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

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

• SM says:

  31 Dec31 December 16:19

  As a shareholder this is good news. I dont think BA will be crying into their beers that the most unprofitable segment of their customer base are going elsewhere. Was good while.it lasted.

  • Rob says:

    31 Dec31 December 16:33

    Last time I looked, having a bunch of customers who put business your way which they should logically give to another provider (or put your way when they don’t even need the ‘product’ – ie flight – at all) is the dream goal of 99% of companies.

    • SM says:

      31 Dec31 December 16:45

      But the net effect of this is an unprofitable customer by the time they have achieved their Gold status? The bottom line is BA/IAG has decided they want full fare paying customers over those who have used loopholes to circumvent the system down the years. I accept things are nowhere near as lucrative as during the Tesco/BA Miles gold rush but as I say, it’s been a good run for those that have benefited from travelling at a higher class than they would normally do.

      • Rhys says:

        31 Dec31 December 16:52

        You’re assuming there are enough people out there happy to pay full fare. What if there aren’t? Lower load factors and presumably profits?

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        31 Dec31 December 17:03

        Doing ex-EU flights isn’t some sort of loophole or tick tick Tavel hack. It’s not illegal or immoral.

        It’s a direct result of decisions BA has taken as to pricing trips that start outside of the UK at a lower price than flights starting in the UK in order to attract customers.

        And it’s been doing that for years and years.

        If people doing such trips are unprofitable then that’s not our fault.

        EU based airlines also do it charging lower prices to people starting their trips away from their home market. This isn’t something that BA came up with all on its own.

        • Throwawayname says:

          31 Dec31 December 17:38

          …and the fact that those pax won’t get any status from going to the trouble of flying via LHR, and possibly also applying for a transit visa of sorts, is likely to mean that BA will need to offer even cheaper prices than the competition, which can’t be that good for its shareholders.

        • JimBurgessHill says:

          31 Dec31 December 19:04

          I was beginning to think ex-EU mega cheap business class fares were a thing of the past.

          Plugged in London to San Diego Club World for dates next September. We usually use BA Amex 241 vouchers on this route for annual visit to family. The cash price came back as expected at around £3K.
          Plugged in the identical flights & dates **except ticketed ex-DUB** and hey presto £1500 instantly saved per person. All that’s needed is a low cost positioning flight for the quick hop to DUB, staggering savings. And what with the current uproar about changes to BA exec club it’s fab to know that ex EU’s are still very much alive! Have used ex-EU’s many times over the last 15 years, along with Amex 241’s.

    • aroundtheworld says:

      31 Dec31 December 18:50

      Agree with this entirely. And that Gold had swelled a little too much. As well as first lounge at LHR still having toilets from a hospital – something had to give.

      But why not just push Gold TP to say 5000 and call it a day? Something else at play here.

    • Guido says:

      1 Jan1 January 10:07

      This is of course the essence of the matter. I joined a “loyalty” programme. I give my loyalty to BA, in return I get a range of (gold in my case) benefits. I value the benefits enough to keep putting business towards BA in a sufficient degree to retain gold. That loyalty comes at a cost to me. In the new structure, the cost to me is so elevated that the benefits no longer warrant it, not in the least because I travel only in business/club or first, so get quite a lot of things as part of the fare anyway.
      I will retain gold for 25/2026, but I have no intention whatsoever of pursuing this next year. Instead, I will simply move to booking the best value/most convenient carriers. Meanwhile, I will seek to use my almost 600K avios whenever I can until depleted, since I am no longer restrained by chasing tier points on BA instead.
      I would argue that the BA loyalty programme has been very effective for the last 15 years in getting me (and my spend) onto their planes – with that business now going elsewhere. As such, and as Rob has hinted several times, this seems to me a very poor decision by BA which will lose much, if not all, of the business I used to put their way. Almost every trip I have made in the last number of years could have been taken cheaper (for the same class) and often more convenient on other airlines and alliances. The fact that I (and I suspect others like me) kept choosing BA in order to maintain status with them seems to me to illustrate exactly why a good loyalty programme is of such benefit to an airline.

  • RC says:

    31 Dec31 December 18:09

    Unless you have insider knowledge, claiming one customer is profitable and another is not is quite a claim.
    In a high fixed cost network business in reality no one knows other than at the marginal contribution/cost.
    Few will know that and none that do will be permitted to post the data in public.
    So in short, the premise of your argument is utterly flawed, and indeed likely reflects personal biases or prejudices?

    • Rob says:

      31 Dec31 December 18:22

      The wacky world of airline economics requires deeper insight than a lot of people show.

      For example, lets say I book a £10,000 Club ticket to The Maldives on the day after the schools break up at Christmas. BA could sell that seat five times over. It doesn’t need me or my money.

      If I book a £200 return to Hamburg on BA instead of £175 on Eurowings at midday on a Wednesday where the aircraft is half empty, because I have status, my £200 is genuine marginal profit.

      When you understand this, you understand airline economics.

      I remmeber reading a business biography years ago where the author had his first breakthrough moment when he realised that the difference between profit and loss was not what he sold his product for (which was pretty much a commodity item) but what he sold his offcuts and production waste for.

• SM says:

  31 Dec31 December 16:25

  Whatever the motivations for this extraordinary change, I will now spend my money based on convenience, product and price. Will also cancel the BA PP and stop chasing vouchers.

  • danimal says:

    31 Dec31 December 16:39

    Why not do both? Spend your money with airlines based on convenience and their loyalty program, whilst still earning Avios and vouchers for cheap J long-haul flights which give you all the benefits of Silver.

• John says:

  31 Dec31 December 16:28

  Loving the article. I found it pretty entertaining watching all those freeloaders gaming the system cry. Best one of seen was the idea that AIG share price will go down when they stop flying BA which was hilarious.
  Hopefully soon we will stop seeing people pouring drinks from the lounge to their bottles and loading their backpacks full of food

  • Garethgerry says:

    31 Dec31 December 16:31

    😀😀😀😀😀😀

    • Garethgerry says:

      31 Dec31 December 16:33

      However , my wife does take a Chamomile teabag from lounge as 50:50 if they have one on board CW

      • flyingbanker says:

        31 Dec31 December 16:36

        See….. this is why this is happening 😉

      • Occasional Ranter says:

        31 Dec31 December 16:54

        It’s all Gareth’s wife’s fault ! I need a camomile tea to calm down now.

        • flyingbanker says:

          31 Dec31 December 17:23

          Too bad, there aren’t any left in the lounge because someone keeps pinching them

      • Flier33 says:

        31 Dec31 December 20:44

        I do the same 🙂

  • DW says:

    31 Dec31 December 16:39

    There are many customers unhappy about the change, doesn’t make them freeloaders.

    • ianM says:

      31 Dec31 December 16:57

      Indeed, and don’t tell me that a leisure traveller making best use of the rules as they were (eg BA pushing hard with double tier points on BAH) isn’t still returning a profit to BA in achieving their aspirational Silver or Gold.
      What it has done has polarised this community.

    • pbcold says:

      31 Dec31 December 17:03

      DW this is social media – one must ignore people who use terms such as “freeloaders” just as one would in real life.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    31 Dec31 December 17:21

    What “freeloaders” would these be?

    People aren’t getting TPs for free but taking part in the commercial market and using opportunities that are available to anyone to use.

    BA could have ended e.g. the BA Hols double TP scheme anytime it liked but it kept extending it for example.

  • RC says:

    31 Dec31 December 18:12

    AIG is an insurance company.it has nothing to do with BA.
    fare paying travel is not free, as you claim.

• Alastair says:

  31 Dec31 December 16:34

  Nothing other than a little ramble…

  I’ve only ever worked for ‘all economy policy’ employers, even when flying to Aus. Naturally I got creative with routings though and managed to pad the journey out with various stopovers (on their dime). Having a few years of Silver for this was great, and thanks to TP runs I learned to scuba dive in Sicily and sat through a Polish film that I thought would be in English in Dusseldorf. Fun times…

  At the start of Corona I moved to Finland and the only game out here is eye wateringly expensive AY. Those in the know out here readily share that for several years they were trying to sell themselves to IAG, hence various alignments were not a surprise.

  TPs and/or runs are pointless here (pun intended) so my whole strategy shifted to J redemptions which have been fairly fruitful – their Visa card gives a [generous] 2 Avios / Euro (60euro AF) – and if you know anything about Finland it’s not exactly the land of free-wheeling consumer credit based capitalism, so this always surprised me.

  In short perhaps this is really it now for the hobby: earn-and-burn on J with all the benefits that come with that – status is nothing other than a marketing gimick for the likes of McKinsey consultants who will fight internally at their organisations to keep the contracts with BA.

  • Throwawayname says:

    31 Dec31 December 17:03

    Doesn’t SAS work for Finland-based travellers?

    • Alastair says:

      31 Dec31 December 17:14

      Certainly worth a look-in, but unfortunately Finnair and Norwegian appear to be the only CC games in town.

      The Finnish Amex offering is an absolute joke sadly (coupled with narrower acceptance than in the UK)

      I recently matched KLM status too, and they’re OK on paper as they do serve an incredible amount of UK airports and I enjoyed their product both on ground and on-board, but the transfer and timings started to become a drag.

  • aroundtheworld says:

    31 Dec31 December 17:42

    Good insights and info. Earn and burn on J seems like the play now. Especially for now on AY in terms of redemption rates and product quality.

• Voian says:

  31 Dec31 December 16:55

  Indeed, plenty of people who had a fair amount of business travel but nowhere near the new thresholds. I wouldn’t call them freeloaders. I had years in which I was comfortably landing above 2000 TPs working on South African IPOs and doing weekly trips at GBP 5-7k a pop… And years when I had only 5 long hauls and had to supplement TPs with POUGs and AUPs to hit Gold at the end of the year. If BA doesn’t want this revenue that’s fine.

  I’d like to get one point straight though – there aren’t really bankers or lawyers who always book the most expensive flexible GBP 12k ticket, as Rob’s words may suggest. Yes, it happens once in a while – I remember booking last-minute flights SFO-LHR ($12k one-way on BA) or EWR-BOM on UA for $15k when I really had to be at a urgent meeting and there was nothing else available… But under normal circumstances, you’re dealing with travel booking software giving you b/s like “cheapest most logical flight” and if there’s JetBlue Mint available for $3k JFK to London, it’s already a struggle to get a marginally more expensive BA to get approved… You can’t just book the most expensive thing out there in the current environment where travel spend is scrutinized (and discouraged, as a general matter at banks, law firms, accounting firms etc.).

  • Bagoly says:

    31 Dec31 December 21:27

    It would be fascinating to know the breakdown of passengers paying over say £6k for TATL – how many through tied company arrangements, how many from free companies, how many independents etc.

    • Brightstar says:

      1 Jan1 January 00:56

      I had a long stretch working in one of the biggest global banks. Between 2015 and 2019 (when I left), the route deal for LHR-JFK-LHR was pretty consistently £2,500 on BA in J. I suspect there were rebates on top of that. This was pretty much fully flexible and available up until days before travel. Unless you were literally traveling in the next three days at a busy time, that was the price.

• Toby says:

  31 Dec31 December 17:10

  As a leisure based long haul traveller 1 maybe 2 long haul a year in business – I don’t mind this really.

  Still collect avios / companion -quieter lounges only downside really is having to decide whether to pay for seats

• James says:

  31 Dec31 December 17:17

  This is not actually a bad change. I like my lounges, priority boarding, and baggage allowance. Up until now I’ve had to pay business for these benefits on my holidays. Only because I bought business did I get status which defeated the purpose since I had paid for the benefits. Now I can fly economy (never really likes business on board) and bundle my hotel booking in and spend more money on my holiday and experiences and less on my flights while still getting status and the benefits that matter to me. On the plus side seeing all the freeloaders who get their status through cheap tier point runs lose their status means more chance of an upgrade for me and more room on the lounges. I think this will work for BA. The only people they will lose will be low value spenders and the odd VFF traveller or person who has hotel loyalty cards so books direct. Realistically speaking a aemi frequent leisure traveller putting all the work bookings including car hire and hotel through BA will still get status. The ones who don’t spend enough are not really BA’s concern.

• Points Hound says:

  31 Dec31 December 17:19

  BA in the last 10 mins have confirmed to someone on Twitter (X) that soft landings are to be kept in place and that they will drop from Gold to Silver.

  “ Hi. If you retain Gold going into the new collection year, you will keep this status until the collection year ends. If you don’t retain Gold, in the following collection year, we are still going to keep the ‘soft landing’ so you will fall to Silver. I hope this helps. Tony”

  • Geo says:

    1 Jan1 January 09:57

    Possibly that is the case this year maybe – but what about long term? The answer sadly isn’t giving that away but I hope for BA’s sake they are retained, if they have any sense.

    The consultants may have calculated the savings associated with not offering a soft landing and an airline with a short term view could find these very attractive.

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