5 January 16:11

    Here is the thread Adele shut down very quickly upon the effort being made to clue the public on what was coming:

    https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/2173655-tps-become-spend-based-april-2025-unsubstantiated-time.html

    Contrary to the modetators’ speculation there, I am not BadNewsFairy, nor jetsetpensioner, nor the Hicksville (NY) posters.

    • Phil says:

      5 Jan5 January 18:44

      TBF I think BadNewsFairy had 1 or 2 post count so a brand new user turning up and posting a massive bombshell is more than likely going to trigger a troll alert and be capped off.

      I don’t know the politics over at FT as dip in and out but that would be my take if saw it and no follow-ups

      • Gerry says:

        5 Jan5 January 19:09

        I do find it odd, so many random threads on random topics on FT (which I thoroughly enjoy) – at worst, they get merged into existing threads with speculation about potential changes…

        Won’t be surprised if this was killed by mods due to pressure from BA, as it was spot on, and months before public announcement of these changes by BA.

        • Phil says:

          5 Jan5 January 19:26

          But are they done by a new / 2 post user?

          Again that is why some benefit of doubt should be exercised maybe.

      • Lady London says:

        5 Jan5 January 22:37

        So if *you* were privy to confidential discussions at BA and you leaked them to Flyertalk, would *you* seriously use your existing real longstanding wellknown username?

        No, you’d create a new username and probably even do it from someone else’s computer as well or via a VPN. Despite the being-perceived-as-troll-risk.

        • Phil says:

          6 Jan6 January 07:16

          Nobody is saying they’d do it from a traceable acc but on the balance of probabilities if a new acc appears and posts something likely to be cause panic / lots of chatter in their first post 9/10 it is a troll.

          Done moderation for professional forum for a while and you’d be surprised how many times sock puppet accounts, etc… are created by bored individuals.
          I binned off being a moderator simply because its voluntary and pretty thankless task

          As say don’t know the internal politics or profess to know more than these simple facts – bored people chuck contraversial stuff out with burner accounts.

  • Rob says:

    5 Jan5 January 17:55

    I have a lot of time for Flyertalk team who do an exceptionally difficult job for no reward and not a huge amount of gratitude. Any criticism of FT mods on here will be deleted.

    It’s a complex relationship not helped by the fact that I post stuff over there which I would not post on here, because I can post over there as a private individual whilst anything I say on here would be taken as ‘the official HfP line’ which it often isn’t.

    I hope it is fair to say that we all share a desire for BA to operate as a world class airline and our different platforms allow us to nudge them towards that in different but complementary ways.

  • Ollie says:

    6 Jan6 January 02:31

    I find the sequence of events fascinating and am half-minded to run a AI-based analysis of writing style to try and see who BadNewsFairy is, just for personal interest. It is obviously an account created just for the purpose of delivering this “bad news”, and is clearly informed enough to know that KARFA is a “she” – something I did not clock for a while.

    • GUWonder says:

      6 Jan6 January 09:32

      “Lingo tells” aren’t all that reliable, even as some try to use it to identify others and do get lucky with that at times. Whether BadNewsFairy knows the gender of some of the people interacted with on FT, I don’t see that in BNF’s posts. That said, there are lots of closet BA employees and former BA employees on the FT BA board and many have some history of hanging out or running into others from the same board and shooting the breeze about other FTers. It’s been rather amusing what you sometimes hear in the CCR for example when some FT BA personalities have had their get togethers there.

      Speaking of which, it seems like the current and former BA employees with BA elite status are also mostly not fans of this change which will make their lounge raids less common, way more expensive, and/or less “posh”.

    • GUWonder says:

      6 Jan6 January 10:50

      Now there is someone positing as Phoenixed there:

      https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/members/phoenixed.html

      Two interesting posts there from a new account, one basically saying this change is McKinsey and BA’s doing more than IAG’s doing.

• Roberto says:

  5 Jan5 January 16:45

  In the Iberia in-flight magazine you can find the following sentences

  Happy 2025!

  We’re starting the new year full of ambition. We are going to add eight long-haul aircraft to our fleet, which will allow us to reinforce some of our current routes and open up new destinations. We will also see some interesting changes to our loyalty programme and to the MadridBarcelona Air Shuttle. And we will be deploying many other developments over the coming months.

  ronda.iberia.com/issues/jan-feb-2025/staff-

• Nico says:

  5 Jan5 January 16:55

  Makes sense for iberia to move to revenue based also, if thresholds are the same wont have many status holders…

  • GUWonder says:

    5 Jan5 January 17:07

    Of course. BA/IAG will be interested in shutting down arbitrage opportunities as much as they can. BA literally wants fewer “free” lounge-using BA passengers at its lounges and at contract lounges. Contract lounges have tried to substantially increase the fixed monthly and variable usage fees, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is part of the drive for these changes. And it would be an issue for Iberia too.

    • Nico says:

      5 Jan5 January 17:10

      I was thinking the same on contract lounges, and it has not been discussed much.
      Also when people say, we can then have status with an other one world airline, BA gets paid then for the lounge, also better for them then, no?

      • GUWonder says:

        5 Jan5 January 17:31

        One contract lounge dealing with a major airline wanted to hike its contracted monthly minimum business commitment raised from something like $10k-12k per month from the airline to $20k-$24k per month from the airline. [I use dollars but the currency was actually denominated in a European currency.] And this was at an outstation where it was all about the trying to run up revenues/profits at the expense of the airlines.

      • GUWonder says:

        5 Jan5 January 17:33

        The operating airline is more typically the one paying for the lounge access even when a guest’s entitlement to lounge use comes from a partner airline program elite status.

        • LittleNick says:

          5 Jan5 January 18:48

          Does the operating carrier not charge the partner airline reward programme like it would as if it were it’s own lounge?

        • Matty says:

          5 Jan5 January 19:34

          I thought about this recently. Last month I was in Hong Kong twice. HKG to Taipei on Cathay in Economy. Used my BA Gold status to get into The Pier First Class lounge. Later, with Qatar in Business Lite, HKG-DOH, I used my BA status to access the same lounge again.

          Cathay would pay, I assume, for the Taipei flight (or maybe BA) but wasn’t sure would pay for the Hong Kong to Doha flight. BA or Qatar?

        • Nico says:

          5 Jan5 January 20:47

          Would have thought the opposite, not with any real data

        • Dubious says:

          6 Jan6 January 10:26

          In StarAlliance, many years ago, the principal was that the airline gained the passenger in part thanks to the frequent flyer status (and the benefits it confers). Thus the airline benefited from the frequent flyer program and was the one to pay for the lounge visit.

          I am not sure but have a feeling this only related to the first lounge the passenger visited at that airport (during that trip), and changed if they lounge-hopped.

        • Dubious says:

          6 Jan6 January 10:26

          (and of course, the procedure might be different in OneWorld)

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