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

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• TrevorHKG says:

  31 Dec31 December 05:18

  I am not 100 pc clear on the situation flying with other OW airlines. Is it broadly better to credit to Finnair/Iberia account if travelling on these airlines rather than put the avios/TP to the BA account? Of course other OW have moved in the same revenue based earning approach already.
  Thoughts?

• Adam says:

  31 Dec31 December 05:29

  Their club, their rules so I am not going to complain about it but, like other comments on here, it has taken away pretty much the last remaining reason for choosing BA.

  In the past I have chosen BA over budget carriers for european flights often paying more than double the fare with arguably no real difference in the product. Long haul again my loyalty has been influenced by tier points however if I am honest more focused on OW than just BA.

  Although initially disappointing this change could actually be liberating for a lot of travellers, especially those who fly business long haul anyway. There are a lot of very good deals and excellent products out there. I used a stack of virgin points that I had accumulated over the years to fly Air France business to BBK and it was superb, especially the food!

  Realistically I think the only loser will be BA.

  • John says:

    31 Dec31 December 07:11

    Yes liberating it will be. LH will be overjoyed with this new club

• Hertscanuck says:

  31 Dec31 December 05:33

  I’ve got gold for life on American Airlines as a result of being a million miler. Roughly equivalent to BA Bronze. Most useful feature is getting my BA seats a week ahead of time and free bags.
  Am a UK resident, and was crediting OneWorld flights to BA though to build Avios. Struggled to hit Bronze most years.
  Wondering if I should now credit to AA or to Qatar.

• Adam says:

  31 Dec31 December 05:40

  Unlike most people I am very happy with this – Having recently left the country it has been a nightmare always routing through London so I could maintain my status. Now I don’t have to. (Especially as the BA flights are at my own expense as my company has a deal with another airline, so it was costing me a lot of money, even using discounted tickets.)
  And no more winter trips to Jersey needed just to hit my tier points.
  Obviously I also get to save on the BA Amex as well (Although I was already cancelling, due to leaving the country so this announcement makes no difference to this.) but at least the pressure to accumulate Avios for when I return to the UK is gone.

• Kai says:

  31 Dec31 December 05:54

  I understand why people are disappointed but unfortunately the gravy train had to end sometime. For too long people have been able to short cut to status for very little effort and not in the spirit of what a frequent flyer programme is designed for. Tier point runs to Sofia, deliberately exploiting double points offers with connecting flights just to jump to status etc. all this will now be finished with the new revenue based system.

  Now having a silver or gold card (and possibly even a bronze card) will be a genuine elite status. A few months back I was at Gatwick in the first lounge waiting for my flight. I noticed when I boarded at least 20 people who were in that lounge at the same time as me were on the same plane. Another 40 or so boarded in groups 2&3 and therefore would have had silver and bronze cards. How can a gold card be an ‘elite status’ if 10% of the plane has one? And if almost a third of the plane has status then what is it really worth?

  Once this trickles down and people downgrade status or expire completely those of us that are left should reap the promised benefits. As the saying goes, if everyone is a priority then no one is. If everyone has status then no one really does.

  I doubt I’ll maintain gold but I certainly will keep silver with these new rules and if the number of silver card holders is cut then I look forward to potentially better value than the current gold system in a few years.

  • Ian says:

    31 Dec31 December 06:25

    I agree entirely. I fly MAN to LHR quite a bit and the priority queue is invariably as long as, or longer, than the non-priority queue!

    • Adam says:

      31 Dec31 December 12:52

      Better solution to this is to scrap the lower status bands which get priority boarding too. No alienate the regular leisure flyers.. the competition will be happy to woo them!

      • Kai says:

        31 Dec31 December 17:42

        If you’re not spending the money why should you have the status? The whole point of this system change is to reflect your value to the company. Someone booking the cheapest flights and exploiting a distance based system without putting too much revenue into a company is not a valued customer. They’re actually a drain. Anyone spending serious money with BA will remain under this new system. The reality is if you’re not spending the money to reach these thresholds then you have three choices. 1) spend more money (BA likes this) 2) spend the money you already spend with BA but accept lower status (BA likes this too) 3) Take your small spending elsewhere. BA will keep the revenue of those spending these amounts already. Those in group 1 and the costs savings from those in group 2 will more than offset the losses of group 3. The vocal minority are outraged but the silent majority will keep BA running. I’ll be very happy when the group 2&3 people vacate the lounges and free up more upgrades for me. The group 3 people need to realise they’re not actually that valuable to BA or any airline. Stick to easyJet or Ryanair if you want to spend pennies. This is not a devaluing of status, it is restoring the value of status to its original meaning when airline status really was an elite thing to hold.

        • Rob says:

          31 Dec31 December 17:50

          I suspect 80% of people spending £20k per year with BA are spending their employers money and 80% of that lot have to use BA or at least oneworld under a route deal.

          You are trying to impose standard economic logic on a system where it doesn’t work. The ONLY reason that airline loyalty schemes are more successful than those in any other sector is because you are rewarding people for spending SOMEONE ELSE’S MONEY.

          If you are personally spending £20k of your own money on BA given the other airlines out there then I’m lost for words.

  • Kai says:

    31 Dec31 December 20:03

    Who said anything about spending £20k on BA flights alone? The new system allows for your hotel and other holiday spending to count. BA will take a massive commission on me booking my hotel through them rather than booking elsewhere so it makes sense to incentivise this. I travel for a mix of leisure and work but pay upfront for my work travel and claim back via my employer for the odd overnight trip away. There is no such rebate for my employer in this. I’m given an allowance per trip and can spend up to that amount, or spend more if I which but am capped at that allowance. I can fly who I want and stay where I want so long as I stay within that cap or am prepared to pay out of pocket for going over. I budget each year an amount for personal leisure holidays. Under the old system unless I were travelling for more than 5 days I got no bonus booking my hotels through BA. now for one night work trips away I definitely will. And when it comes to personal holidays I will book the lot via BA holidays. They may have gone all in for business travellers on flights only but their BA holiday offering is still quite generous. You don’t have to spend the full £20k of your own money on flights to get gold. I like flying direct and hate connecting so getting full bang for my buck on the new system rather than having to connect to boost my tier point yield really works for me. I can spend less time in the air, book nicer hotel rooms, and earn on side things like airport transfers, experiences, hotel meals, and more. Example: I have a trip to Tenerife booked on personal money. Under the old system even with double tier points I only earn 80TP which is roughly 13% of the way to silver or 5% of the way to gold. On the new system I’ll clock up around 950TPs with everything included. That is also 13% of the way to silver or 5% on way to gold. I also go Vegas next year. Old system = 140TP so 23% of silver or 9% of gold. New system with all extras included would now = 3500TP or 46% of silver and 18% gold. Most of my other bookings come to similar better off calculations. This is a really good offer if you book your whole holiday through BA and you can really make it pay.

• Tom says:

  31 Dec31 December 06:41

  As a former tp-runner, this move makes sense to me at face value (it was a flawed LOYALTY programme given I could often earn 3x TP paying 1/3rd the direct flight price, doing silly airport hopping mostly on non-ba metal, bar the 4 legs to Inverness and back).

  The problem is the great-lounge-rebalancing will mean I now actively avoid T5 and therefore BA. It’s not a matter of spite, money, or the onboard product – I just stand a far better chance of getting lounge access and/or a peaceful terminal experience at another terminal / airport regardless of flying short/long haul.

  Sure T5 BA Lounges will become quiet(er), but all the Savy British travelers will just try their luck at the Plaza Prem and Club Aspire lounges, which will no doubt be permanently at capacity.

  Sure space can be reallocated, new paid-for lounges can be built, but let’s not forget this is Heathrow, where even some new security scanners turns into a logistical nightmare due to short sightedness of engineers / architects.

  Sure one of the BA lounges could just be reassigned to be a paid-for lounge, but I doubt numbers will drop enough to facilitate such a change (given how many Americans can gain OW status through their neverending cc-spend), and the existing real estate would be hard to subdivide.

  Seems like BA have found the perfect way to push half-savy travellers towards T2 / T3 / other airports (unless redeeming Avios).

• Mr. AC says:

  31 Dec31 December 06:51

  Anyone knows what’s the cheapest (or at least reasonably cheap) way to short IAG stock on a 1-2 year horizon in the UK? The overnight fees make it not worth it via CFDs, and I don’t think Robinhood supports put options in the UK.

  • R01 says:

    31 Dec31 December 06:55

    I was thinking the same thing. As a shareholder – albeit an inconsequential one – I’m thinking this is likely to be bad for the market cap in the medium term. Might be wrong but I’ll put my money on it.

    • Mr. AC says:

      31 Dec31 December 07:29

      Yeah, I already sold all the IAG stock I owned (it has been positioning well recently so a good time anyway), but I want to sell more than I own… Haven’t shorted anything before outside of max a week horizon.

  • Ken says:

    31 Dec31 December 08:27

    I presume you all ready know that 80% of CFD accounts lose money.

    Are you just looking to get that up towards 100% ?

  • No longer Entitled says:

    31 Dec31 December 09:57

    BA is only a part of IAG and even within that, a lot of high priced business travel is driven by corporates locked into contractual agreements.

    HfP is an echo chamber and a very small part of their flyers will ever use this site or one like it. A big change to Avios might be detrimental in the long term but not tier points.

    I for one, could not care less and I say this as an active Avios collector.

    • Charles Martel says:

      31 Dec31 December 10:19

      I disagree, for many businesses it’s marginal revenue that changes profit or loss so losing a few percentage points of sales from people switching to budget carriers or AF-KLM could have a more dramatic effect than you might expect. Then there’s those that will continue flying BA (they still have the LHR slots) but crediting else, again very marginally reducing group revenue.

      And these are both before you get to network effects, if small business commuters now decide easyJet and a long pass is better, when do some routes or frequencies become unprofitable? Cutting them reduces feeder traffic onto the long haul routes.

      Brunchgate is proof that BA can be penny wise and pound foolish.

      • No longer Entitled says:

        31 Dec31 December 11:48

        I get marginal revenue, but IAG made €1.45bn profit in Q3 alone, up 16.7% form Q323. It’s not a business currently scraping the barrel.

        Anyone who claims that they can foresee stock valuations is a fraud. All I am saying is that HfP comments section may not be reflective of IAG’s financial strength and core/bulk of their passengers.

• Londoner 79 says:

  31 Dec31 December 06:53

  Is there any chance of some of this released lounge capacity being offered as an AmEx Platinum perk a la Delta, Eurostar, Lufthansa…?

  Having been Silver for a couple of years (but no hope of hitting it under the new system) I’d been considering closing the AmEx Platinum as I don’t value the Priority Pass in the same way as I used to. If AmEx offered BA lounge access, I’ve suddenly been given a reason to keep the card (and I know, wishful thinking).

  • danstravel says:

    31 Dec31 December 07:46

    I think unlikely. Would that not cannibalise the sign ups towards the Amex Plat vs the BAPP? I think they would want to protect the BAPP at all costs – given its their flagship card.

    Having said that, I think something similar to the AMEX HK model; where their Explorer card (and previously their CX co-brand card) allowed up to 8 or 10 lounge visits a year to the Plaza Premium lounges. Introducing this for the BAPP would definitely make the BAPP more appealing – but would no doubt result in a AF increase

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