Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

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

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

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.

  • Clive says:
    31 Dec31 December 10:15

    As a budget-conscious solo traveller I have preserved my Bronze status by spending about £1,000 a year on short haul business class flights. I’m not going to shell out another £2,500 to retain the ‘perks’. Blue is meaningless, so if they’re putting Bronze out of reach for most leisure travellers they need another tier in between.

    • Jonathan says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:04

      What perks would a status in between Blue and Bronze offer ?
      Bronze already hardly has any benefits to bother going for in the first place

      • Clive says:
        31 Dec31 December 12:16

        I’m grateful for the seven-day seat selection and avoiding Euro traveller queues when checking in at airports abroad. My point is that they’re now saying, unless you spend a minimum of £3,500 a year with us we don’t value your loyalty.

  • MGW says:
    31 Dec31 December 10:16

    Wow! This does suggest to me that as a business owner/traveller who generally chooses to fly business, I may need to look elsewhere for my long-haul trips. Being based near EDI I have plenty of options and KLM (in economy) via Amsterdam often works out as cheap/cheaper than direct flights with the LCCs.
    However, with the Qatar link to Doha as part of Oneworld that does open up a lot of possibilities. I wonder if @Rob or @Rhys might consider a detailed article on how one might manage Avios and Tier/Status transition from BA to (say) Qatar. Perhaps for the neophytes amongst covering where Avios are stored (still on the Avios suite even if earned with Qatar?) and how one would arrive at Silver (my current BA status) equivalent with Qatar (Qatar Gold/Oneworld Sapphire).
    I am also not really sure what level of flying is necessary with Qatar to reach their Gold (BA Silver eq).
    I should add the level of status above works just fine for me and I have no interest in chasing a higher level unless it were to drop in my lap.

  • MGW says:
    31 Dec31 December 10:22

    Just adding to my own thought process, I suspect the challenge with Qatar would be filling the holes left by the churn of short-haul trips from EDI to LHR. These usually readily top up the TPs collected on the long-haul trips to the 600 required annually for Silver.

  • John says:
    31 Dec31 December 10:22

    God, all these people moaning again. I am a leisure traveller and would have no problem in getting silver status based on the new tiers. Clearly ba are doing this to reduce the number of people with tier status, the same as companies all across the globe are taking emasures to reduce costs. Stop moaning and be grateful foe what you have which is clearly sufficient funds to allow you to take loads of holidays each year. Some people are not sa fortunate. It isn’t exactly the end pf the world is it.

    • John says:
      31 Dec31 December 10:25

      I have plenty of funds but they won’t be going to BA (well to be fair they already aren’t really going to BA)

    • RC says:
      31 Dec31 December 10:56

      Clearly a different opinion. But playing the ‘those less fortunate than you card’? Really?
      If you spend that much on leisure travel then perhaps you are not shopping around that well? Perfect for BA though: unquestioning customers with more money than sense who’ll feel even more important from April 2025 (as they overpay).

  • Simon says:
    31 Dec31 December 10:37

    Not sure if this comment has been made already (as trying to read through over 1300 so far!), but seems to me that BA may be inviting some Legal challenges under UK consumer protection regulations based on the timing of the changes – in year one at least. Anyone who purchased flights before yesterday for 1 April 2025 onwards as part of their unfinished status renewal planning for 2025/26 might reasonably claim to be a victim of misleading sales tactics – effectively a bait and switch – under the Unfair Trading Regulations. No doubt many will have been able to purchase enough TP-earning flights already for the selling period 1 April-19 Dec 2025 – obviously good news for them for another year. But anyone who was part way through that process may well have selected flights/cabins based on the representations made throughout voluminous Executive Club materials at the time of booking the flights.
    The obvious/simple solution and good customer relations (I know they don’t care!) would have been for BA to notify that these changes would be effective for bookings from 1 April 2025 but allow all flights booked over the next 3 months to continue to earn TPs at the previous levels. That solution only gives one more year of status if fully earned, but at least credits someone who was (in good faith) part way there.
    I get that the Exec Club terms say that they can change the TP earning system at any time, but doing it part way through the planning period for the next year is aggressive to put it mildly. Clearly they feared a cliff edge on bookings from April and decided to go all in yesterday.
    Should add that I can see the logic for the future changes, but the implementation has been botched yet again…

    • Nico says:
      31 Dec31 December 10:46

      Good luck with that and they surely got their own legal advise before doing it

    • Richie says:
      31 Dec31 December 10:46

      I do hope there are legal challenges.
      BA appealed to the Supreme court re Lipton v BACF and lost, it does appear that they think they are above English Law.

    • ianM says:
      31 Dec31 December 10:59

      +1 to that, CMA (and Consumer Scotland) should take a hard look at this announcement and implications for the consumer. New DMCC Act will also apply.

      • Richie says:
        31 Dec31 December 12:20

        The CMA has allowed Vodafone and Three to go forward with a merger, not sure if their teeth are blunt.

        • Lady London says:
          31 Dec31 December 14:28

          Thar’s very interesting and hard to understand as they blocked Three’s wish to merge with O2.

          Or did Hutchison perhaps say if acquisition of UK asset Three by Vodsfone is not allowed then Hutch will.exit the UK and close the business?

          It looked to me from the outside, as though Hutch had lost interesr in the UK around when Brexut happened.

      • Lady London says:
        31 Dec31 December 14:23

        DMCC ?

        • Simon says:
          31 Dec31 December 16:52

          It’s the 2024 Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. Penalties of up to 10% of global turnover can be imposed by the CMA (Competition & Markets Authority) if companies are proven to have misled consumers on digital selling activities (amongst other things) so supposedly has some teeth.
          Having achieved BA Silver (and a few golds) for 20+ years, and with 400 or so TP flights scheduled from next April onwards, I can say hand on heart that I wouldn’t have booked some of the much more expensive/higher earning TP cabins for next year if I knew that the rug was going to be pulled half way through.
          So was I misled? Yes.
          Is BA offering refunds for anyone taken in by these misleading sales practices and the botched implementation of the changes? No.
          Do I care enough to contact the CMA and ask them to look into this? Worth a go…

  • bamihapske says:
    31 Dec31 December 10:39

    Just did some thinking here. To reach silver (or maintain it), I needed 600 TPs via the old system. That level was reached after about 8 x long haul flights a 90 TPs (4 returns per year). Total cost of those flights was around 12k annually.

    If I spend this amount of money on the current system, I easily reach the 7.5k tier points (or 7.5k Pound Sterling) and am halfway to Gold.

    Yes, this is all travel for business and I totally see that leisure tier point runs are becoming more difficult to achieve.

    • Andy says:
      31 Dec31 December 10:59

      I tend to fly long haul once a year and short haul a couple of times a year (all business class and for business purposes)

      Typically a long haul to Hawaii and a couple of short hauls would get me Silver for £4-6k but now I’m not going to make it

      I get lounge access with the ticket and the only reason I want silver is because BA nickel and dime us with seat selection costs… price and convenience will be my only reasons for choosing BA now, already spent or cashed out most of my Avios haul to Nectar

      • Jonathan says:
        31 Dec31 December 11:36

        A lot more people will be doing that following yesterday’s announcement, even since the idea was first announced, there were plenty of people moving Avios to Nectar at the very maximum allowed

  • Paul says:
    31 Dec31 December 10:39

    I suspect getting a status extension by having a second child will likely be easier than the £20k spend for Gold 😅

    • Zain says:
      31 Dec31 December 11:32

      Exactly what some of us have been thinking! If the missus doesn’t want another 9 months of pain, might an adoption be eligible for a status extension? 😂

    • aseftel says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:32

      You should try claiming the status extension…

  • JB says:
    31 Dec31 December 10:44

    Trying to figure out the implications for my stash of aviva (such as it is). Presumably the future treatment of avios will be a bigger determining factor than the treatment of tier points and status when it comes to attracting leisure travellers?

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

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.

Get 25,000 Avios with the Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

GET A SIGN-UP BONUS OF 18,000 VIRGIN POINTS!

Latest Forum Posts

Get 80,000 bonus points (worth 80,000 Avios) and £400 of dining credit with The Platinum Card (Offer ends 27th May)

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Get up to 10,000 bonus Hilton Honors points

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.

SME? GET THE ONLY FREE SMALL BUSINESS CREDIT CARD WHICH CAN EARN AVIOS

Get points worth 30,000 Avios with 'first year free' American Express Gold (ends 27th May)

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.

Got it!