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

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• Jill Kinkell says:

  31 Dec31 December 17:27

  I really don’t fancy a gut wrenching plunge from Gold to Blue in April 2026.

  • Jill Kinkell says:

    31 Dec31 December 17:30

    Just read the previous comment! So it’s a little gentle step instead!

    • Points Hound says:

      31 Dec31 December 17:43

      It’s looking more hopeful.

      I’d rather the language being used was ‘will not be changing’ as opposed to ‘we haven’t made any changes’ as you can’t help but here a feint “yet” being tagged on the end of the latter!!

      • Points Hound says:

        31 Dec31 December 17:44

        *hear

• Chris R says:

  31 Dec31 December 17:31

  I’m not fully following the logic of some comments suggesting those “losing out” as a result of these changes aren’t in BAs target market or are unprofitable. Surely a large chunk of current silver and gold customers are those who are less price sensitive and chose BA over the alternatives in order to achieve that very status. I don’t really see much commercial sense in this decision.

  I’m a blue member (travelling on CW etc using avios and have lounge access via Amex Plat) so this change doesn’t impact me, but I’d be really put off if I were a gold or silver member!

  • Dim Sum says:

    31 Dec31 December 18:16

    Chris R, the point is that under the new regime, “less price sensitive” effectively means you need to buy full-flex BA tickets.

    Nobody sensible does that unless they have to, because the price premium is rather horrific.

    The only people who do buy full-flex tickets are the people whose employers pay for it, because they are on corporate contracts, and so (as outlined by Rob in the original article) although the ticket price might show £12,000, as Rob said the company will typically receive a generous end-of-year rebate so they never actually pay anywhere near the “headline” £12,000 price that you and I would pay if we rocked up to BA and asked for a full-flex ticket.

    Meanwhile the so-called “£12,000” contributes towards the Gold balance under the new regime.

    These, as Rob said, are not people who “choose” BA. They are people who are FORCED to choose BA because their employer signed a contract.

    Everyone else has to earn Gold (or Silver) on the ex-tax, ex-fees value of the ticket. Which pretty much means your leisure traveller who books discount fares 3 or 6 months in advance has naff all chance of getting Gold.

    It also means that, for example, using a Round-The-World ticket to make a generous contribution to your Gold status is also out the window because the ex-tax ex-fees price of a Round-The-World ticket is typically naff all compared to the £20k you need for Gold under the new system.

• PB884 says:

  31 Dec31 December 17:31

  I asked the BA Twitter team about the soft landings and have just been told this: “Hi, thank you so much for your patience while we got back to you. To confirm, we haven’t made any changes to our ‘soft landing’ proposition. We hope this helps to put your mind at ease a little. If there’s something else we can help you with, please let us know!” Fingers crossed this is accurate.

  • ianM says:

    31 Dec31 December 17:33

    So much for ‘Nick from BA’

    • LittleNick says:

      31 Dec31 December 17:46

      Maybe they changed their position somewhat since Nick from BA commented given the online backlash

      • Danny says:

        31 Dec31 December 17:53

        Or Nick from BA hasn’t sent his missive to the social media team yet

    • Rob says:

      31 Dec31 December 17:51

      As mentioned elsewhere, we are talking about what happens on 1st April 2026 and not 1st April 2025. Nick is 95% accurate in what he posts on here.

      • Points Hound says:

        31 Dec31 December 18:02

        Rob, see BA’s responses to this tweet, this suggests they will continue as normal.

        https://x.com/elwyn87/status/1873782393766891768?s=46&t=vKRpshQQtGw1Pew30FoB_Q

        • Richie says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:04

          You really really really really can’t trust IAG.

        • Points Hound says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:05

          Specifically this part: https://x.com/elwyn87/status/1874061394917941383

          Ok so if i were to get Gold by April I would defin be Gold for 2024/2025 and then Silver for 2026/2027, Bronze for 2027/2028?

          BA response – Yes that’s correct.

        • Points Hound says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:06

          @Richie totally agree, until there is an official statement it could mean anything!

        • ianM says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:16

          I think you mean golf from 2025 to 2026, not 2024 to 2025?

        • ianM says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:16

          Or gold even 🙂

        • NFH says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:18

          Don’t forget that all these public statements by British Airways are binding contractual terms pursuant to Section 50 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. If it turns out that British Airways is making these public statements incorrectly, then they would be misleading actions in breach of Regulation 5 of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. I have used both pieces of legislation in litigation several times.

        • ianM says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:19

          I think the dates in your twitter message are all over the place unfortunately, the BA guy could be agreeing to anything !!

        • babyg_wc says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:23

          hmmm one last push for gold then and a soft landing to silver then bronze…?! unlikely to get the chance ever again…

        • Points Hound says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:57

          @ianM I know what you mean. It was the fact they OP on Twitter suggests a drop down over 3 consecutive years and they agreed. Clutching at straws perhaps 😂

        • JDB says:

          31 Dec31 December 18:58

          @NFH – a statement by BA’s X team would not constitute a public or binding statement on behalf of the company. That proposition could lead to such obviously ridiculous outcomes in any company. Anyway, if the X team turned out to be wrong and you took legal action – what would you actually be suing for?

        • ianM says:

          31 Dec31 December 19:06

          @JDB Quite likely to be a misleading omission under CPRs as pointshound suggests, and there would likely be a transactional decision made by a consumer.

        • ianM says:

          31 Dec31 December 19:06

          No suing involved, it’s criminal law.

        • NFH says:

          1 Jan1 January 09:09

          @JDB – Section 50 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 states:

          “Every contract to supply a service is to be treated as including as a term of the contract anything that is said or written to the consumer, by or on behalf of the trader, about the trader or the service, if—

          (a) it is taken into account by the consumer when deciding to enter into the contract, or

          (b) it is taken into account by the consumer when making any decision about the service after entering into the contract.”

          On what basis do you say that public statements by BA’s social media team are exempt? Is there any case law to support your assertion or are you merely surprised that the legislation exists?

• Davedent says:

  31 Dec31 December 18:07

  I can’t wait till a BA member of staff greets me as a gold member – lemmings.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    31 Dec31 December 18:42

    So you can have a go at them about something they had no say in?

    You’d be addressing your anger towards the wrong people.

  • Jc says:

    31 Dec31 December 18:47

    Not really the staffs fault is it. Blame the company..

• Mark says:

  31 Dec31 December 18:09

  I will have a gold card until 2026. Is there a one world partner I could transfer to to make the transition any easier? Will the ba holiday double tier points remain?

  • Namster says:

    31 Dec31 December 19:08

    Anyone but Oneworld Alliance, no more double TP’s , time to move on Buddy

  • Clive says:

    1 Jan1 January 11:38

    As a guess, I think that another OwnWorld airline would be regarded as cheating if it offered a status match to BAEC members, what we have to hope is that SkyTeam drop the charges on their current offer. I’ve looked into moving to QR (I’m a Burgundy member to get free wifi), but the problem would be having no status with QR while building up QR status. I doubt if they would regard OneWorld Emerald as counting if crediting the points to one’s QR account.

• busjon says:

  31 Dec31 December 19:40

  There is a group of losers and a smaller group of winners which arent just full fare First/Business. I can kind of see why BA have done this, as frustrating as it may seem.

  Clearly BA execs have targeted the holiday/hotel sector with these changes.

  Could be some winners chasing bronze/silver with the AMEX and holiday offers, along with the wider earning possibility

  Be interesting if ba chuck in targeted offers as well,

  For me who takes 2/3 PE returns long haul with work with some AMEX spend and limited leisure travel with very young child (no interest or possibility of Bus/First) I wonder if this is fairly neutral.

  Everybodies scenario is different here

  • John says:

    31 Dec31 December 20:13

    Best comment I’ve seen here so far. People need to take a deep breath.

    I see the credit card spend component limit increasing and targeted offers too.

    If you’re not spending £7.5k you probably don’t deserve silver status to be honest.

    Best wishes all for 2025 and may your adventures continue irrespective of tier status.

    • flyingbanker says:

      31 Dec31 December 20:28

      And re qualifying after year one at a lower rate?

    • Rob says:

      31 Dec31 December 20:34

      You are failing to understand that your £7,500 may be worthless to BA and my £7,500 may be valuable and that differentiation should be made.

      Let’s imagine you want to spend £2,500 booking our ‘top’ ad on mobile for a week each month. We can sell that space twice over each week. Your money is effectively worthless to us.

      Let’s imagine you want to spend £2,500 on a sponsored post each month. We can fit in as many of those as we can sell. Your £2,500 drops straight to the bottom line, all 100% of it. You’re our best customer.

      • John says:

        31 Dec31 December 21:16

        Yes Rob, I understand. But the BA revenue management teams will manage that £7.5k accordingly. How much do you think BA were making on those LHR-SOF TP runs?

        • Rob says:

          31 Dec31 December 21:29

          All of it, because those flights would not have happened otherwise. 100% marginal revenue, probably 80% straight to the bottom line.

        • Londonsteve says:

          31 Dec31 December 22:03

          An absolute ton of profit. SOF was sometimes 14 rows of J, on a route with often extremely low fares due to the intense competition from the LCCs reducing fares to as low as £15. Moreover, the LCCs were offering multiple departures a day compared to BA’s single flight. Without the TP incentive next to nobody would pay £500 for a J return to SOF from London when you could get largely the same experience down the back (with status) for often £150 rtn, or regularly for £75 (or less) with an LCC.

          TP runners were keeping the route alive. A legitimate point of view is that this is artificial business and without it the route should close if it can’t wash its face, but then BA loses valuable transfer business heading to a city that isn’t otherwise served by direct TATL flights.

        • Tom says:

          1 Jan1 January 06:29

          No, no you don’t understand, clearly. This change is not just disincentivising TP runners which makes sense. It’s also telling the leisure traveler who spends almost £2K on a highly profitable WTP ticket to JFK four times a year to get lost and go fly with VS instead, they won’t even make Silver now.

      • John says:

        31 Dec31 December 21:34

        “All of it, because those flights would not have happened otherwise. 100% marginal revenue, probably 80% straight to the bottom line.” Good one! Have a stiff drink and Happy New Year!

        • BOSSMANTRAVELS says:

          31 Dec31 December 22:23

          But it ends up costing BA way more as a large majority were abusing the route to obtain Gold which has a knock on impact leading to overcrowded lounges, costing BA more with food and drink, free seat selections etc etc. the majority of people are upset as they were essentially getting something really cheap and BA have called time on it instead of saying it was good whilst it lasted. They keep mentioning loyalty but BA have just stopped the cheap way to status. The big losers are the loyal customers who take 40/50 flights and won’t get status not the people who have found a loophole and are now crying they will never use BA again….well not until the next time!

        • Track says:

          1 Jan1 January 05:27

          “Costing BA more with food and drink” — BA solved this problem long ago with First Lounge offering burger and lasagna, or steak pie of sorts. All is low quality, pub food.

          Accountants mindset: “each person who didn’t pay a seat selection fee generating us a loss”. Pretty much similar to LCC mindset – each person who doesn’t pay for extras gets a freebie flight for £10 quid, and frankly shouldn’t be allowed on our shiny airplane.

      • Xmenlongshot says:

        31 Dec31 December 23:41

        How would that differentiation be made though? You might be able to track it for your website (and if it is that easy to sell the top ad you probably aren’t charging enough) – harder for an airline to do. If the airline gets the marginal pricing right, there isn’t another customer waiting in the wings at that price. Granted filling an otherwise empty seat will make sense in most cases if above marginal cost. But the airline won’t say – hey all your flights were midday on a random Wednesday you are now super profitable and get Gold, whereas the family paying extortionate half term prices is irrelevant because there would have been someone else buying the ticket in their absence. Way too complicated – just focusing on headline revenue is the only way to do it

  • Rob says:

    31 Dec31 December 20:39

    Disagree. If they REALLY wanted to incentivise holidays they would allow the option of either a) the lead booker having all the points or b) them being split. At the very least, splitting the points only across adult flyers, excluding kids from the calculation, would have been better. I doubt anyone will be delighted to see their kids hit Bronze when instead they could have had Silver.

    • LittleNick says:

      31 Dec31 December 21:07

      Do you think Ba Holidays may allow this in future? Lead booked keeps TPs and they might have Bonus rates, so maybe 2x TPs on spend going to lead booker to help someone maintain status?

    • Douglas says:

      31 Dec31 December 22:12

      Exactly this – there is no additional incentive for me to book a BA holiday than there was before the change as my 6 & 9 year old gaining bronze at the expense of me reaching silver or gold is just daft. Bronze would be of no use to either of them as they won’t be travelling without me and that’ll apply at least until their mid to late teens.

    • Dubious says:

      31 Dec31 December 22:58

      “a) the lead booker having all the points or b) them being split.”

      Although one way around this is to omit the BAEC numbers of the other passengers in the BAH booking. The points then all go to the lead traveller.

      • Thomas says:

        31 Dec31 December 23:24

        No, BA split by passengers and any party without BAEC, they(BA)keep the TP and no one gets that share. I’m sure plenty of 4 year olds suddenly get bronze like their parents

• jay says:

  31 Dec31 December 19:51

  I have. a question- I am silver at the moment and have done enough to retain Silver for next year ( on current model) will I keep this now for the year or will it be removed from April 2025?

  • Namster says:

    1 Jan1 January 09:09

    @jay , happy blue year for everyone in 2025, unless BA u-turn

    • ianM says:

      1 Jan1 January 10:12

      Incorrect fake news 🙁

• Aaron P. says:

  31 Dec31 December 20:15

  As always, the vocal minority delude themselves into thinking that because they are all shouting very loud they will be listened to. The silent majority will carry on funding BA.

  The new BA holidays offer is actually better than double tier points in my opinion. Return flight to Dubai with 5 nights all inclusive flying economy. Old system would be 140TP of only just half way to bronze. Under the new system depending on your choice of hotel you could bag bronze outright with this and be well on your way to silver. I don’t really get this obsession with gold.

  Ok so you get the first lounge and first wing at Heathrow instead of the club lounge and club wing and get boarding group 1 instead of 2. That’s about it. Most other airports have you in the same lounge and in the same check in queue and there isn’t really much difference. There will be a teething issue but a good bit of marketing and some promotional bonuses will see this take off. The small number of people commenting do not speak for the silent majority who will carry on spending with BA anyway. The only way I can see you losing out on this is if you frequently fly to see family/friends and stay with them instead of a hotel or you excessively travel on cheap flights that score high TPs like Sofia runs.

  • Rob says:

    31 Dec31 December 20:29

    Lot of assumptions there though:

    *that you won’t get a bad deal on the hotel (flying economy, there isn’t a lot of fat to cut so the whole flight + hotel package may be cheaper bought separately)

    *that you have no interest in hotel points or have no hotel status to upgrade you or don’t need the elite nights

    *that you travel alone, because otherwise splitting the value across all travellers including kids will cripple your earnings

    *that you have a good reason for not paying Royal Jordanian $49 to get BA Bronze equivalent instead

    • Aaron P. says:

      31 Dec31 December 21:03

      Assumption 1 – I can only speak from personal experience but I’ve always checked the price of booking separately vs together with BA and have always found BA holidays to be cheaper.l even if only marginally. Plus it then comes with ATOL protection and BA is jointly liable for my hotel stay anything goes wrong. I’ve always found BA to be incredibly helpful on the odd occasion something has gone wrong and I really do trust them to look after me while I am away.

      Assumption 2) Yes, I have no interest in hotel points. Just as some people have no interest in airline status. I prefer free choice of hotels rather than sticking to a chain and find hotel point chasing to be very uneconomical. Each to their own. If you want to chase hotel status then fine but I value airline status over this.

      Assumption 3) most frequent fliers (it’s a frequent flier programme after all) probably do travel alone or with just their partner. Most of my bookings are solo trips or the odd jolly off with a few friends. How many times are you taking the kids away on holiday? And if you are taking the kids the premium you’re paying during holiday season will probably rocket you to gold on a revenue based system.

      Assumption 4) Because under the new system I will easily achieve silver so why pay money for something I don’t need?

      • Rui N. says:

        31 Dec31 December 21:52

        You are completely delusional if you think #3 is common lmao

        • Aaron P. says:

          31 Dec31 December 22:28

          Gaming the double tier points to achieve a status card for you and your whole family is probably part of the reason why this has changed. BA will have no problem selling school holiday seats at a premium. The business provided by these people claiming they will now go elsewhere will not be lost. They might take their cash elsewhere but during the school holidays you’ll find no shortage of people to replace them. These people won’t be spending much with BA that they can’t get from elsewhere. I really can’t see much business being lost here. Genuine high spend frequent fliers will stay. It’s a sad truth that if you have kids you’re a captive audience.l and the travel industry has always exploited this. You won’t be flying much outside the holidays for childcare reasons unless you’re travelling for work. I’m sure there will be the odd exception but there will be no shortage of families wanting to spend their money with BA or any other airline during peak periods. From the airline’s perspective the ‘lost’ business from this group of people will be easily replaced. The removal of screaming kids from the lounges and having to hunt for a seat because everyone and their dog has a silver card will be a considerable improvement to the scheme. I reiterate my point. The vocal minority are shouting very loud about this. There is a silent majority quietly celebrating this. Please don’t delude yourself into thinking that the volume of this minority is going to wash with BA. There are tens of thousands of people in the executive club who will continue to spend with BA. The tiny number of low spenders upset about the end of the free run will not be much of a loss to them. The costs saved and the potential gains from people upping their spend to meet the thresholds or rebuffing how they spend by booking hotels via BA holidays will more that offset this loss.

        • Danny says:

          31 Dec31 December 23:15

          Aaron, BA hardly offers an aspirational experience – on the ground or in the air. However, people judged that the existing BA scheme offered reasonable value. Many therefore compromised based on this.

          This compromise will no longer be there and I doubt BA will upgrade itself. Will be interesting to see how the airline evolves, if at all.

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