British Airways launches new Seattle lounge, confirms Heathrow rebuild for 2026

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

• Clive says:

  22 Feb22 February 10:06

  What is particularly interesting about this discussion is that after so many thousands of words have been posted, still nobody appears to understand what BA is trying to achieve by its ‘enhancement’ of the offering, of course as requested by us.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    22 Feb22 February 10:16

    Perhaps that’s because BA don’t really know themselves?

    And even if they do they’ve poorly articulated the reasons!

    • Nick says:

      22 Feb22 February 10:43

      Let’s say – hypothetically of course – you’re going on holiday with a 2-4-1 voucher booking in CW. How much extra would you pay for access to F wing and GF?

      Leisure customers are spending longer in the lounges than business customers used to – that’s why they seem so busy even though the total number eligible is the same as pre-covid. So as the old world isn’t coming back… why not at least charge them for it?

  • JDB says:

    22 Feb22 February 11:05

    I think it’s more a question of people not wanting to understand what BA is trying to achieve rather than actually not understanding.

    BA is very sensibly not spelling out what it’s trying to achieve and the rationale for it. Whether it will work out as they hope (or at least within the range) remains to be seen.

    • Clive says:

      22 Feb22 February 13:16

      If, as you correctly say, BA is carefully not spelling out what it is trying to achieve, how can it be a question of people not wanting to understand, as you suggest? Surely they can’t understand because it hasn’t been explained, and therefore there is still only speculation about the reasons.

      • JDB says:

        22 Feb22 February 14:08

        BA is not acting any differently than any other corporate implementing significant change or taking away benefits customers have got used. I don’t think it’s very difficult to understand what BA is doing, but in order to do so one needs to look at the bigger picture and consider it from the company’s perspective as well, rather than simply how it affects one personally and/or just getting angry which has been the fairly standard response.

        • Anthony Dunn says:

          22 Feb22 February 14:41

          It’s not as if people haven’t paid for the benefits they’ve got used to and it’s not exactly as if providing these benefits has crashed BA’s P&L is it?

          Sure, BA can decline to provide any semblance of a rationale – in which case neither they nor their apologists can whine when that void is filled with the sound of grinding teeth and paying customers stating “f*** you BA!” After all, it’s nothing personal and, as a paying passenger, it’s a strictly commercial decision dontcha know.

        • JDB says:

          22 Feb22 February 14:52

          Yes, it’s a strictly commercial decision in both directions!

          People have paid for the benefits but they have really paid very little for them compared to top statuses in say hotel schemes, the £15k spend now needed for a 241 etc.

        • Clive says:

          22 Feb22 February 15:13

          This is still not answering my question, which was directed at your criticism of ‘people not wanting to understand’, thus implying that they have made a choice not to understand. There has been no explanation by BA of its aim, so I really don’t think it fair to criticise those who don’t understand – like me – because this isn’t willful misunderstanding on our part, it’s genuine puzzlement. You say that ‘…it’s not difficult to understand what BA is doing’; please, therefore, explain what you understand the reasons to be, as you say it’s not difficult, for the benefit of the many contributors in the same position as me – failing to understand because it seems illogical and hasn’t been explained, not refusing to understand and being angry. I don’t believe that any post of mine has shown any signs of anger, but please correct me if you differ.

        • RC says:

          23 Feb23 February 16:53

          Nope
          As a customer all one cares about is what I get. I don’t run a charity for corporate shareholders.
          Now, businesses can change the terms of future business, but it is delusional to think corporates are ‘owed’ some sort of charitable understanding from customers.
          Airlines, especially as they erode rewards schemes, have only themselves to blame when the customer views choice on a purely transactional basis.
          Any airline that erodes trust and confidence from its customers is asking for trouble. BA has done just that – not necessarily because of the changes but definitely because of the abrupt nature of the change, some of the worst gaslighting coms I’ve ever seen, and because it still can’t explain how much of the scheme works, eg Amex, after almost two months.

• Garethgerry says:

  22 Feb22 February 10:31

  I think active HFP users overestimate the number of people moving to other oneworld programmes,. The vast majority can’t be bothered.

  Especially since silver is as good as gold. It’s only when you get to GL level gold becomes meaningful. (First wing at LHR excepted)

  Before Teir point inflation, gold used first lounges along with first.

  • Nico says:

    22 Feb22 February 10:42

    Results out next week, so will see if any change in booking trend.
    And I have with you, direct flights if you live in London will always be the winners, maybe less clear elsewhere, overall cant see empty planes as filled with american anyway

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      22 Feb22 February 11:02

      Aren’t those results for 2024?

      Hard to see any let alone a major impact on bookings for something that was only announced on the 30th December.

      • Nico says:

        22 Feb22 February 11:06

        Yes, results for 2024.
        They will also talk about summer booking trend at least on the call, which should be the interesting bit as easyjet, jet2 not been great.

      • JDB says:

        22 Feb22 February 11:10

        At the same time IAG will provide an outlook statement which will cover trading in the first couple of months and an indication of forward booking trends but probably not by airline.

        • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

          22 Feb22 February 11:27

          But is 6 weeks a long enough period to say the TP changes are having an effect on bookings?

          Things like the geopolitical situation and the economic outlook will have a bigger impact on bookings than the TP changes (which lets be honest only affect a relativly small subset of passengers that far outweights the noise they make).

          I had a US friend message me this week saying his trip to Europe this year is likely not going to happen (and if it does it’ll be booked very close in) because his job with the government will likely be ‘DOGEd’ at some point. I cancelled 2 US bookings for this summer on the 6th November.

        • JDB says:

          22 Feb22 February 11:54

          No, you are right that six weeks is a short period and it’s going to be difficult to separate out an TP change from the potentially much more serious economic headwinds.

          BA (and the other IAG airlines) will see clear forward booking trends vs previous years but obviously more for leisure than business.

        • Rob says:

          22 Feb22 February 12:52

          Bookings will be OK for a year. If you’ve got BA Silver or Gold you’d be stupid not to get full value from it over the next year.

          The only changes will be a) drop in Club Europe bookings albeit replaced by Economy and b) drop in BA Holidays bookings.

          The rest won’t be noticeable for a while. A lot of Golds may also be happy with a soft landing to Silver (if BA confirms it will happen) and not look to swap carriers until 2027.

        • jj says:

          22 Feb22 February 14:10

          @BAFlyer, this it OT,, but some people like you will decline to travel to the USA because of the political situation. But the evidence from within the USA is that far more people migrate internally because they are fleeing the Democrats than the Republicans. Most Blue states see a big net outflow from internal.migratiin, and most Red states see the opposite. Much has been written about the phenomenon of political migrants within the USA, but the statistics are unanswerable. So, there will be plenty of people to replace you.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    22 Feb22 February 11:14

    Vast majority of people can’t be bothered to join any FF programme in the first place.

    If they fly in Club or F they are still in the lounges.

    BA could have easily this by upping the thresholds every couple of years or so or reducing earnings on cheaper tickets.

    Example just priced up a return to NYC for random dates in May inc Saturday night

    Cheapest = £3,317
    Flexible = £ 12,013

    Yet under the old system both would earn the same 280 TPs

    • Rob says:

      22 Feb22 February 12:54

      But no-one is paying that £12,000 except, potentially, someone on a corporate deal who will be literally be paying less than half that after rebates.

      And £3,317 from me – who has a choice of carrier – is worth more than £12,000 who has to fly BA via their corporate deal (and only pays £5k net after rebates).

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        22 Feb22 February 14:26

        That’s not really my point though Rob. It’s that under the current system both were rewarded equally with the same TPs.

        BA could have reduced them in the cheaper fare buckets of they wanted to reduce the number of people with status.

        But how would TPs work under the new system for the corporate flyer,

        The individual would get them based on the £ 12k fare but they wouldn’t get any clawed back once their company gets the rebate would they.

      • JAXBA says:

        23 Feb23 February 12:32

        The £12,000 fares do get paid, even without corporate deals. I work for a corporate travel agent, and while most travel will be in economy, some pax are in the full J/C fares without rebate, because that’s what they need.

      • Pat says:

        23 Feb23 February 18:55

        What decade is your info from? £12k that ends up at £5k. Your info is seriously out of date.

        • Rob says:

          23 Feb23 February 19:54

          I didn’t mean the £12k literally became £5k, I was being simplistic. In my experience a good corporate deal will, for example, allow cancellation / changes on tickets which are usually non-refundable, giving the de facto benefits of a £12k ticket on a ticket costing far less.

    • Phillip says:

      22 Feb22 February 22:24

      As would a return between Lisbon and Helsinki on Finnair which can be had for just over £500.

  • Rob says:

    22 Feb22 February 12:59

    I agree with this. Most people will just walk away from BA entirely.

    Franly, once you’re tried (for the fifth time) to get into a lounge with your BA card whilst trying to keep your RJ number in your booking, you’ll be losing the will to live. It’s fine once you’ve got RJ status of course.

    • Garethgerry says:

      22 Feb22 February 15:56

      RJ status only needed for lounge if you are flying economy. So it won’t effect premium lesuire, or BA gold who find themselves silver. It will only effect BA gold who find themselves bronze. If there are a lot of these shows how perverse the old system was.

      • John says:

        22 Feb22 February 20:57

        You may have bought your RJ status for the first year, but you won’t be renewing it if you keep having your BA number in your bookings.

• Flier33 says:

  22 Feb22 February 11:03

  Was just at the BA lounge in Lagos, surprisingly good!

  • Rob says:

    22 Feb22 February 12:56

    Lagos is probably BA’s most profitable route outside North America. Virtually all corporate travellers on high fares.

    • Thegasman says:

      23 Feb23 February 14:36

      Corporates & kleptocrats. Neither care much about the price.

• Namster says:

  22 Feb22 February 13:53

  Why would you invest in the old terminal in Dubai which is going to be closed and replaced by Al Maktoum International Airport. It’s not a long term strategy

  • jjoohhnn says:

    24 Feb24 February 09:50

    They need to compete with Emirates.

• RC says:

  22 Feb22 February 17:12

  Not sure where merging the T5 F and CCR lounges comes from.
  There’s a separate CCR refurb plan, and with at least 8 F seats on the 777X (one day), BA plans on a sizeable (but less than 10 years ago) F proposition. There’s CCR, separated from the Golds and assorted guests is part of that – especially in summer when one becomes a crèche, and the CCR a refuge from that.

  You can dream of merger but they are separate for good reasons- so unless you have an F sector, GGL, Prem black card, or one of the very few still living and flying the historic Concorde regulars (accommodated by Prem or GGL4L) the access to the much higher level food and beverage will remain restricted.

• Paul says:

  22 Feb22 February 20:01

  The Seattle first lounge has gone completely. It’s all one lounge now . While it’s true you are given a separate menu if you are flying first the food is not great – cold beef rib and mash is what I had – and you are just sitting among the crowd

• Andy says:

  22 Feb22 February 22:40

  Did they fix the shower during the lounge refurb?

• MT says:

  23 Feb23 February 00:23

  The focus back to business travellers, hopefully we’ll see more pinch points sorted. Nudging LHR to reduce the typical 45 minute wait for “priority” bags at T5 would be good for longhaul travellers.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    23 Feb23 February 00:31

    BA doesn’t do priority bags.

    But the LHR part of the baggage system is pretty fast. The issue is the time it takes BA baggage handlers to unload the plane and get the bags to the unloading bay that’s BA responsibility not the airports.

    • Clive says:

      23 Feb23 February 13:05

      I have bitched for years to BA about Priority tags being little more than a joke, played on us by the baggage handlers. I have suggested that they send some managers to T4 to see how QR, their part-owner manages this so well. The nadir in our case was flying BGI – LGW in First, and finding that our bags were the last to arrive.

      However, earlier this month we flew LGW – ANU in CW, where the Priority baggage came through first, which left me muttering about BA achieving this at an out-station, but not at its home base. We flew back POS – LGW, where I almost fell over as a stream of Priority bags came through first. So has LGW got it right, at long last?

      Mind you, our e-ticket showed us flying POS – LGW on a day when the flight doesn’t operate!

      On a different point, in this post JDB told us that it was easy to understand BA’s aims in savaging the BAEC offering. I asked JDB to explain these reasons, for the benefit of those of us (I think the overwhelming majority) who clearly still don’t understand. There hasn’t been any response, so it remains a mystery to so many of us.

      • Thegasman says:

        23 Feb23 February 15:08

        Your bag situation actually makes sense. BA do provide baggage prioritisation on loading at LHR. Bags are placed in containers prior to being loaded & containers with priority bags are loaded last so first off at the destination. This should make it significantly more likely to arrive at carousel first/early. The priority status of your bag is also coded on the printed tag, the priority labels are just for show. My recollection is also that priority is only coded due to cabin & not status.

        On inbound legs from smaller outstations they have less control over how individual containers are filled & where they are loaded. The only way to ensure priority bag delivery would be to hold non priority bags back at the belt until they have dealt with all the orange/yellow tagged ones which is inefficient & doesn’t actually make your bag arrive any quicker. It’s a nice little ego boost though.

        • RC says:

          23 Feb23 February 18:26

          Doesn’t work most of the time:
          BA priority bag at Heathrow and outstation: 65-85 minutes after landing. Priority bags consistently delivered last.
          Delta- on belt after entry so less than 10 minutes.
          SAS: 15-25 minutes after landing Delta- and priority comes off first.
          Qantas: 30-40 minutes. Priority off first.

          If BA wants us to prioritise it for travel now the executive club has been gutted, so it’s crossing purely on price/quality/schedule (none of what BA have the best proposition in), it needs to be much better at this.

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