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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 elsewhereclick here to read more.

You can find out more about these changes on this special page of ba.com.

Comments (3839)

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

  • Davey11 says:

    Why didn’t they just bump up the TP requirements for each level – say Bronze 600, Silver 1000 and Gold 2000? Would reduce overall numbers so dealing with lounge overcrowding and priority boarding, prob sell more flights, be easily understandable and result in far less uproar.

    Prob would have saved a few million on McKinsey too – I’d have done it for a very reasonable rate 😉

  • John says:

    I’m an American reader and somewhat confused by the comments.

    What do lose dropping from gold to blue? From a brief read of the comments, it’s lounge access for BA, oneworld lounge access, 2 for 1 BA voucher, free seat allocation, fast track and the ego hit?

    All the airlines here offer the airline benefits (lounge access, seat fees, fast track, and 2F1) on credit cards.

    Presumably BA does (or will start doing) the same? Credit cards seem like a better way for BA to monetize the benefits.

    • Tom says:

      No, the US has an almost unique credit card market, nowhere else in the world I’m aware of do you get these benefits via a credit card. US merchants are overcharged fees by credit card providers in the US which they are used to pay for these benefits. In the UK and EU, the fee charged by credit card providers for this has been legally capped at a much lower level.

      There is no way BA can drive the same level of credit card revenue as the US airlines, which is the problem with copying their loyalty scheme model.

      • The Savage Squirrel says:

        You’ve missed that the UK credit card market is very different. You pay merchant transaction fees at nearly 10 times the rate the UK does (and the UK rate is limited by law – processors can’t increase it) so there’s vastly more profit margin to throw round in rewards in the US.

      • John says:

        Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe there is any regulation on annual credit card fees in the UK. Card issuers can set their own fees.

        Yes, the charges in US and Canada are very high relative to the UK but it strikes me the folks here (and certainly anyone dropping a few thousand on a tier point run) would suck it up. What works here could work there.

        Let’s wait and see 🙂

        • Nico says:

          There is a cap on fee charged per transaction in the UK, annuel fee no, guess you cant only ask so much upfront

        • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

          An annual fee for a card isn’t the same as the card processing fee.

          The former isn’t regulated but the latter is.

        • KyaCat says:

          Here John, read this: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/payment-surcharges. UK is a whole different ball game than the US. UK credit cards will never provide the type of benefits you get with loyalty status.

          • John says:

            Yes, of course. I forgot, Britain is very different. A British friend explained to me recently how Nigel Farage won’t be your next PM.

    • Dubious says:

      Unfortunately all that’s done in the USA is to degrade the quality of the lounge offerings and ‘upgrades’ (in combination with airline management seeking to slash costs once they’ve found new revenue).

      The whole upgrade waiting list displayed at the gates is an example of the production-line culture the airline industry has in the USA.

      • John says:

        Sure. But strikes me the business model is more profitable if well executed. Be interesting to see how this plays out 🙂

  • George says:

    As Roy Keane once said, if you want loyalty get a dog

  • Garethgerry says:

    It goes back to if every one has priority no has priority.

    When BAEC if I remember was first introduced, you needed 9.5 CW transatlantic NY to get Gold (80 each way , only 100 for longer routes) 30 CE, even then Gold was not rare as they predicted. But lounges weren’t the zoo they are now

    If Gold is supposed to be for their most valuable customers £20k is not unreasonable.

    Silver gives Leisure travellers most of what they , want £7k is not that high to be high value special lesuire traveller. Less frequent Leisure travellers can get most of this by flying Business.

    Sorry if you want to fly economy at economy prices then you need to fly a hell of a lot to be of any value to BA. I note they have dropped (I think some time ago) the guarranteed silver for was it 40 or 50 return flights on BA metal.

    Rob’s argument that this rewards business flyers with corporate deals who have to fly BA , so why do it. They should Reward non corporate people wh have a choice butspend less. Businesses have choice, and they will choose an airline for their deals than not only gives value, but one that rewards their staff , they do care about their staff.

    Any way , except for transatlantic NY, it’s very easy for a business traveller to find a good reason to fly on any airline they choose, the timing …… so they are not forced to fly BA.

    I’m sure BA worked all this out.

    • Garethgerry says:

      9.5 CW , New York returns for Gold

    • Dubious says:

      In some ways it suggests the lack of effective competition in the market, or that BA are vastly superior to their competitors (e.g. through direct flights and times preferred by customers).

      If people/customers had a real choice BA may need more rewards/loyalty enticements to win them over.

    • Tim S says:

      I agree

      Except that it isn’t a 20K or a 7.5K spend, it’s some number, an unknown amount higher that that, which differs depending upon which OW airline you are flying with.

      That’s the bit that irks me.

  • whiskerxx says:

    I’m not sure I care one way or the other.
    I was BA Gold until yesterday.
    I did sixteen Oneworld long haul business class flights last year (leisure) and none of them were BA.
    All paid for using Avios.
    I don’t live in London.
    Previous experience makes me think I generally get better service/deal elsewhere.
    BA provide no real incentive to book with them.
    So I won’t.

  • Gareth Oakley says:

    Well I’m off to Finnair Plus. Most of my cash Oneworld bookings have been there for years (UK to Thailand via Helsinki) anyway and 2x trips in J is enough for Oneworld Sapphire. More interestingly – they also let you swap Avios for tier points (up to a limit).

    • Simon says:

      Good idea. Just book flights through Finnair on BA flights.

    • G says:

      Finnair are revenue based too.

      • Gerry says:

        Yes but Finnair requires approx 1/3 of BA’s new threshold for Gold status and that also comes with some upgrade vouchers which are actually usable.

  • Peter Taysum says:

    I think Flying Blue is the way forwards for me; based in NCL.

    Will be fun going via PAR and AMS more!

    Can we have have less on One World from HfP please?

  • Peter says:

    I got the official email from BA yesterday and responded: “Thank you but not interested. You have butchered your loyalty program to a degree that I am no longer interested in flying British Airways (Iberia etc.) or credit partner flights to it. I hope other members will do the same. There are way better alternatives in both airlines and loyalty programs. Enjoy your remaining customer base who have no choice but flying with you because their employer makes the choice of airline for them.” Maybe more people could give the feedback early rather than just stop flying BA and/or crediting miles to their Club.

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