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

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As we have been predicting for some time, British Airways has announced the move to revenue-based tier status.

The net effect is that earning Gold status will now be very, very difficult, bordering on impossible, for leisure travellers.

Some changes are unexpected – the speed of the launch (1st April) and a rebranding of British Airways Executive Club to ‘The British Airways Club’. Whilst a bit more 21st century, it’s ironic given that only ‘executive’ travellers are now likely to qualify for the higher tiers.

British Airways Club membership cards

Here are the new British Airways status thresholds that kick in from 1st April 2025:

  • Bronze: 3,500 points
  • Silver: 7,500 points
  • Gold: 20,000 points
  • Gold Guest List – new member: 65,000 points (with at least 52,000 earned through British Airways-marketed flights and British Airways Holidays)
  • Gold Guest List – renewal: 40,000 points (with at least 32,000 earned through British Airways-marketed flights British Airways Holidays)

There will be milestone bonuses of 2,500 Avios at 5,500 tier points, 4,000 Avios at 11,000 tier points and 5,000 Avios at 16,000 tier points which will be triggered on the way to Gold. Assuming 1p per Avios of value these are not exactly generous.

These changes were made “based on our Members’ feedback” according to BA’s press release so if you don’t like them, you only have yourself to blame.

What is a ‘point’?

1 point = £1 of spending on British Airways-marketed flights.

ONLY the base fare and BA-imposed surcharges are included. Airport charges, Air Passenger Duty etc are NOT included. Seat selection and luggage fees ARE included.

On a £11,990 fully flexible ticket to New York in Club World, virtually all spend (£11,687) would qualify towards status. On a £387 economy flight to New York, only £189 of spend would count.

There are other ways of earning ‘points’

You will be able to earn up to 1,000 points per year by purchasing Sustainable Aviation Fuel credits. You will get 1 tier point and 10 Avios per £1 spent on SAF credits.

You will be able to earn up to 2,500 points per year via spending on the British Airways Premium Plus American Express credit card. It isn’t clear what the ‘conversion rate’ will be – I suspect something close to 1 point per £10 spent.

You will earn 1 point per £1 spent at British Airways Holidays. For high end leisure travellers this could be an attractive way of earning status. However, BA has potentially messed this up because tier points will be split equally between all travellers. You can’t book a £20,000 holiday for a family of four and get Gold – in fact, at 5,000 points each, you wouldn’t even all get Silver.

(What you COULD do is book a BA Holiday – flight and hotel – for one person, and then have the rest of your family book their flights separately. This ensures that you receive all the tier points.)

One upside is that there will no longer be a minimum stay requirement for earning via BA Holidays.

What happens with partner flights?

You will earn tier points based on a percentage of miles flown for non-alliance partners.

For Malaysia Airlines, for example, it will increase from 2% of miles flown on a discounted Economy ticket to 30% of miles flown for a fully flexible First Class ticket.

This structure means that it is VERY unattractive for people buying flexible tickets to choose a partner airline over British Airways. For low cost premium cabin tickets it is probably roughly equal – eg Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur in discounted Business Class on Malaysia Airlines would earn 1,600 tier points under the new structure which is roughly what a £2,000 sale cash ticket on BA would earn.

Some airlines are rewarded more generously. Qatar Airways, for example, earns 25% of miles flown in deeply discounted Business Class. This is double what you receive for flying Malaysia Airlines.

There will be bonus tier points for the first few months

Flights booked BEFORE 14th February for travel after 1st April will earn bonus points. It isn’t clear if these are one-way or return, I suspect one-way:

  • Euro Traveller: 50 points
  • Club Europe: 100 points
  • World Traveller: 70 points
  • World Traveller Plus: 140 points 
  • Club World: 210 points
  • First: 330 points

These are bizarrely small numbers based on the new tier thresholds. 420 bonus tier points for a Club World return flight isn’t going to make much impact on hitting 20,000 tier points for Gold.

What happens with existing bookings for travel after 1st April?

It’s not clear. We are told:

“Customers who already hold bookings for travel after 1 April 2025 will be awarded Tier Points based on a conversion of the existing method. Any existing bookings will earn proportionally the same number of Tier Points, or more, as they would today.”

The implication is that it will be based on the same % of status as you would need today. A flight earning 140 tier points (currently 23% of Silver or 9% of Gold) will presumably earn somewhere between 23% of the new Silver threshold (7,500 points) or 9% of the new Gold threshold (20,000 points).

The implication is that this only applies to existing bookings made before today. If you book today, you will be on the new system for travel from 1st April.

What happens with existing BA Holidays bookings for travel by 30th June?

People have booked with BA Holidays expecting double tier points (for trips taken between 1st April and 30th June) based on the current tier point system.

On paper you won’t be worse off. The tier points you would have got will be multiplied by 13.5 and then doubled. Trust me that this is fair.

The bigger issue is that if you will need additional tier points for status, the gap is bigger. For example, if your BA Holiday would have got you halfway to Silver it still will – but you’d still need to spend £3,750 to earn the other half of the points needed.

British AIrways Club status changes

Are ‘soft landings’ remaining?

It isn’t clear. However, a BA employee has told me that they will be removed. If correct, a Gold member will now drop directly to Blue.

What is happening to Lifetime Gold?

Your existing tier points will be converted. Take a look at the FAQ here for details.

Conclusion

This is, clearly, a pivotal move by British Airways. It is effectively washing its hands of the leisure market and going all-in to attract the dwindling band of full fare business travellers.

With Gold now available for just over one and a half £12,000 fully flexible Club World return flights to New York, it is clear who the target market now is.

Realistically, it will now be impossible to earn Gold for small business travellers, economy travellers or self-funded leisure travellers. Even Silver will be a major stretch. British Airways Holidays spend could have offered a lifeline, but by splitting the tier points equally among all travellers it’s not going to make any real impact.

It’s not clear to me why BAEC members asked for this, since it was done ‘based on member feedback’ according to BA but that’s people for you ….!

It will also be virtually impossible for corporate travellers to earn Gold status based on economy travel. This leads to the question of why you’d even want to push for status – if the only people who can earn status are flying in Business Class, they don’t need Silver status anyway as they have the benefits. Gold doesn’t add much on top.

The long term issue remains. Business travellers have their flights paid for by their employers. Many of these are tied to BA or oneworld via a route deal. Many get huge end-of-year rebates which means their headline spend is not what they actually pay – in reality business travellers with a high rebate will need to spend LESS to earn status than leisure travellers. BA is rewarding ‘loyalty’ from people whose loyalty is contractually enforced on them.

Remove status from those people who DO have a choice of airline – leisure travellers, small business owners – and their reasons for flying British Airways shrink dramatically.

What I don’t understand is why the offsets for leisure and SME travellers are so half-hearted. Capping credit card tier points at 2,500 is pathetic – just 12.5% of what you need for Gold and still leaving you £5,000 of ‘before taxes’ BA spend short of Silver. American Airlines now lets you earn status based ENTIRELY on credit card and partner spend if you wish. If someone wants to put £200,000 through their BA Amex to earn Gold status, why not let them?

The British Airways Club, of course, is not the only game in town for earning oneworld status. I suspect that most people will now find it easier to earn Silver or Gold-equivalent status via another oneworld airline – you would get virtually the same benefits except for Gold access to additional Economy Avios inventory. We’ll be looking at these options in detail as we get nearer to April.

As a starter, remember that oneworld member Royal Jordanian will give you 12-months of BA Bronze-equivalent status for just $49 if you have hotel or airline elite status elsewhere – click here to read more.

You can find out more about these changes on this special page of ba.com.

PS. If you are reading this but are not a regular reader, please consider signing up for our FREE daily or weekly newsletters full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news. Visit this page of the site or click any of the ‘Subscribe’ links on this page.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (3839)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • R_B says:
    30 Dec30 December 16:22

    429 comments, 23 pages as of counting says it all. BA really don’t know how to act, of all the things they could have focussed on (dreadful IT, why they thought breakfast at 1pm was a great idea, OnBusiness MIA for over a year), stiffing the majority of their customers was of course the obvious answer.

    • Chris W says:
      30 Dec30 December 16:39

      Theyre a very profitable business.

      That is their purpose.

      Ensuring us “hobbyists” can earn status cheaply is not a business strategy.

      • JDB says:
        30 Dec30 December 16:45

        Sorry @Chris W but it seems like common sense posts aren’t allowed for this article. The complete disconnect between business sense and people having their cheaply earned toys taken away as exemplified by so many rabid posts sounds like a bunch of toddlers.

        • r* says:
          30 Dec30 December 16:54

          Stop being so patronizing.

        • BOSSMANTRAVELS says:
          30 Dec30 December 16:56

          Spot on, you would think coming to this forum it’s the end of the world but it’s completely skewed by people who obtain status very cheaply.

          • Ginza1Chrome says:
            30 Dec30 December 20:18

            This is Gold.

          • Rob says:
            30 Dec30 December 20:26

            It’s more complex than that. It’s about share of wallet. People who disproportionately spend on BA to earn / retain / use status are financial gold. Giving people status who don’t change their behaviour is stupid.

  • yonasl says:
    30 Dec30 December 16:23

    As a leisure traveler, if I had the option between two business class providers and OW was slightly more expensive I may have taken OW to try and reach status (then, once I had it I may try to travel SH with OW instead of a low cost). This is not posible now. My cheap business class flight won’t help me get status so I should pick the cheapest. The whole point of the TPs is would couldn’t really put a value to them (which was the whole point otherwise you realise it is cheaper to just pay for the lounge yourself).

    • Damien says:
      30 Dec30 December 16:27

      Totally this. They’ve removed that “loyalty” element and made it fully about the cash. If that’s the case. Then I may as well keep the extra cash.

    • George says:
      30 Dec30 December 16:32

      I’m genuinely surprised that they can make this move without any consultation to OneWorld – it’s going to have an impact on their other members for sure.

      • memesweeper says:
        30 Dec30 December 16:52

        You can be sure this will comply with their OneWorld obligations.

        Frankly, given their model now, I suspect they’d have just scrapped the BAEC tiers entirely were it not for OneWorld membership.

  • Keith Purdom says:
    30 Dec30 December 16:23

    Why don’t you guys lead a petition and ensure BA senior management understand how badly received this is

    And what’s the legality of allowing me to pursue Gold For Life then changing the rules when I’m close?

  • Lady London says:
    30 Dec30 December 16:25

    OK so let’s take this change as it is, accept BA are competent in managing their own business, and ask ourselves

    1. Assuming this move does make sense, what does that tell us about ‘loyalty’ and customer benefits in the future.

    2. What does this tell us about BA’s own future business strategy.

    Re 2. I’m seeing it similar direction to Virgin. BA key focus West/ the USA. QR given domination of East routes. Any other routes kept by BA only so long as QR or IB don’t want them and only so long as there is a specific reason for them to be profitable Barbados, Capetown, summer routes esp from LCY to European destinations of high spenders).

    Re 1.what is the future of loyalty if this is accepted as making sense, I’d be very interested to hear what others think.

    • yonasl says:
      30 Dec30 December 16:29

      Loyalty is a two way street. I use BA for SH flights even if low costs are cheaper because they give me back small perks such as seat selection or access to a lounge. But now these things come on tbe back of me spending £7,500 (minimum) with BA. If I am flying business I don’t need all these perks so who will not fly business and get some sort of status? (Before it was maybe possible via premium economy flying – around 3 return floghts – now you need at least 6 so why would you stick to BA?).

    • Throwawayname says:
      30 Dec30 December 16:36

      There’s virtually nothing in it for the short haul traveller, almost regardless of price or frequency of travel.

      If one accepts the assumption that BA management are competent, that lots of airlines with limited/no intercontinental service are interested in running meaningful loyalty schemes, the logical conclusion is that they’re only interested in European flights to the extent that they support their US network. But, if this results in fewer flights to the UK and Europe, intercontinental passengers will also be affected if they’re flying beyond LHR, so I cannot see how they’re hoping to maintain yields unless their plan is to become a much smaller operation.

    • Chris W says:
      30 Dec30 December 16:40

      Loyalty is moving from how much or how far you travel, to how much you spend.

      BA are not alone with this.

      • JDB says:
        30 Dec30 December 16:48

        It’s how most good loyalty programmes work unless they are struggling – eg Nectar that hand points out like confetti.

        • Cranzle says:
          30 Dec30 December 17:01

          But most good offerings don’t need a loyalty scheme.

          Here we have a mediocre product positioning itself like a top end hotel brand might. Except they skimp on very basic things like housekeeping.

        • Throwawayname says:
          30 Dec30 December 17:02

          This has been discussed at length here, the logic of loyalty schemes is to generate incremental revenue for the business by modifying consumer behaviour. Giving lounge access to those whose tickets already include it is very unlikely to convince them to spend more than they otherwise would.

          The assertion that that they’ll improve the benefits after they thin the herd actually runs contrary to the entire raison d etre of this type of scheme – once you’ve used your £30k spend to become HON, you’re not going to say ‘hmm, perhaps I should see whether the BA lounges are less filthy now’, you’ll likely be gone for good. Of course, the fact that this doesn’t make sense doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not planning to do it!

    • memesweeper says:
      30 Dec30 December 17:12

      1. BA think they can operate more profitably without ‘loyalty’ — they are not interested in rewarding frequent travellers, the scheme, such as it is, will only provide a very marginal benefit for a few high-spenders who occasionally fly in Economy

      2. Interesting question — what is their strategy? Entrenching the North American focus for long haul is a given, but I had previously thought part of their strategy was to distinguish themselves from LCCs/new entrants by offering things like Club up front and a decent rewards scheme, thus avoiding a straight price war (which they cannot win, at least on short haul)

      The future of loyalty will be determined by the success or failure of this approach. LCCs largely operate without loyalty systems, and many seem to do OK. BA will discover that yields / sales drop over time as the impact of this change sinks in to their ‘loyalists’, who cease to be (as) loyal. Is this a corporation with a culture of listening to customers, and/or learning from data? Does it have the metrics to know what the impact of this change really is? (to have those metrics, you need to track the change in behaviour from people like me, who used to favour BA, and accurately value it, against the savings from emptying the lounges, and maybe squeezing a few quid out of some for seat selection).

      I think unbundling and a poor loyalty scheme will not favour BA. Perhaps the lure of Heathrow slots is so strong they don’t need one. We shall see.

  • r* says:
    30 Dec30 December 16:26

    Just to be clear, any bookings made now will use the new nerfed TP system and there is now no way to get silver using the old TP method?

  • R says:
    30 Dec30 December 16:27

    I guess I’m the target of these changes.
    I travel 3-4 times a year to the US for work and fly WTP. I don’t stay a weekend so pay and book a month in advance so pay approx 2-3k.

    I will definitely start adding car rental to make it a BA holiday and will shift more spend to a BA credit card to ensure I remain silver.

    I’m also incentivized to travel with OneWorld even if the Virgin/Delta flight times suit better because I’m on the threshold.

    • Steve says:
      30 Dec30 December 16:55

      Your travel sounds almost identical to mine. I currently make Gold each year once I add leisure travel on, but I can’t see myself getting anywhere near that with the changes. I’m sure I would make Silver status but Gold is probably £5000 away, given that APD etc is removed from the amount counted.

      While BA may think that’s perfectly fair from their part, they haven’t counted on how many times I’ve booked with them and paid more to protect my status, rather than booking a cheaper fare elsewhere. Now, I’ll most likely book the cheapest fare or move my status to another airline group.

  • KJ says:
    30 Dec30 December 16:27

    It seems from the FAQ that the existing 2xTP for BAH will be honoured and converted to the new level of TPs (i.e if you would have earned 90% of the total number required for silver status you will receive 90% of the new total number required:

    “For holidays booked before 30 December 2024 for travel from 1 April 2025, Tier Points will be awarded based on a conversion of the existing method. This means any bookings you’ve already made, including bookings made as part of the British Airways Holidays double Tier Points offer, will earn proportionally the same number of Tier Points, or more, as today.
    Example for a holiday booked before 30 December 2024 for travel after 1 April 2025, that was eligible for the previous double Tier Points offer:
    London Heathrow to New York booked in Economy (O class)
    Today you earn 20 Tier Points each way
    From 1 April 2025, we’ll convert this to 267 Tier Points each way, when you fly
    After your trip, we’ll add a bonus 534 Tier Points to your account, meaning you’ll earn 1,068 Tier Points in total for your holiday
    Only eligible holidays booked before 30 December 2024 for travel completed by 30 June 25 will receive double Tier Points bonus award”

  • George says:
    30 Dec30 December 16:30

    Remember a time after Covid when the leisure traveller became the lifeblood of BA’s premium offering? Yeah – so do I… when BA would do whatever it took to keep us flying Club World, to keep the cabins full.

    Things I’m going to miss after next year when I move to Qantas (most likely at the moment)? Book with cash, upgrade with avios; there’s some real value here, but certainly not enough to tie me into a BA credit card, BA flights and BA underwear.

    Anyway, with no value in earning avios from flying anymore, and no value in earning tier points from flying anymore … just struggling to understand why the leisure traveller will fly BA anymore?

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