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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 (3829)

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

  • Novice says:
    30 Dec30 December 23:54

    It’s crap what they did but it doesn’t affect me as I have never chased status. I was never their target market and if you fly business; you get all the benefits you need.

    I have always chosen based on best price and product for any of chosen destinations and if I can use Avios for a flight I am interested in then that’s great.

    Glad I never cared.

  • Gerry says:
    31 Dec31 December 00:01

    This is going to drown in the millions of comments here, but another factor that made me move away from chasing BA status is the “opportunity cost”. Avios are less and less valuable, and pursuing BA status means crediting flights to BAEC. I recently booked AA business class JFK-LHR for 45k Alaska miles and $18 in taxes (!). The BA flight on the same date (which I had originally booked) was 90k Avios and $240 in taxes…

  • SydneySwan says:
    31 Dec31 December 00:04

    I haven’t got time to check through 1032 comments but is this the highest number of comments ever on a HfP story?

  • Mark says:
    31 Dec31 December 00:07

    BA deleted this comment from their website so clearly a take they don’t like: great to see that they are abandoning their middle class customers in favour of the rich and the dwindling number of corporate flyers. Hope that works out for them.

  • Globetrotter says:
    31 Dec31 December 00:10

    I agree with earlier suggestions that BA should consider softening the blow by keeping soft landings. Based on the comments, this has been a sudden and unwelcome announcement for most BAEC members. The lack of notice is also disappointing and unfair to BAEC members. They should defer the changes by at least a year given that is how long an earning cycle runs. Pls feedback to “Nick” @Rob – thx.

  • Mouse says:
    31 Dec31 December 00:16

    My £40-50k annual spend on Qatar will now move to BA. I suspect I’m an outlier, but it doesn’t take many of us to make this profitable for BA.

    • Joe says:
      31 Dec31 December 00:19

      Interesting. What’s your logic? I don’t get the calculation you’re doing at all. Is the benefits of getting GGL worth sacrificing the QR hard product for BA’s?

    • ab says:
      31 Dec31 December 00:26

      BA is the armpit of the airline world…You can have em…..Qatar is so above and beyond BA …

    • Lee says:
      31 Dec31 December 00:27

      Why? This makes no sense. BA is a vastly inferior product in all cabins

    • John says:
      31 Dec31 December 01:42

      You know you can already credit this to BA and be a GGL/ CCR cardholder if you wanted just flying 4 BA flights per year…

      Do you not get significant benefits from this spend on Qatar? Do you actually want to have status with BA?

    • Londonsteve says:
      31 Dec31 December 03:24

      If partner airlines are only earning a fraction of the miles flown despite the high ticket price, you might find you’ll achieve Silver but fail to reach Gold. I’m sure you’re in the highest tier with Qatar with this sort of spend, I can’t see the incentive to credit to BA. Were I handing this sort of money to an airline every year I’d want to make sure I’m an elite status holder in the airline’s own programme.

    • Mouse says:
      31 Dec31 December 20:21

      Currently use QR to get 560 TP per trip and just make GGL. Now will get more TP (and avios) from flying direct on BA. Agree QR is much nicer but not so much more as to compensate for the inconvenience of going indirect.

  • EightSix says:
    31 Dec31 December 00:25

    I may not be happy about it, however this change will ultimately save me a lot of money as I will likely spend less money on travel. I may come up with some other justification, however there are definitely some trips that I take because I need the TP.

    Surely the idea of a loyalty scheme is to alter the purchasing decision of as many potential customers as possible. Sure they want to reward those that spend more – but why make a change that reduces your ability to influence the decisions of those further down the pecking order. The issue I perceive here is that the incentives of status are now not justified by the cost for those making a purchasing decision. The value of silver is really there if you frequently fly Y. If flying J the value is getting to gold. If booking “normal” (ie non flexible) long haul flights you’re going to need like 15 round trips to hit the spend requirement through flights (based on a quick check of flights to NY). While I’m sure there are some people doing that, I have to assume there are multiples more taking 6-7 trips a year that you still want to incentivise and now have nothing to strive for. I also don’t understand why they have capped the amount of TP you can earn from BAPP spend?

    I have been BA gold for 10 years and was VS gold before that – all self funded leisure travel in J – initially just flying back from NY ~6x pa and now based back in London with 3 kids spend £40k pa on BAH (flight + car) + some non family trips. I don’t look anywhere other than BA for flights. I value gold status for the priority phone line, first wing and slightly better lounges (mostly non-BA). I don’t have any interest in obtaining silver – even though I might get there with my 1/5 share of the BAH spend, what benefit do I get? Better Avios earning rate? I might as well fly J on VS where you get the upper wing without the need for status. I won’t actively avoid BA if it’s the best choice, however I can now make my decisions based on the best value / product without being influenced by “loyalty”. Maybe I was the problem (I wasn’t buying £8k fully flexible tickets and my kids do occasionally leave crumbs on the floor in the lounge) but I also doubt my spend was unprofitable for them.

  • Lee says:
    31 Dec31 December 00:26

    This must be to clear out the lounge of economy passengers. As a regular Qatar Airways/occasional BA flyer, I’m always shocked how overcrowded the T5 lounges are. This change pretty much brings BAEC into line with QAPC. My £20k p.a. spend with QA just gets me to QA Platinum/Emerald and now similarly would just qualify me for BA Gold too

    • Joe says:
      31 Dec31 December 00:31

      I don’t think it’s this at all. As soon as the lounges are quieter they’ll just charge for access. There is zero point having an underutilized resource as an airline where an extra passenger adds nominal marginal costs.

      • Paul says:
        31 Dec31 December 00:48

        Or they will reduce the number and/or size of the lounges. There’s no point paying for all of that real estate if there’s not enough people to use them.

      • Lee says:
        31 Dec31 December 00:50

        Very difficult for a OW carrier to move to a charge for access model but I take your point on utilisation Joe.

        I’m just guessing but every time I’ve been in a T5 BA lounge it looks to be at 110% capacity. If BA can take that to 80-90% capacity it will keep their core travellers happy whilst clearing out some lower spend passengers

        • Londonsteve says:
          31 Dec31 December 03:26

          Lounge access for OW status holders and those travelling in J and F is a given, but there’s nothing to stop an airline offering paid entry to its own lounges as an extra revenue stream.

    • Barrel for Scraping says:
      31 Dec31 December 01:11

      QR, not QA! On a frequent flyer website can we not use the proper IATA codes to avoid ambiguity?

      For example Virgin Atlantic is VS, Virgin Australia is VA. People using VA for the first one cause ambiguity. VS is SkyTeam, VA is not, but it’s a partner of QR

    • Tom says:
      31 Dec31 December 01:58

      £20K per year before taxes and fees, to be clear, probably £25K+ of actual spend for most passengers. I think there are many people outside the UK who achieve QR Plat for a lot less than £20K also.

    • Matt B says:
      31 Dec31 December 08:51

      Qatar doesn’t have a short-haul route network connecting millions of passengers to hundreds of destinations across Europe. The price that BA is paying to reduce headcount in lounges could well have the effect of reducing headcount appreciably on many of its domestic and European flights, haemorrhaging significant revenue per passenger as frequent flyers decamp en masse to LCCs.

      • Toilet Paper Man says:
        3 Jan3 January 15:42

        Tell that to the 26 countries of the Middle East and South Asia that QR fly to using a short-haul route network…

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