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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)

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  • Toby says:
    31 Dec31 December 12:08

    I’m not understanding the issue with a holiday booked between the 1st of April and 30th of June. If, as the article notes that the tier points that would’ve been earned, which in my case is 320, then it’s multiplied by 13.5 and then doubled, does that bag 8640 points? Which under the new system should achieve silver.

    • Nico says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:13

      Yes you are silver, but if you are chasing gold, look how far you are compared to before! And how much you need to spend to get there.

    • MrT says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:22

      But the total points are divided by number of passengers so unless you are going on your own ……..?

      • Nico says:
        31 Dec31 December 12:31

        Not if booked before yesterday
        I forgot to say it works for 2025, how to requalify a year later is a different matter, will cost a lot more!

        • Toby says:
          31 Dec31 December 12:35

          Now I’m even more confused.

          • Nico says:
            31 Dec31 December 12:46

            You are fine if you want to be silver

          • Toby says:
            31 Dec31 December 12:49

            Yes, but the holiday is for two people. Seems hot that BA are willing to give silver away for this short period between first of April and 30th of June. But does this mean that I will be greeting in in Silva until 31st of March 2027?

  • Julian Phatarfod says:
    31 Dec31 December 12:09

    Figured I’d use the morning to do a bit of maths, and I’m sure the hive mind here will have thoughts. I have a cash flight to Naples in April in Economy.

    So under the current system, that’s 5 tier points. As a % of the current Bronze threshold of 300, that’s 1.6% of earning.

    The cash fare was £64 but the fare was £18 so under the new system that’s 18 tier points. As a % of the new Bronze threshold of 3,500, that’s 0.005% of earning. (!!)

    Figured I’d do a comparison on some other One World airlines.

    On Qatar the flight is 6 Qpoints, and their equivalent tier threshold (QR Silver is BA Bronze) is 150, so 4% of the way there. Almost feels like I should be awarding to Qatar all along …

    On Cathay, the flight is 5 status points, and their equivalent tier threshold (CX Silver is BA Bronze) is 300, so the same as BA now and therefore 1.6% of the way there.

    On Iberia the flight is 15 Elite points, and their equivalent tier threshold (IB Plus Plata is BA Bronze) is 1,110. So 1.4% of the way.

    On Qantas the flight is 15 status credits, and their equivalent tier threshold (QF Silver is BA Bronze) is 300. So 5% of the way.

    So Qantas a clear winner (of my very small sample size … ), and seems like I should have been doing it all along, with Qatar a close second. Obviously needs 4 QF flights in an earning year but as an Australian, I think that’s going to be quite doable. Qatar’s ‘retain’ thresholds are lower too so that makes it possibly the most attractive. And maybe Qatar’s substantial destination network makes it more attractive choice from a loyalty perspective.

    I’ve obviously not included credit card spend and sustainable aviation fuel credits in this but I consider this relatively moot.

    I was going to compare with American and Finnair but they also do revenue based earning (also incl credit card spend for AA) so I didn’t really do the maths yet….

    • Nico says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:16

      Interesting – it is harder if you are using BA perks for fast track lounge and so on, also looking at different type of tickets maths may work differently

    • Charles Martel says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:27

      Qantas FF also have achievable lifetime status for Emerald and Sapphire, but there is a rumour they will be moving to revenue based status earning too. It’s almost as if theirs a Oneworld lizard people conspiracy to move in this direction.

      • QFFlyer says:
        31 Dec31 December 12:46

        QF lifetime Platinum (Emerald) is not exactly what most people would consider achievable, 75,000 SC – Lifetime Silver (Ruby) is 7,000 and Gold (Sapphire) 14,000, for comparison.

        Platinum is 1,400 to qualify, 1,200 to requalify – so 63 years (assuming you exactly scrape the threshold every year, you’d trigger Lifetime Platinum in your 63rd year).

        If you’re Platinum One, which is 3,600 SC (with no requal discount), it’s still 21 years.

  • George says:
    31 Dec31 December 12:10

    I’ve lost count of the number of times people have said that BA will lose a noticeable number of customers after they did something silly. This will be the same.

    The people commenting on here are probably a couple of hundred at most.

    • BrancasterLancaster says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:17

      The thing is though I can see people taking their business elsewhere as a result of these changes.

      Very few will say “never BA” because of it, but if status is harder to get (whether rightly or wrongly) then customers’ behaviour will be altered. Previously they might have spent a little more of a CE flight because that would have retained their status. Now they might not

      • FlyingTayto says:
        31 Dec31 December 12:34

        Or they may go for the LCC at a cheaper cost if they lose the status benefits, what real difference is there between BA & Easyjet or Jet2 on a European trip? Especially if your trip starts outside Greater London/SE.

      • Julian Davies says:
        31 Dec31 December 13:02

        That’s exactly the point, have been spending a little more to maintain GGL and now I probably won’t. First world problem so not going to be devastated, they made a business choice so will I.

    • Throwawayname says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:32

      Anyone who has to connect and has a choice of airlines/connection points would be mad to continue chasing BA status unless they’re close to achieving the lifetime version.

      They might still have reasons to fly BA (e.g. because their ex-EU premium fares can be cheaper than what better airlines charge), but such decisions won’t be driven by the loyalty scheme, and may well be made despite of it (i.e. for those that only ever fly upfront and don’t care about status giving them lounge access etc).

      What that’ll mean for the IAG bottom line is anyone’s guess, but, on the face of it, it looks like a big gamble at best.

    • AL says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:32

      This. BA flew somewhere in the region of 43m people last year. There are, probably, 30,000 (maybe) Gold and Silver members, noting that GGL isn’t a separate tier, and Prem and *fL are already covered. If all 30,000 refused to fly BA ever again, and they won’t for various reasons (including “British is best”, “LHR is my local airport”, “good route network” etc.), they’ve still got 42.97m people flying with them.

      Sure, those people are regular fliers, but regular fliers cost money. They’ve done the maths, they’ve calculated the ‘risk’, and they’re happy with it. Members aren’t, but this is BA’s game to play: their rules, their game. They change the goalposts, tough.

      • Xmenlongshot says:
        31 Dec31 December 12:36

        There are a lot more status members

        Lufthansa for example has hundreds of thousands of- BA will be no different

      • Geo says:
        31 Dec31 December 12:57

        You’re underestimating Silver and Gold members by more than a factor of 10 there. Only GGL can be counted on the thousands on one or two hands.

      • RC says:
        31 Dec31 December 14:26

        Mathematically very questionable analysis.
        Base data are off the mark , and then golds fly a lot more than average . Even the 0.3m silvers too.
        So BA could lose far more traffic than that, and disproportionately higher premium yield traffic too. So revenue hit could be equivalent to their profit margin if they’ve messed up here. (Time will tell on that).
        Your maths are as off as Vasu Raja was at AA (he got fired last year)

  • Janie says:
    31 Dec31 December 12:14

    Does anybody know if I will be able to backdate the TPs for an early April 25 flight to this year? Another year of Silver would be lovely.

    • AL says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:33

      Usually not, no. They’re posted to the membership year in which the flight was taken.

      • Geo says:
        31 Dec31 December 12:45

        BA have been known to offer 14 days grace period if you ‘just’ miss the tier point year if you contact customer services, but it’s not advertised and there is no guarantee.

  • Steph231 says:
    31 Dec31 December 12:15

    I am personally not sure these changes will have such an impact on BA. According to their own words there are more than 13 million BAEC members, probably a lot of these hardly “active”. When checking on statista.com, BA revenue in 2023 was 14.3 billion pounds. Reading some comments here (can’t spend the whole day to ready all of them), it looks like some loyal travellers will keep flying BA but credit to another OW airline, all the best for BA, others will probably just keep things as it is due to BA being a practical option. Remains those who will really stop using BA but what does it represent out of 14.3 billion pounds a year? Remember that people reading HfP and other blogs/forums/loyalty sites are a small group and most people filling in a B-777 or A-350 (at least in the back of the plane) are just taking one (or two) trips a year and don’t bother about chasing any kind of status. Even at the front of the plane some people are just looking at the best value for money based on their needs (me included).
    That BA (and a lot of airlines) don’t care about their customers is obvious but I tend to think that they know what they do.

    • QFFlyer says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:56

      This is an interesting point; sure, crediting the flights to another FFP will cost BA a marginal amount, but they’ll then (assuming the other FFP has status) pull in $ from that other FFP when those customers access the relevant lounge (assuming they don’t have access from class of travel).

      For e.g. most people in the Flounge aren’t flying F, so a (say) QF Platinum flying UK domestic Y arguably brings in money for BA (me, for example – although a handful of times every ~18 months, in my case, which doesn’t move the needle, but multiplied by however many, etc.).

      I guess they’ve done the figures, and have no idea how much airlines pay each other in these transactions, but it’s another thing amongst a huge heap of considerations.

      • Throwawayname says:
        31 Dec31 December 13:15

        There’s no way they could make an accurate forecast when all those variables are involved, much less condense it into the typical consultancy ppt presentation.

        • QFFlyer says:
          1 Jan1 January 08:00

          Maybe not accurate, it’ll be full of assumptions, that’s for sure. The data might not even be in a PPT, they’d just present a forecast saving/impact on revenue/something like that, I would assume.

          • Rob says:
            1 Jan1 January 08:30

            Oddly we DO have relevant data which I might publish.

            The truth about BA was that the benefits of Exec Club and Avios made people accept a substandard product. Strip that away and you’re in trouble.

      • Geo says:
        1 Jan1 January 10:06

        @Rob would love to see your analysis / any data on this when you are ready to share it

  • Jimmy says:
    31 Dec31 December 12:22

    To fly – to rip off

  • Matty says:
    31 Dec31 December 12:28

    I need 12k Tier points for Lifetime Gold. Surely, if I try hard enough, I should try to achieve that in the next three months, rather than trying to hit 20k every year going forward?

    • Mickael says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:33

      11 5-night BA holidays in SouthEast Asia flying with QA should be enough for you to reach Lifetime gold… but you have to start now 😀

    • Budva says:
      31 Dec31 December 12:35

      That is a lot of flying and money in 3 months!. I’m at a similar lifetime total. My plan is to do as much as I can now to reduce what I’d need under the new system, but there is no way I could manage 4000TP a month!

    • Dev says:
      31 Dec31 December 13:50

      Surely like the old system, you don’t actually need to hit Gold every year but just chalk off the TPs over time. It seems like you already have 361,000 lifetime TPs in the new system (23/35 =0.657…. 550000/100*65.7 =361,350).

      Can you knock off say 10,000 via flights, 2,500 on the Amex over a decade or so. You’ll hit lifetime gold eventually?

      (My opinion – don’t bother rationalising it. Choose another programme that works for you and credit there!)

  • Will says:
    31 Dec31 December 12:36

    I wonder where this leaves Priority Pass. Given that one of the more tangible perks is lounge access, I wonder if the PP lounges are more jammed full as a result of less people having BA status.

    • AL says:
      31 Dec31 December 15:33

      They’re already full, too. If PP were clever about it, they might introduce a tiered system and do away with the £20 whenever you want crap. But, then again, PP lounges aren’t great.

      Wagamama and Fortnums at T5 going to be getting an influx!

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