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

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• Richard E says:

  17 Jan17 January 15:43

  New story in the “top stories” part of the FT, posted one hour ago:
  Virgin Atlantic targets BA frequent flyers after loyalty scheme changes
  Airline angered many customers after announcing controversial shake-up to its executive club points system…”
  Sorry if already posted.

  • Rhys says:

    17 Jan17 January 15:53

    At the very bottom: “BA has been contacted for comment.” I’m sure they’ll love that!

    • JDB says:

      17 Jan17 January 19:12

      Just looked at the article. That line about BA has been replaced, presumably after they did respond.

      “BA said status matching was common practice in the travel industry. “Our customers who opt into those of other airlines retain their status with us and continue enjoying the benefits we offer such as lounge access and priority boarding, seat selection and bonus Avios.”

      • Phil says:

        17 Jan17 January 19:43

        That’s because you cannot just close your BAEC account. They keep it inactive and will not delete it without lots of hoop jumping

      • RC says:

        17 Jan17 January 21:09

        In PR terms that’s a very defensive statement.
        It seems BA are just not very good at this.

  • Adam says:

    17 Jan17 January 15:59

    Reported in Gulf News as well. This was a nice quote:

    ““Our Flying Club status match makes it easy for customers who are not feeling the love from their existing airline to experience the award-winning hospitality of Virgin Atlantic,” said Anthony Woodman, the vice-president for Flying Club, in a statement.”

    I’m not feeling the love because of a running argument about whether an F flight qualified for F tier points or not, even though I was told it did. The indifference, is what I’m feeling.

    • GUWonder says:

      17 Jan17 January 16:08

      Emirates is looking to pick up quite a lucrative chunk of the BA elites turned off by these BA changes. But they don’t seem inclined to think they need to up their frequent flyer program game to do that. The question to be answered is does any airline really think it needs to up its frequent flyer program game to win over the section of current BA elites being alienated by the BA status qualification changes.

      • Adam says:

        17 Jan17 January 16:14

        Emirates’ FF programme always used to be pretty good. I was Platinum for a while and very much enjoyed the pampering and the S-class airport collections / drop-off both ends of a flight. I abandoned them when they increased their upgrade price from (I think) 20k miles to something like 40 or 60. Still, being able to easily upgrade with points in the (excellent) lounges made it a very compelling proposition.

      • Tom says:

        17 Jan17 January 17:55

        I am Emirates Platinum and also BA Gold Guest List. The onboard treatment I get as Emirates Platinum in First is far better than BA Gold Guest List in First these days. I’m not sure the newest generation of crew at BA even know or care what the loyalty program is, they are quite happy to ignore taking meal choices in order of status, etc.

        Skywards is not the best frequent flyer programme, but it doesn’t need to be. Once you’ve tried Emirates First to Dubai instead of BA, there is no going back, sadly.

        • Phil says:

          17 Jan17 January 18:46

          Its the shower option on A380 and the ridiculous attention to detail.
          Just blows everything else out of the water

          Even the takeaway chocolates before disembark

      • Tom says:

        17 Jan17 January 19:12

        P.S., if Emirates really wanted to shaft BA, I would suggest now would be the best possible time for them to look again at relaunching a UK credit card. Huge numbers of high earning professionals in the UK have historically been locked into BA/BAEC partly because of earning the companion voucher on the BA Amex, if Emirates came up with a decent proposition I’m sure there are a lot of attractive customers to be picked off right now.

        • JDB says:

          17 Jan17 January 19:14

          Any new products are welcome, but just how many people in the UK would actually want an Emirates card unless it had some absurdly attractive benefits which seems improbable?

        • Tom says:

          17 Jan17 January 19:21

          Emirates already operates almost 130 long-haul flights a week to the UK, the overwhelming majority of which are on A380s, I’ll let you do the maths on how many potential customers that is.

          P.S., congrats on responding so quickly, JDB, do you have some sort of screen set up for posts critical of BA or something?

        • RC says:

          17 Jan17 January 21:40

          Unlike @JDB, for the unblinkered by the corporate arrogance of BA without any fact checking, the. if you consider that (by seat count) their ex UK long haul operation is nearly half the size of BA that would make sense.
          If I was at Amex UK it’d definitely be looking to diversify my offer now BA has gone toxic in much of the press. I suspect Amex are already using such a threat to change the balance of terms between themselves and BA/IAGL

        • JDB says:

          17 Jan17 January 22:26

          @Tom – I’m not sure you can really extrapolate much from passenger numbers to gauge the appetite for what is a tiny market in the UK for paid (and it would need to be a paid card) loyalty reward credit cards and even the BAPP which has been around for 25 years and backed by Amex, with big benefits and sign up bonuses has remarkably few cardholders. Virgin even fewer. The UK is a pretty tough market for these cards and who knows whether EK will launch a card but if they do it’s unlikely to be as a response to this saga. How could EK make money out of a UK card? Do you think the appetite for the BAPP will be notably diminished in the next 12-18 months?

      • CJD says:

        18 Jan18 January 07:47

        Emirates don’t need to up their frequent flyer program because they clearly believe the actual product they’re selling is good enough that customers don’t need any incentive to fly with them.

    • NorthernLass says:

      17 Jan17 January 16:56

      350k points for UC to BGI is not exactly making me feel any love from Virgin!

      • GUWonder says:

        17 Jan17 January 17:16

        When it comes to the legacy major airlines unfortunately allowed to collude against customers via revenue-sharing, government-immunized joint ventures, their game is to massively devalue the spendable rebate currency but keep the more valuable customers on the hamster wheel with elite status and those elite status benefits. But now they are sort of even cutting back on elite status benefits, as that is what de facto market concentration power allows the behemoth airline groups to do with too little negative consequences for the airlines doing this.

• babyg_wc says:

  17 Jan17 January 16:43

  ba.com broken again… mainpage works.. but not much else… what a joke https://downdetector.co.uk/status/british-airways/

  • KS says:

    17 Jan17 January 17:35

    Probably making the switch over to revenue based redemptions.

• Garethgerry says:

  17 Jan17 January 17:43

  Yep I got my maths wrong, apologies

  Old days silver 10 CW returns now 18, lot harder

  Old days Silver 5 returns to New York in CW (160 pts return), now between 5 if you only travel in sales at £2000 tickets (very unlikely) , and 1 if you pay the exorbitant full flex fare. But at more normal price can do it in 2. Lot easier.

  Thus clearly BA values longhaul well above short haul customers.

  BA is clearly positioning itself as london longhaul airways.

  • Ilou says:

    17 Jan17 January 17:49

    Gold will for sure be harder to achieve.. is BA planning on enhancing the offering for Gold members ?

    I don’t need first wing when travelling alone on business, I need it when travelling with family and kids.. quality of lounges is poor and again can’t use it with family anyway

    BA should make the benefits much more attractive to make it at least wort considering

• Garethgerry says:

  17 Jan17 January 17:47

  Or you could say Oldie current system was hard on longhaul in terms of £s per teir point.

  • RC says:

    17 Jan17 January 18:41

    Unlikely for most. Very few private buyers will pay the high levels where you break even, and corporate travel will likely earn at discounted levels discussed elsewhere (ie not what the ticket price says).
    For example first to S Africa was 240tp each way. To break even you’d need to spend over around $6.5 return. Anyone else will be worse off

• Lou says:

  18 Jan18 January 10:19

  On my first trip since the announcement. The number of people who I’ve bumped into who are angry about the changes is staggering, and these aren’t your Flyertalk folk

• Garethgerry says:

  18 Jan18 January 10:21

  $6.5 is circa £5k couldn’t get first to SA for less than that , first for next December is £6k, hard to get business for much less than £4 k . OK may be cheaper in thier winter but that’s not when leisure travellers go.

  By they way your 240 pts each way highlights teir point inflation, in 90s it was 120 business, 160 first. It was only 180 Concorde to New York.

  • Throwawayname says:

    18 Jan18 January 11:30

    You can get there for well under two grand in March on ET which is an excellent airline.

    • RC says:

      18 Jan18 January 13:36

      Agreed. ET seats in biz a bit old skool but very well cushioned. Lottery on seat type but so is BA. Crew is experienced enthusiastic and ‘real’. Real contrast to other airlines’s inexperienced crews to CT (here’s looking at you virgin and BA) who seem to view passengers as an inconvenience on their way to two days of partying and sun bathing. At least the Lufthansa crews keep it professional.

      I think another poster harking back to tier point levels (35 years ago) could be a little too outdated. Let’s then have the same availability, and 1990 much much much lowertaxes and other bs charges on redemptions too!

      • JDB says:

        18 Jan18 January 16:13

        It wasn’t me talking about 35 years ago, but it wasn’t all as wonderful as you suggest! Economy and business fares in Europe were significantly higher in absolute terms than today – an Apex (the cheapest Y ticket back then) to Nice or somewhere in Italy was £249 – £289, so over £500 in today’s money and Club was more than double. The positive aspect of that is that the EC261 compensation levels are set off those prices which is why they seem too high today.

        As for Air Miles, they were much harder to earn and while availability was better long haul it wasn’t short haul. The BA scheme was barely developed so most people collected on BA flights via AA which was much more advantageous and had the RBS AAdvantage credit card. When the BA scheme got going it was harder to get gold as once you reached silver, points were reset to zero and then you had to reach the gold threshold.

        • Roy says:

          18 Jan18 January 22:02

          Wasn’t there a time when you had to purchase a full fare ticket and send off the boarding card stub just in order to be eligible to join BAEC in the first place?

        • RC says:

          18 Jan18 January 22:03

          ‘ It wasn’t me talking about 35 years ago’
          But you just have.
          It’s an out of date comparison anyway. The world has digitised and airlines can’t use a brand to mask a rubbish product anymore. The change at BA seems to assume it can – without the actual delivery quality of a JAL, or Delta.

          Unless flying in ‘coalers’’ (747-100s) was your thing. No doubt sitting next to ‘the lady’.

        • JDB says:

          18 Jan18 January 23:08

          @RC – well today’s Times article on how well BA is doing references Lord King (although it incorrectly refers to him as the CEO), so they are going back almost 45 years. He was incredibly cantankerous, but very effective.

          In the investment world, it’s particularly valuable to have long term knowledge of companies and markets – yes, 35 years plus, so I’m not sure why you diss references to past events; they are rarely irrelevant and often quite the opposite.

  • RC says:

    18 Jan18 January 13:55

    All rather shows how BA manages to fund so many greater fools to pay that. Obvs good business to charge the max punters will pony up for, but a little research will get Lufthansa or Swiss First class for little more than BA want for their outdated 1990s seat on the A380 and already worn out 787s they send down there.
    Tbf I’m making a point that many punters are price insensitive enough just to pay up whatever BA plucks from the air. So for those, gutting exec club probably does make business sense.

    • Scott says:

      18 Jan18 January 15:58

      Most people tend to just stick to what they know.
      Heinz, Kelloggs, Cadbury, BA, M&S etc. Might not be the best out there, but they’re companies/ brands we’ve grown up with, used all our lives, have the well known names etc.
      It’s like supermarkets. A lot of us shop at the same one. “Eugh, Aldi. Can’t be shopping at that place”.

    • Roy says:

      18 Jan18 January 23:32

      I’m not sure most people would swap a direct flight for an indirect one, even with better hard and soft product. For most people flying is about getting from A to B, even if they prefer to do so in comfort.

      • Throwawayname says:

        19 Jan19 January 01:24

        That’s a very simplistic view- ET and BA both offer indirect flights from MAN to JNB, the fact that the latter charge more than double cannot be attributable to the superiority of LHR as a connection point over ADD (never mind the fact that I think that ADD’s a lot better!).

      • Phil says:

        19 Jan19 January 09:38

        Lots of people don’t live in London.
        I have done this flight via MAN in F & J many times, including to Windhoek which is 2 stops same as ET or LH do on that.

        BA offered zero benefit beyond status and is often more expensive.

• TomFE says:

  18 Jan18 January 15:38

  Partner and I have greatly reduced number of flights over the last couple years to reduce our carbon footprint. Now down to roughly 3 flights per year I was happy with silver or bronze as we always fly CE/CW either cash or reward flights. The thing that annoys me is seat selection and the prices BA charge for it. I wouldn’t mind being blue on the new system if seat selection was free in CW/CE. You win some, you lose some.

• Garethgerry says:

  18 Jan18 January 15:55

  It all depends how you value a direct fligh

  also when I Google london capetown in March with EK it comes out at over 4k return business , 2k each way

  • Phil says:

    19 Jan19 January 09:41

    For a lotof people outside London it is not a direct flight unless you add in another step to get to London anyway.

    The UK isn’t London except to BA

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