Too little, too late? British Airways backtracks on sector based tier qualification

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• BJ says:

  5 Feb5 February 09:06

  They should not have backtracked at all, it was the best thing they did since the launch of CW flat seats. They, and all other airlines, should stop the rot and scrap status entirely. Passengers should always get what they pay for, flying should not be like orange squash!

  • yonasl says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:42

    What are you even doing on this site?

    • BJ says:

      5 Feb5 February 09:53

      No interest in status as I either pay cash or miles for all premium flights. There is much more to travel, loyalty and HfP than status. Based on comments I’m also not alone in having these views.

    • JDB says:

      5 Feb5 February 10:13

      @yonasi – what is it about status that’s so important? Is it to access lounges that so many people complain about endlessly? Most of the elements can be purchased if they are so important and might well cost less than even the current TP system.

      If it’s to boast that I’m BA Gold dontcha know, that’s priceless of course.

      We shall become statusless and gain true Blue BA cards, but so what? I’m not bothered and my wife is even less bothered. We shall continue to collect and redeem Avios in premium cabins.

      • LittleNick says:

        5 Feb5 February 10:50

        You can’t purchase AA flagship lounge access on domestic us journeys no matter the ticket just can’t be done. I find this useful, and being able to access other one would lounges in the network when flying economy. Also accessing LAX QF F lounge when flying Aa domestic for example

        • BJ says:

          5 Feb5 February 11:11

          There are other
          lounges amd other ways of accessing them that do not require airline status.

        • JDB says:

          5 Feb5 February 11:47

          @LittleNick – of course there is the odd benefit you can’t buy, but frankly they are fripperies that one can easily live without. So many of these lounges are pretty grotty as well! The enthusiasm for bottom shelf lounge wine and food seems rather distorted by the supposedly ‘free’ aspect.

        • memesweeper says:

          5 Feb5 February 12:53

          If you take that view flying, in the vast majority of cases, is a frippery we can all live without.

          Status does confer some concrete benefits, and they are very important to regular economy passengers, as I once was.

  • Andi F says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:54

    But a decent status programme should be able to drive loyalty to the airline but as HFP has pointed out, BA are taking away any incentive for the people who have a choice and rewarding those who are contractually bound to the airline anyway. So yes, BA might as well do away with status but airlines that do it properly should not as it should drive loyalty and indirectly revenue.

    • BJ says:

      5 Feb5 February 11:48

      Loyalty would be better driven by quality hard and soft products, and by offering good value for money. Status dilutes and sometimes removes what paying passengers pay for, and hand it over to ‘elites’ who often fo not pay for it and who may have done littke or nothing of consequence to earn their status. The whole system is rotten to the core industry wide are requires drastic reform or scrapping.

• NRM says:

  5 Feb5 February 09:06

  Too little too late.
  – nothing to give any form of relief to most valued GGL customers
  – destruction of OW partner flights is a tragedy and I imagine OW partners will push them on that. I fly AA, AY, CX, JL, QF and QR precisely because of the alliance. Now there is little incentive and so I won’t. That means I won’t be GGL in which case just protect my SQ PPS instead.

  They are sycophantic mugs.

  • Dwadda says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:19

    They should have adapted the SQ PPS programme and hiked the tier points for attaining status. That is, SQ runs both a miles based programs AND a revenue based programme.

    • LittleNick says:

      5 Feb5 February 10:51

      Exactly, BA should have adopted both, and upped the requirements on their segment based old scheme

    • LittleNick says:

      5 Feb5 February 10:51

      Exactly, BA should have adopted both, and upped the requirements on their segment based old scheme

• Ziggy says:

  5 Feb5 February 09:10

  Re. an exodus to Iberia: Would it be possible for Iberia Plus to (a) set separate requirements for members based in Spain/South America and those based elsewhere and (b) have a way of genuinely verifying the location of its members so that there wasn’t any “cheating”?

  It sound overly complicated to me and therefore unlikely, but if it’s something that can be done I wouldn’t put it past IAG Loyalty to try something like this.

  • Rhys says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:32

    You could verify a real address by sending a verification code in the post. Wouldn’t make it impossible but would make it more challenging at least to fake residence somewhere else.

  • Phillip says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:43

    BA did exactly that in the 90s and 00s where residents of many European countries had different tier point thresholds. Anyone remember Gold for 600 tier points? You just had to register under a relevant address. No checks made but you did lose the ability to earn miles (as they were back then) through the online BA shopping portal etc.

    • Ziggy says:

      5 Feb5 February 09:56

      That’s what gave me the idea 🙂

    • John says:

      5 Feb5 February 10:01

      800 points to be technically correct.
      But that was not the best bit. Often there were special promotions. At one point it was possible to earn 420TP and 50,000 Avios for £300 in the space of a couple of hours.

• tomtom135 says:

  5 Feb5 February 09:12

  Why did BA do this in the first place? Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought they were highly profitable so why have they taken such a massive risk whilst simultaneously upsetting a large cohort of their frequent fliers? Is it supposedly revenue enhancing or just about exclusivity?

  • Rui N. says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:21

    Probably have a model saying that this would increase profitability by 0.01%, so it absolutely needed to be done.

  • Davey11 says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:24

    Because some overpaid genius at McKinsey explained that all these pesky status passengers were getting seat selection for free and if they could get a load of them to pay it would be a huge number – more profit and trebles all round.

    Flawless logic, flawed assumptions. See it all the time with the “smartest” people

  • LittleNick says:

    5 Feb5 February 11:05

    It’s a shame such people run and have such a massive influence over BA.

    • Richard says:

      5 Feb5 February 12:21

      On a recent CW flight the crew member I talked to said that they had a lot of time and support for Sean Doyle but he was surrounded by too many executives from the Willie Walsh days, and they were still calling the shots.

      I suspect that the BAEC changes have been driven through by this group, backed up with a McKinsey report on the financial benefits to BA of these changes, which Sean Doyle found hard to argue against.

      And the G/GGL status holders who formed the focus group moaning about the lounge capacity also added to the pressure to change the future tier point requirements without these individuals realising what the changes would mean for them.

      Personally, I have now status matched with Flying Blue and I will use the opportunity to try new carriers.

      • Dubious says:

        8 Feb8 February 14:17

        I do wonder if part of the thinking relates to the belief that air travel is going to get more and more expensive to the point that only the very wealthy will be able to fly. (At least that was the narrative a year or two ago – but perhaps partly as a form of industry lobbying). The response being to align the loyalty scheme to that new environment and future customer base:
        Status based on spend because the airline thinks it will start to get financially squeezed – and high(er) targets because travel will get more expensive in general.
        Avios Miles as a mass-market tool for everyone else as a way to diversify income (from non-flight costs) and encourage some demand in the form of reward flights (i.e. it’ll be so expensive to fly with cash that using miles will seem just as attractive as status is today).

        If that is part of what they’re thinking, I’m not sure I agree with the approach. (In high cost environments people tend to seek greater value for the cash).

        Might find some clues if we look at the implementation dates of Project Phoenix. Do the dates roughly align with cost increases from implementation dates for CORSIA / EU RED II / UK ETS and SAF mandates in various parts of the world (SAF production not scaling fast enough to match demand)?

• ayearinmx says:

  5 Feb5 February 09:13

  while you keep advertising the series on the other oneworld schemes, i feel like the longer you delay, the more people will have to research on their own (no bad thing)

  eg. I’m BA Gold, and will keep it until April 26, but my flights for this year are now going to Finnair because I want to try and get platinum there, and waiting until March/April before switching would mean missing out on a bunch of flights NOW. My point is, there is no point waiting until April to release all the scheme info, if you have it.

  • JDB says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:29

    The problem with looking at RJ and other (particularly OW) schemes is that it will inevitably be based on the programmes as they operate today and it’s probably quite rash to assume they won’t also change within the next 12 months. RJ as a very small OW player must be particularly vulnerable not only to pressure but is likely to suffer cost implications for passengers barely flying on their flights.

    • ayearinmx says:

      5 Feb5 February 09:34

      Finnair today, is better than BA today… for me at least, and i don’t think it’s rash in the slightest to move to a better carrier for individual needs.

      if they change, they change, but as it stands, i should be able to reach Finnair Platinum (OWE) on Finnair, which i have absolutely ZERO chance of acheiving on BA

      • JDB says:

        5 Feb5 February 10:01

        @ayearinmx – all I’m saying is that any of these other schemes could make very minor tweaks that completely change the sums and do so at short notice so you could be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. I have no idea whether that will happen, but it’s something to consider.

        • ayearinmx says:

          5 Feb5 February 10:33

          that is the same with every scheme, and exactly what BA did (well, BA did a MAJOR tweak)
          i can’t base my decisions on what they ‘might’ do, and I can’t delay making a decision because i’d be losing out if i kept with BA as their is zero incentive to stick with them. As it stands, I could credit to BA and maybe get Sapphire, or I could credit to Finnair and probably get Emerald. Doing nothing, can be just as much as a cardinal sin, as doing something.

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:33

    It was a waste of time until we saw the rollback details.

    • Barrel for Scraping says:

      5 Feb5 February 09:46

      Not a total waste of time – many schemes run on a calendar year and for many it would be good to know what the other schemes offer anyway.

      I quite like the look of the Finnair scheme, their thresholds are easier than BA but I can keep Avios and move them to BA if needed. But maybe Qatar or IB plus will be better. I’ve not checked those yet.

      What BA needs to do is think of benefits they can offer beyond the minimum oneworld requirements so there’s a benefit to staying with BA rather than becoming an RJ diamond tit or whatever bird their top tier is

• Richie says:

  5 Feb5 February 09:18

  Will Iberia/Air Nostrum operated scheduled flights count as part of the 50 sectors for silver?
  Say I want to go to Nice and are time rich enough to fly LHR-MAD-BCN-NCE, would that be 2 extra sectors compared to LON-NCE non-stop?

  • Richie says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:27

    It seems BA codeshare flights are included.

    • NorthernLass says:

      5 Feb5 February 09:34

      With IB cash prices being so low, this could be a good option if you want or need to do that much flying. I paid £27 for an IB domestic leg in August recently.

      • Richie says:

        5 Feb5 February 09:46

        The Iberia operated flight will need to have been booked with a BA codeshare flight number to be counted as part of the 25/ 50 sectors.

        • Barrel for Scraping says:

          5 Feb5 February 09:48

          So if IB codes don’t count it’s not really a rollback. Currently it can be BA operated and/or marketed (codeshare) or IB operated (with either IB or BA codes)

        • memesweeper says:

          5 Feb5 February 12:55

          BA code required

• Iain says:

  5 Feb5 February 09:26

  Are you sure the bonus points are per flight? BA have told me it’s per booking

• planeconcorde says:

  5 Feb5 February 09:31

  Have the bonus tier points been increased as well? I thought it was originally 100 per one-way Club Europe flight, but now is 175 bonus tier points per one-way Club Europe flight.

  • Rob says:

    5 Feb5 February 09:32

    Yes

    • Barrel for Scraping says:

      5 Feb5 February 09:48

      A tiny bit of good news

      • LittleNick says:

        5 Feb5 February 11:07

        Still peanuts, should have x10 so it would have been closer to pre change values

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