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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)

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

  • Nick says:
    1 Jan1 January 17:31

    Was just checking a holiday booked in CE in June. The points from that would be 1400 i guess but halved for us both.
    So i would need to do 5 of these to attain even bronze. I travel maybe 6 times a year one being long haul in F (if sale on) or CW so would just about get silver. That was valuable as seats were free (i always found it odd to pay £200 extra for seats when already paying £6000 for a holiday). I know they don’t want my kind of traveller but us leisure travellers do spend a fair bit of revenue that may well be used elsewhere.
    Lets face it the refits are on the slow side. Travelled in old CW in October and old F in Jan (as in no sliding doors) so must be a fair bit to do.

  • Jim Sutton says:
    1 Jan1 January 17:34

    Will we still get lounge access after 1st April when flying Club Europe, regardless of tier?

  • Bartolowicz says:
    1 Jan1 January 17:45

    Reading a lot of Rob’s comments on here and I don’t think even he understands how corporate deals work. We actively advertise in our recruitment and retention packs that you can get a BA silver or gold status through us when travelling corporately. We love it in HR because technically it isn’t an employer provided benefit but rather an incidental one meaning we don’t have to pay any additional tax or national insurance on it. Our employees love it to because unlike a company car or private healthcare package where they too have to pay a tax benefit, this doesn’t count. We do get good rebates from BA but the suggestion that a lot of corporates flights are forced is nonsense. Most of our flights are European short haul often at short notice and paid fully flexible. A mix of economy or club Europe based on seniority and trip purpose. Around 20% are long haul and we usually pay economy or club world with the occasional premium economy or first flight where needed. Not sure what the exact rebate is. I don’t sign the deals, just process the travel claims and expenses. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the CEOs in our head office get the premier card as a bonus for signing the deals. One of them was boasting the other day about having it and I wonder if this is part of the deal? This new system does encourage loyalty. It just requires a spend to go with. A lot of our employees really value having silver or gold status earned through us at work to then use on their leisure trips. Corporate and business is a competitive market and businesses get to choose who they tie their contracts with. Being able to reward our staff with benefits like this that they can use in their private time at no cost to us is fantastic. As a business, our large scale custom is much more valuable to BA than the odd leisure traveller. So it is no surprise they are targeting that market. The deals we can get elsewhere are apparently pretty sweet too but I’m led to believe that BA apparently have the most preferential flight times compared to other airlines. Why on earth would we fly our customers on EasyJet or Ryanair when we can fly them BA, get a rebate that offsets the difference in ticket costs, and reward our staff with status at no expense to us? That seems like rewarding loyalty to me.

    • Throwawayname says:
      1 Jan1 January 18:13

      I don’t have a view on Ryanair, but the choice between easyJet and BA on equivalent terms (i.e. comparable times/ease of airport access amd either no status whatsoever or membership of easyJet plus+ PP vs OWS) would be a complete no brainer for me. YMMV and all that.

      Incidentally, I am also not sure about whether advertising FFP perks on job postings is a good idea, but that’s a discussion for another time and place.

    • BrancasterLancaster says:
      1 Jan1 January 18:13

      From what you’ve said your employees don’t have a choice over the airline – it’s BA or the highway.

      The loyalty given is not from the individual, it’s from the corporate deal. I’m sure the employees do value the silver or gold status that they’re getting without spending a penny or making a conscious choice!

      • Throwawayname says:
        1 Jan1 January 18:16

        Imagine the culture shock for any BA-silver-through-corporate-deal going to Athens and trying out the A3 business class food and non- Schengen lounge.

    • vlcnc says:
      1 Jan1 January 18:19

      It isn’t rewarding loyalty though. Employees aren’t personally choosing to fly with BA, they are flying with BA because that’s who they are being told to by your company through the corporate deal you have. The benefit of status is incidental to them, not an active conscious choice. Nor does anyone choose their job based on this. They might not even like BA. Whereas a leisure or even someone self-employed might choose consciously to fly BA on their own money, spending more than they would without the carrot of having status.

    • Danny says:
      1 Jan1 January 18:42

      Sounds like your company is forcing employees to do BA corporate travel…if you are from such a company.

      Wouldn’t surprise me if BA sent some management stooges on here to try and add a positive spin…however futile

    • Garethgerry says:
      1 Jan1 January 19:15

      In our FSTE top 10 company, with huge spend only ONE premier card. The CEO, of whole company , CEOs of subsidiaries didn’t get it

    • roverinexile says:
      1 Jan1 January 20:06

      Given the change to the scheme, will you spend enough, particularly on those flying in Europe only or more juniors in economy, for them to hit the new thresholds? Seems like you may not be able to offer this benefit to everyone anymore.

      • BrancasterLancaster says:
        1 Jan1 January 20:29

        Guess they might need to reword their “recruitment and retention packs”

      • Mr. AC says:
        2 Jan2 January 02:50

        If I understood the HR person correctly the implication is that their employees get status instantly, without hitting the thresholds, simply with their corporate email or something similar. My company doesn’t have this for BA but had instant AF KLM Platinum this year, for example (I created an account for this, never flown AF before).

      • James says:
        2 Jan2 January 10:33

        If you fly mainly fully flexible inside Europe, you are surely more likely to hit status under these new rules? This is surely a benefit to those people

  • patrick says:
    1 Jan1 January 17:57

    @ The Original Nick, the one you want is VIP Santamaría, Terminal 1, Level 3, via elevator near Gate 5, After Security.

  • Ali Painter says:
    1 Jan1 January 18:05

    I can also see BA follow Qatar and put OW flyers in a separate lounge. Still get the payments but offer a cheaper service. This will also discourage BA frequent flyers using another reward scheme.
    And why not? If you want the best lounges that Qatar offer then book first class with the airline.
    Current BA First lounges are crammed and seldom with first tickets. I feel sorry for those on a once in a lifetime trip, having saved for years to get a first class experience, and get swamped with economy travellers guzzling free booze and peanuts before their double TP trip to Ibiza to keep up their status.
    Maybe First Class lounges will become calmer, emptier, and more valued?

    • Rob says:
      1 Jan1 January 18:08

      Erm … the T5 First lounge is NOT for people on First Class tickets. They go to the Concorde Room. The ONLY people who use Galleries First in T5 are Gold card holders and equivalents. This is probably why you ‘seldom’ see a First Class flyer in there!

    • dundj says:
      1 Jan1 January 18:55

      As Rob has already pointed out, flying BA F, from LHR T5, gives access to the Concorde Room so no changes there anyway. Galleries First is simply a OW Emerald lounge.

      It is those GGL and Gold holders who are unable to reach the £20k after taxes threshold who will most likely drop to Silver. That is assuming spend remains with BA and OW airlines.

      I think Alaska, Air Canada and Air France/KLM would be the best options for Gold holders depending upon volume of flights taken or actual spend on airlines. For reward bookings, I’d say it is more likely that the former two are better to work with.

  • John says:
    1 Jan1 January 19:25

    Looking forward to Matt Jones’ analysis on Sunday. Best aviation YouTube content creator in the UK.

  • Garethgerry says:
    1 Jan1 January 19:27

    The BA holidays are a good deal if you have a long holiday in a top resort. A month in Mauritius last year would have got us both gold. But that would have meant BA Gatwick. No amount of tier points will tempt a luxury leisure traveller to get in those old planes.

    The state of Gatwick planes shows what BA really thinks of leisure market and leisure traveller, b****** all

    • Tariq says:
      2 Jan2 January 03:04

      Just the same contempt that VS showed for years in MAN and LGW.

    • Tim S says:
      3 Jan3 January 15:29

      This is what I don’t like about the deal

      book myself a 2 week holiday in a super luxury hotel in Bali (flying economy), and I can have sliver with that one transaction

      how does that make me a loyal BA customer?

      Do these hotels really rebate significant amounts to BA for the booking. The total price charged is already £800 lower than I can get by booking flights and hotel separately via the hotel’s own loyalty scheme.

      Where’s the flight spend for BA here?

      Oh and it wasn’t even 100% BA. the dates that I chose had no direct flights and the final hop was using Jetstar.

  • BSI1978 says:
    1 Jan1 January 20:00

    5 comments (well 4 after mine I guess) from 2k people; come on – let’s do this!!!!

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