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

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• John says:

  5 Jan5 January 21:12

  I have to say BA website is so so awful. Trying to check Avios availability is it deliberately designed to be so sh*t

  • andy says:

    5 Jan5 January 21:33

    enjoy your bronze next year

    • John says:

      6 Jan6 January 08:35

      In your dreams !

• RC says:

  5 Jan5 January 22:15

  Lots of comments still in the ‘bargaining stage’ of grief.
  I predict BA will ride it out. Not because that’s good business, but because they are arrogant enough to think that it is. The damage will be slow motion and BA has misjudged its customer base thinking its copy/paste from Delta. It isn’t: it’s poorer (but above U.K. average), and BA’s products and customer support are way below Delta.

  Now, two questions:
  Earning Avios is revenue based, tier points are, when do redemptions go dynamic. (Not if, but when?)
  Inflation is 2-4% each year. Does BA allow inflation to erode its thresholds, or is it now trapped in an inflationary threshold raising cycle? It’s a question I doubt they’ve even considered but it’s coming at them.

  • Ilou says:

    6 Jan6 January 08:14

    That’s my biggest concern personally

    I hope it’s at least 2-3 years down the line

    I tried to redeem on VA recently and couldn’t see anything below 350k !!! Non sense !!

• Lady London says:

  5 Jan5 January 22:33

  I really do wish people wouldn’t think they are cleverer than BA.

  • Danny says:

    5 Jan5 January 22:54

    Oh I dunno…BA must be a few raisins short of a fruitcake to have kept putting off IT upgrades for the umpteenth time…to only then get hacked and sued for their resulting incompetence.

  • RC says:

    5 Jan5 January 22:59

    Based on data, BA is a company that has badly misjudged.
    The world tailfins
    IT investment
    IT performance
    Choice of CEO
    Fire and rehire in Covid
    Catering/brunchgate but also the CE banding fiasco last decade
    Punctuality
    Cancellation/reliability rates
    Hot/cold commitment to Gatwick short haul
    Staffing and recruitment levels
    Customer communication
    Irrops handling
    Aircraft cleaning
    club Suite design (gap in the middle)
    Club suite embodiment process/timing
    Aircraft interior layout – galley and loos on A350
    A380 storage in Covid ‘on the cheap’ and subsequent issues
    Betting too much on 777X
    Scatter gun fleet planning and replacement cycle.
    Etc, etc, etc
    So, lots of good reasons why it’s clear many can do better than BA more cleverly – even before the current PR home goals.

  • WiseEye says:

    5 Jan5 January 23:03

    A number of us on here run businesses of comparable scale on here. Firstly, we may have insights into how businesses are/should be run from our own experiences. Secondly, not every business takes good decisions – that’s why some businesses lose market share or go under. That’s how competitors gain ground. So frankly there will be some people who are cleverer than BA on here – BA hardly have the best track record in change management or operational excellence.

    • JDB says:

      6 Jan6 January 08:06

      BA does have a good long term record on profitability/margins at a far higher level than other European legacy airlines though, so they can’t be doing it all wrong. While some will point to fortress Heathrow, others also totally dominate their hubs abd don’t have the congestion/flying hour limits issues and unlike others BA has absolutely no government support nor received covid bailouts beyond those offered to all companies.

      • sigma421 says:

        6 Jan6 January 08:12

        Everyone has a different set of cards but there is no way in hell that BA would trade LHR, fees, restrictions and all for the FRA market

      • WiseEye says:

        6 Jan6 January 08:42

        I agree that their financial performance has been good overall. Although RC lists some areas where there have been more general challenges!

        My point was really in response to Lady London’s, “ I really do wish people wouldn’t think they are cleverer than BA.” As a principle, there must be situations where people outside an organisation are smarter than those inside – or else you would never have market disruption, analysts wouldn’t issue sell notes, you wouldn’t need strategy consultants, there wouldn’t be litigation etc. Organisations come and go, win and lose, there are cycles and corporate disasters. No one should rest on their laurels and think they know best – especially in aviation which is capex heavy, margin light-ish, highly regulated and cyclical.

      • Cicero says:

        6 Jan6 January 09:29

        The other airline hubs don’t sit at one end of the most profitable route in the world. It’s nothing to do with BA management.

  • Phil says:

    6 Jan6 January 08:46

    Tunnel vision is a fairly well known business concept and has affected lots of businesses.
    Often modelling with the same closed set of assumptions or ‘outcome driven modelling’ reinforces this tunnel vision as do multi-year projects that are not reviewed during execution.

    Outsiders often get a condor view and see how things are working in practice vs the filtered view of an insider not involved at coal face.

    Example boss X believes new IT system going swimmingly when in reality support desk and frontline users have created workarounds to bugs.
    Bosses deprioritise fixes as not new features / revenue generators

    An outsider sees frontline worker apologising for system errors and / or involving colleagues to do the workaround and small delays
    The boss does not.

    The Devs make a change to add something, which inadvertantly breaks a workaround. Suddenly chaos.
    Outsider sees the staff complaining the workaround doesn’t work anymore
    Coal-face staff know the cause

    Execs see he revenue change was rolled back and demand it be re-implemented ASAP.

    Devs can do a proper fix in multiple parts of system or what will actually happen, a fudge patch as on the clock / not allowed resources and proper fix scheduled for ‘ a later date’.
    Proper fix deprioritised for revenue proj as bosses think system is going swimmingly…

    This is lived experience

• Dev says:

  6 Jan6 January 05:20

  Truth be told, status is utterly pointless when travelling with family who consist more than just a spouse. With kids added on, you get relegated to non-priority/non-lounges as you don’t have enough passes for all of them. Seat selection is the only thing that comes through …

  • Barrel for Scraping says:

    6 Jan6 January 05:32

    Some airlines have policies that allow you to take a family in usually restricted to 2 adults and a varying number of children depending on the scheme. It might be worth an article to say which schemes are family friendly. I tried ChatGPT to find the airlines that let you guest in a family but it misunderstood and gave me airlines that had family plans to pool points

    GGL lets you guest 4 people who are travelling with you into the regular BA lounges (not CCR) or two people travelling on any oneworld flight. It means giving up the CCR for that trip as you can only guest one into that. But knowing about the GGL benefit doesn’t help for people looking for alternatives.

    • Xmenlongshot says:

      6 Jan6 January 05:54

      Lufthansa Senator (Star Alliance Gold) lets you guest your wife and children into their lounges. Miles redemption for your spouse is 50% of the usual amount

    • Tim S says:

      6 Jan6 January 08:36

      I was sitting comfortably in the lounge in Male awaiting the morning flight to DOH.

      After about half an hour, a hoard of families with children in tow, presumably bound for LHR on the direct flight, in a quantity than couldn’t possibly all be booked in the premium cabin, swamped the lounge.

      the next hour was unpleasant

      So by pandering to families you upset the solo travellers on business trips (OK not very likely at MLE)

      • NorthernLass says:

        6 Jan6 January 13:10

        This is what happens when you travel in the school holidays, though. The first week in January is the worst time to be heading away from any major tourist destination.

  • The Original Nick. says:

    6 Jan6 January 08:25

    @Dev, Unless you’re GGL.

  • Davey11 says:

    6 Jan6 January 08:34

    Malaysian let kids into their First lounge at Kuala Lumpur when you’re Gold

    • Shanghaiguizi says:

      6 Jan6 January 09:05

      Platinum enrich members can also gift platinum to their spouse. So can get at least 4 into the lounge.

• Matty says:

  6 Jan6 January 09:07

  I was watching Noel Philips on YouTube last night. He was taking an Emirates flight from Edinburgh, in Business. Emirates were using the BA lounge…

  • sigma421 says:

    6 Jan6 January 09:25

    Yup – been that way since they relaunched. Since the Emirates flight is scheduled in the evening, generally a quiet time in the BA EDI lounge, I doubt there were ever going to be any capacity issues.

  • Numpty says:

    6 Jan6 January 13:02

    I’ll need to go watch, is it the same catering as for BA i.e sandwiches and crisps? not close to the Emirates standards.

    • Matty says:

      6 Jan6 January 13:52

      Same offering. I struggled to guest a friend in the BA Edinburgh lounge when we were both flying Economy in Qatar in October. Agent wanted to see the lounge invite from the Qatar check in desk. Wasn’t interested in my BA Gold card.

      • Numpty says:

        6 Jan6 January 14:02

        I had the same at Edi when flying QR in business class, lounge agent wasn’t interested in the status that would have got me in, and was showing on boarding pass, and wanted the invite card.

        We can all moan about BA, but QR wouldn’t pay for its business passengers to get fast track security at EDI (QR staff admitted this to me).

• Scott says:

  6 Jan6 January 09:12

  I still believe a lot of issues with lounges is the amount of CW and CE passengers.

  Must be well over 1000 able to access lounges based upon their tickets and that’s before a percentage of status holders on top of that

  • GUWonder says:

    6 Jan6 January 09:43

    For a twice per year regional leisure flyer, it can be much cheaper to buy a cheap Club Europe round trip or Club Europe vacation package or two than to pay up the full cost for getting Oneworld Sapphire/Emerald status by flying in the back of the flying buses. To my eyes, these kind of people seem to be a higher proportion of people in the LHR BA club lounges and outstation lounges than used to be the case 10-20 years ago. Nowadays when I see packed lounges across the world, it seems to have a heavier percentage of couples and families than used to be the case even 5 years ago. Solo business travelers and small business team travelers seem to be a smaller proportion in these lounges than used to be the case.

  • Paul says:

    6 Jan6 January 18:01

    That will not last!

• Hilda M says:

  6 Jan6 January 09:42

  Whilst we pore over every detail & scenario, meet the “low information” traveller … currently in the Sofitel Club Lounge LHR. Older British couple: F – What’s all this about the British Airways Club changing? M – I don’t know, think it’s more generous from what I’ve read 😲🤦‍♀️

  • JDB says:

    6 Jan6 January 10:09

    There are plenty of ‘low information’ premium travellers who don’t care about the system as it is today, nor will care about the new system. There are also quite a few beneficiaries of the new system. The almost 3,000 comments here are not a whole market view.

    There are a few dissenting views but since they get shot at for being BA stooges or ignorant, they are quite limited.

    • Shanghaiguizi says:

      6 Jan6 January 10:24

      My guy what planet do you live on? Almost 3,000 comments here, overwhelmingly negative. Almost 250 pages on FT, overwhelmingly negative. I want whatever you’re smoking if you honestly think this isn’t an unmitigated disaster for BA.

      We know you’re a fan. Keeps you away from the peasants and great unwashed. You’re in the minority though so pipe down.

      • Will says:

        6 Jan6 January 10:32

        Pipe down 😂
        What a world we’re living in telling minorities to pipe down.

        • Shanghaiguizi says:

          6 Jan6 January 10:34

          💀

      • Tom says:

        6 Jan6 January 10:35

        The real irony is the changes blatantly have nothing to do with ‘removing TP runners’ or ‘rewarding high spending corporate travelers with more empty lounges’, anyone who has even the most basic understanding of how airlines and loyalty businesses work can see that.

      • JDB says:

        6 Jan6 January 10:38

        Perhaps you find it surprising that the turkeys aren’t voting for Christmas? Social media has a funny way of creating much more drama than there actually is and while there may be 3,000 comments, there are far, far fewer posters and probably many duplicates with FT. People have enjoyed unduly cheaply acquired status and unsurprisingly don’t like having it taken away although they knew it was coming.

        I’m affected negatively but accept that it is a sensible business decision by BA to limit the highest rewards to their highest paying customers. They may not have gone about announcing it in a very sensible way, but that’s a different issue.

        As you are always so extraordinarily negative about BA, I can’t see how it affects you anyway.

        • Shanghaiguizi says:

          6 Jan6 January 10:44

          Fair point. My loathing of all things BA is well documented. I’m enjoying the self inflicted damage from the sidelines. Also happily nudging any former-BAEC members looking for a new home to greener OW pastures so we can collectively continue to bend BA over every opportunity we get 🤣

        • Ziggy says:

          6 Jan6 January 13:07

          You keep saying that BA now wants to “limit the highest rewards to their highest paying customers” but you keep ignoring the fact that a very significant percentage of the people who will benefit from the changes are those who bring very little revenue or profit to BA. Their companies do. That’s the bit that strikes me as the most illogical part of this move.

          I would genuinely love to see airlines move their programs to a system where it’s the person or corporation that’s paying who gets all the benefits (be that status + a redeemable currency or a boosted rebate) . That would really cull the number of people with status who contribute very little to the airline’s bottom line.

        • Scott says:

          6 Jan6 January 18:36

          You could argue that someone who flies 3 x CW for £2.5k each and gets a silver card is doing status on the cheap compared to someone buying a last minute £8k flight.

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        6 Jan6 January 10:45

        Even if these 3,000 comments were from single individuals (which clearly isn’t the case because many of the comments are replies and not a separate views) then it still doesn’t amount to much when compared to the number of people who fly BA every day.

        As has been said numerous times over the years the people that post here and on flyer talk (and other sites) do not represent all flyers and we are very much the exception rather than the rule.

        And if all you’re going to do is insult then perhaps you should be the one who needs pipe down.

      • George says:

        6 Jan6 January 10:47

        If you loathe BA why would you care about BAEC changes as you surely wouldn’t be a member anyway?

        • Shanghaiguizi says:

          6 Jan6 January 10:55

          schadenfreude George. I enjoy watching BA screw the pooch.

          I’m not going to go into the details. Neither me nor the tier points BA stole from me some years back are the story here. BA taking liberties with their loyal BAEC members very much is the story.

          There are going to be many former BAEC members looking for a new home. I’m here to proselytize about the virtues of Malaysian enrich as well as Qatar privilege club. Both of which will get former BAEC members into the same LHR BA lounges so we can collectively keep costing the BA bean counters money.

        • Throwawayname says:

          6 Jan6 January 11:03

          @George I can’t speak for anyone else, but there’s nothing strange about that. I’m not sure I quite ‘loathe’ BA, even if I do try to avoid them wherever possible (not hard to do for someone who’s not based in London), but I would certainly be delighted to see them losing [further] market share in the Midlands and North, resulting in better frequencies to more European hubs from BHX/EMA/MAN etc.

          It makes perfect sense to belong to an FFP of an airline that you dislike – you can bet that I won’t be leaving any money at IAG’s table if I can help it. Why wouldn’t I want to use the AY miles that I’d bought for a song on a cheap transatlantic business class redemption from MAD?

        • George says:

          6 Jan6 January 11:20

          “ It makes perfect sense to belong to an FFP of an airline that you dislike”

          Does it?

        • Throwawayname says:

          6 Jan6 January 11:42

          Of course it makes sense, as long as one can derive benefit from it. By the same token, I have a VS credit card and no plans to fly that airline in the foreseeable future (not due to actively disliking them but because of their sparse route network)- I use my points in AF.

        • Throwawayname says:

          6 Jan6 January 11:42

          *on AF

        • George says:

          6 Jan6 January 13:30

          How are the tier points relevant to you then?

          I have loads of avios but not many tier points

        • Throwawayname says:

          6 Jan6 January 13:43

          The changes to the tier points are only relevant to me to the extent they erode the BA market share in the regions and help create demand for their competitors to increase their UK frequencies (e.g. look at the Flyertalk comments on the new KLM route from Exeter, seems like there will be a fair few people planning to ditch LHR in favour of that).

    • Tim S says:

      7 Jan7 January 10:37

      Apart from people who might blow 25K pp on a super luxury BAH, who are the beneficiaries here?

      I can’t think of any other reasonable travel pattern where the traveller is better off under this new scheme than the old one.

      would love to know what they are?

      • Rob says:

        7 Jan7 January 10:51

        Even people blowing £25k don’t benefit unless it’s a solo trip. Remember the TP are split between ALL travellers, even kids without BA accounts. You’ve got 4 travellers getting 6,250 TP each, not one person getting 25,000.

  • meta says:

    6 Jan6 January 14:15

    This is actually great for shareholders short to medium term. Long term probably not.

    It has also been announced at the time when people couldn’t be bothered to read anything or even get engaged. Changes don’t kick in till 1 April, by that time people will have forgotten. Then they’ll be hit with changes after they have made and booked all tickets for the whole year and then Xmas 2025 and early 2026. They’ll only realise what happened when it’s too late. However from April 2026, I suspect BA revenues start reducing as people start booking away.

• GUWonder says:

  6 Jan6 January 09:47

  “The more you spend, the more you get” sounds “generous” or “fair” to those who don’t compare properly against the proper baseline to measure increased or decreased generosity from the company. So it’s not shocking that many people who don’t really have much of a focus on these things are like that older gentleman in the Sofitel LHR lounge.

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