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

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• Nick P says:

  10 Jan10 January 10:38

  An observation, apologies if this has been posted before.

  BAEC at least rewarded loyalty with minimum flights on BA metal required, and for those flying economy there was still hope of achieving some status.

  Club comes along and it ‘pay-to-play’, with a round trip to Sydney in First with a hotel, and you’re nearly there, that’s travelling on your own obviously [no risk of points shared]. How is one round trip loyalty, and you assume that this was on BA metal!

  Other musings:

  Bravo for adding seat reservations and baggage to the eligible spend in some pretence that it could help us in achieving status. Except that is for those attempting to requalify you get both of these for free.

  Bravo for points for green [washing], limited per flight and capped at £1000. How many flights would you need to max out the allowance?

  Bravo for capping Amex spend, yet will this be the same in the USA where for those that don’t know they already get 10% off their flights and 3 Avios per $.

  Semi rant almost over … To BA [who probably read HfP] admit your hired consulting house have got it all wrong and apologise.

  Lastly please fix your hard product including ‘Brunch and Supper’. Cheese as a main course and a cookie for a desert …. really!

  You’ve lost me already, but I could come back.

• Ironside says:

  10 Jan10 January 11:18

  I haven’t seen it mentioned – and I have (honestly) looked through a wedge of the 121 pages preceeding this one – but am I right in thinking that Silver will no longer be achievable with 50 cash flights in any cabin?

  • LittleNick says:

    10 Jan10 January 11:31

    Yes I think that’s gone

  • Jonathan says:

    10 Jan10 January 12:26

    BA appear to’ve decided to retire that method of obtaining silver status

• BadOmens says:

  10 Jan10 January 11:26

  premium fare deals have found some flights that’ll instantly get you gold

  https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/premium-fare-deals/2182934-tp-run-jfk-hnd-ba-f-25-427-a.html

  Wide open availability too.

  • LittleNick says:

    10 Jan10 January 11:32

    Insane for a self funded leisure traveller!

    • George says:

      10 Jan10 January 11:53

      I’m not referring to this ridiculous example but I’m sure that for some people who actively “chase” status it would be cheaper to pay for the “free” stuff each time (apart from eg group 1 boarding which I’m not sure you can pay for)

      • JDB says:

        10 Jan10 January 12:08

        Even Group 1 boarding is a waste of time as it’s just not properly enforced and the Group 1-3 queue can be just as long as the 4-9 one. The Chinese know how to do this properly – Group 1 and you will definitely board first and your bags will come out first.

        • Clive says:

          10 Jan10 January 15:25

          And it can be faster to be in Group 4! BA has recently developed the habit of putting Groups 1-3 in one line, with Groups 4-9 alongside, then they let the head of both queues go through the gate simultaneously, so the lead people in Group 4 are ahead of 5th and 6th in the Group 1 queue. And yes, the Chinese enforce priority boarding very effectively.

      • GUWonder says:

        10 Jan10 January 13:56

        As the saying goes, a fool and their money are soon parted.

        But maybe BA is counting on the greater fool theory of selling tickets. I just don’t think there are that many fools willing to pay £25k+ out of their own pocket for BA Gold status who actually have the money to spend to do it. But all the more power to BA if the world is full of enough such fools to allow BA to stick to this post-April scheme.

        • JDB says:

          10 Jan10 January 14:37

          I think you are assuming that everyone is obsessed with status which just isn’t the case. We will probably spend just the same amount of cash with BA but probably not have any silver or higher status and that’s absolutely fine with us. It’s the same with rewards credit cards; plenty of better off people don’t have one or want to pay for a card, whatever benefits it might theoretically offer. These travel/card sites aren’t as representative as you might think.

          BA should be preserving more cachet and more value for the higher tiers and restoring gold to being difficult to earn as it was in the past when we were gold.

        • Clive says:

          10 Jan10 January 15:28

          But as the F ticket was £25,427 would that even reach Gold, as we’re not told how much of that is taxes and charges? Of my many objections to the new scheme, one major point is that it’s virtually impossible to plan ahead, as we don’t know how much tickets will cost for a given trip at some point in the future, nor how much of the headline figure won’t count towards the required total.

        • Nick P says:

          10 Jan10 January 16:12

          The fare element is $28,172 [£23K ish]

• Richie says:

  10 Jan10 January 12:00

  BTW Pam Ann on social media has picked up on this with her Sue from BA Cusstomer Services character.

  • Daniel says:

    10 Jan10 January 16:18

    Ha! I’d gone off Pam Ann but loving Sue! She embodies this thread.

• Cyril says:

  10 Jan10 January 15:56

  I was looking in business Class to Asia with Qatar, i saw for the new tier BA points chart , there is 25% difference between RBD I and D , but both are in comfort business Class . Do you know how can i see different categories of RBD when i book a flight. Thanks

• RC says:

  10 Jan10 January 16:49

  It’ll be interesting to see if the Daily Mail becomes less anti-BA once the ‘tabloid golds’ lose their status. It’s not all downsides from this move.

• GUWonder says:

  10 Jan10 January 16:55

  Delta Air Lines today had a very strong earnings report. Unfortunately, the signal this sends to BA is that you can have a strong run as a business even while walking over your loyalty program customers with spend-based elite status and devaluing the loyalty program currency.

  Don’t be surprised if the consultants and company management at BA who drove this change in elite status matters will point to Delta Air Lines as a reason to stick with the change and hope that the non-partner European airlines follow the same course as BA.

  • JDB says:

    10 Jan10 January 17:15

    Yes, I don’t think the negative financial effect on BA that some obviously hope for will materialise. The same arguments were used when BA moved to revenue based Avios earning and that’s worked out fine.

    Re other European airlines following suit, that seems quite probable. Those claiming to be actively looking at other programmes may well find they jump to one that has its own negative changes in due course. It’s a bit like changing energy supplier, the cheapest at a given moment is often just the one that has delayed increasing prices, but soon follows.

    • Londonsteve says:

      10 Jan10 January 18:12

      I’m not sure the move to revenue based collection has worked out fine. People like myself continued flying BA for the tier points, despite the fact the Avios reward had been decimated. The tier points on offer were masking the true effect of the removal of the Avios reward. It would be legitimate to conclude a reduction in Avios earned on cheaper tickets made little to no impact on bookings, but that will have been down to people being willing to accept that status was still there for the taking and BA retained their loyalty. Now the second major incentive has been taken away, the lack of Avios comes to a fore when deciding which airline to fly with.

  • Ziggy says:

    10 Jan10 January 17:16

    The problem for BA , however, is that it has absolutely no chance of replicating the Medallion program. Delta’s passenger demographic is very different to BA’s, BA has very little wiggle room when it comes to Amex + any other credit card issuers it wants to deal with, and BA’s Avios/loyalty ecosystem doesn’t come close to the ecosystem that Delta can offer.
    Add to that the fact that the UK may be walking into a full-blown recession right now, and I wouldn’t be doing too much cheering just yet if I was a BA decision maker.

    • JDB says:

      10 Jan10 January 17:35

      I don’t think it makes sense to tie these TP changes to a probable UK recession which won’t alter the impact of the changes; it’s a totally different headwind BA and many airlines and other discretionary spend companies may face. I would be much more concerned about the UK hospitality industry than BA.

      Within a European context BA/IAG has created a very powerful Avios/loyalty eco system which makes it less likely BA will go as crazy as Virgin if they did decide to move to some form of dynamic pricing. As well as the Avios earning cards which provide a valuable source of income and loyalty tie, BA has its own things like subscriptions and boost.

      Clearly nobody likes change, but if BA moved to dynamic pricing in a sensible way, it might actually work out quite well for many.

      • Throwawayname says:

        10 Jan10 January 19:02

        DL operates on a totally different scale, the Avios ecosystem isn’t even that big in Spain- basically it’s really strong in the UK but not anywhere else . OTOH, Miles and More may be generally underwhelming but it does offer credit cards in more than 20 markets.

        I think that the AFKL model is the most clever of the lot- the easy to achieve status means passengers are more likely to buy tickets in order to use their status benefits, while the miles awarded on a revenue basis result in pretty low earnings for anyone who’s not paying an arm and a leg. That then means they can maintain reasonable award availability while also getting additional income from points transfers from the likes of AMEX. Win-win-win.

        BA are trying to do the complete opposite of that. I think that it’s a huge risk because it undermines the viability of their short haul network, but we’ll see how it works out for them.

        • Gerry says:

          10 Jan10 January 19:05

          +1

          Even other airlines in the US can’t replicate what Delta is doing, despite their efforts. And they operate in the same ecosystem. The UK is a whole different animal.

        • Track says:

          13 Jan13 January 18:56

          Delta is also doing a simple thing: competitively priced First Class (business class).

          Unlike that BA does milk the bottlenecks, such as 600 quid one-way prices to Athens in Summer or ski destinations in Winter.

      • Rob says:

        10 Jan10 January 20:36

        I’ve always liked the Etihad system, where basically it operates like BA does now BUT you also see a dynamic price for flights with no standard availability. Best of both worlds.

        • LittleNick says:

          10 Jan10 January 22:14

          Isn’t that like QF as well?

        • Track says:

          13 Jan13 January 18:58

          SQ does similar, with Standard and Advanced (double) pricing.

    • GUWonder says:

      10 Jan10 January 19:24

      BA has one big trump card: it’s London Air and it dominates London. Even Delta with the NYC airports isn’t comparable to what BA has with London: massive dominance with the monied parties for the whole London area.

      • Throwawayname says:

        10 Jan10 January 20:12

        @GUWonder, the strength is also a single point of failure. If their short haul offering becomes less attractive as a result of the FFP changes, they’ll need to start cutting routes and frequencies, and then they’ll have even fewer connecting passengers on the long flights and yields will suffer further.

        • GUWonder says:

          10 Jan10 January 20:26

          It’s indeed a potential double-edged sword, but there is enough short haul demand that I doubt BA will suffer much while they replace me and others like me with people subject to paying bag fees and seat selection fees. And a lot of previous status chasers will probably pay up for CE anyway since it’s cheaper than chasing BA status.

          I am in the camp that hopes BA has given itself a very bad bloody nose with this change, but my hopes diverge from my expectations on this because of the London dynamic.

        • George says:

          10 Jan10 January 20:36

          “If their short haul offering becomes less attractive as a result of the FFP changes”

          What % of short haul customers are impacted?

        • Throwawayname says:

          10 Jan10 January 21:02

          @George, I haven’t got a clue, but it can’t be a negligible number. I’m sure that there are tens of thousands of people who travel between London and Scotland/Germany/France/Netherlands etc more than once a month for work or personal reasons, but I haven’t got a clue about the proportion of them will be actively engaged in any FFP, let alone the % holding elite status with any individual airline.

        • Phil says:

          10 Jan10 January 21:08

          It also makes them uniquely vulnerable to a downturn affecting The City

        • manarh says:

          11 Jan11 January 02:39

          Substantial reduction of short haul routes/flights from LHR could be very much worse that just eating in feeder traffic for long haul. If you don’t use LHR slots, you loose them. I wonder what the risk is that BA ends up in a negative spiral over the next decade where it gives up LHR slots it can’t use which get picked up by competitors which puts further pressure on BA capacity. No idea how real that risk is but I suppose proper competition out of LHR would be great for the UK even if BA would suffer royally.

      • Tom says:

        10 Jan10 January 20:23

        Delta’s hub is Atlanta

        • GUWonder says:

          10 Jan10 January 20:29

          Delta has multiple hubs. Even as a long time Delta frequent flyer — lifetime status with them for a reason — JFK is my primary Delta hub. And NYC is more like London than Atlanta is like London, so that is why I went with DL@NYC.

        • G says:

          10 Jan10 January 21:31

          Delta has a domestic market of 300+ million. BA is dependent on London retaining its international financial status, which, is on both relative and absolute decline. Particularly under this government.

      • Track says:

        13 Jan13 January 19:00

        Exactly, in the USA British Airways would already be subject to anti-trust investigations and regulatory action.

        NYC competition means Delta/United/AA do compete.

        BA on the other hand simply milks the bottlenecks, like summer flights to Athens etc.

• Adam says:

  10 Jan10 January 19:53

  Several pages back there was a mention of an imminent 2.5x new tier points promo for flights booked after (iirc) mid-Feb for travel after 1st April. Despite a thorough search, I can’t find any more on this topic. Has anyone else seen anything?

  • JG says:

    10 Jan10 January 20:03

    I wondered what had happened to that too. I think it was first mentioned by LadyLondon, but nothing else since then.

    • Lady London says:

      10 Jan10 January 21:18

      I think as @BA Flyer IHG Stayer pointed out, this was the early bonus scheme Rob’s article gave a small paragraph to. In which he concluded it’s also worth zilch. I saw other promotion and ran a test case and commented that as a bonus it is indeed worth zilch – not going to move the needle on behaviour but will result in a tiny extra uplift for need to choose BA, on the part of those that haven’t been thrown out of the BA status system.

      So corporate travellers again. No one else is going to choose BA even with that so-called bonus as it still results in peanuts. As Rob said.

      I feel defenestrated

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        10 Jan10 January 21:26

        Their is another offer as someone posted about it- maybe in one of the numerous other threads people have started!

        It required registration but although I registered I can’t remember the actual details of the where and when’s and howw.

      • Adam says:

        10 Jan10 January 22:56

        Ahhh, that really rubbish bonus of an entirely irrelevant number of what we believed to be new tier points? 2.5x bonus on new tier points would swing me towards BA for long-haul club / first tickets to be booked in the next three months. In the absence of that it’ll be price, product and schedule that wins the day.

        Loyalty, eh. Funny old thing.

        • LittleNick says:

          11 Jan11 January 13:00

          Yep, it’s a shame that they didn’t consider a TP bonus for premium cabins, perhaps they should have for BA holidays to retain some leisure travellers. 2x for premium economy, 3x for Club and 4x First perhaps as an idea.

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