‘Soft landings’ are definitely staying at British Airways Club, as 30th April proved

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• Gerry says:

  6 May6 May 15:25

  I’m trying to figure out why my collection year is so mismatched with the card expiry… Any ideas?

  “Tier point collection year ends:
  Tuesday, March 31, 2026
  Membership card expiry:
  Monday, June 30, 2025”

  • Rob says:

    6 May6 May 15:56

    All collection years are now aligned to 31/3. Your current card should have expired 30/4 but, because of when you achieved status, you get the extra 2 months. Your next card expiry date will be 30/4/26.

• Andrew says:

  6 May6 May 16:07

  “Definitely staying” is quite the extrapolation from one data point during a period of extreme change… this may not age well.

• RC says:

  6 May6 May 16:29

  Interesting to see the same little cabal of 12 year olds on FT still in denial that soft landings were ever at risk.

  Definitely showing HfP is far better connected and informed than FT.

  • patrick says:

    6 May6 May 17:08

    What makes you think they are 12 years old? I find this comment really very strange.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      6 May6 May 21:26

      Because at times a small cabal behave like 12 year olds.

      And it’s not pleasant when they do gang up on other posters – especially new comers.

  • ianM says:

    6 May6 May 18:12

    HfP said soft landings would def not continue

    • Rob says:

      6 May6 May 20:18

      Which was the original plan, hence RC’s comment.

      • RC says:

        6 May6 May 22:33

        Quite. Rob was totally correct and well- informed – there was never going to be soft landings but BA was able to reverse on that as the feedback from their most valuable customers was so bad. Anyone in the investment community knows that too.

        Interestingly, the next planned move (dynamic pricing for Avios redemption) has also been ‘parked’. For now, anyway.

        What is wrong is that a cabal of self appointed experts on FT think they can rewrite historical fact. (Most aren’t experts or particularly well informed).

        Now, having experienced some of those individuals ‘in action’ as a group in the London CCR, I can confirm that BA might be onto something with some of the BAC changes. But that’s for a different discussion.

        • Rob says:

          6 May6 May 22:49

          The power with Avios is moving to QAPC and they aren’t supporting dynamic pricing.

• tricky says:

  6 May6 May 17:08

  BA will not want a large number of gold, descending into silver… I can see this loop hole being closed..

  Unless you spend money with BA they don’t want you and the quicker they can clear you out the better

  • NorthernLass says:

    6 May6 May 18:06

    And yet they have allowed exactly this!

    • LittleNick says:

      6 May6 May 18:23

      Yes but doesn’t mean they will next year. One should not make decisions based on something that may or may not happen next year

  • Rob says:

    6 May6 May 20:21

    Compared to letting people retain status via segments, this is a drop in the ocean.

    Any plan to quieten the lounges was totally trashed when qualification via (cheap) segments was brought back because, without wishing to state the obvious, someone who flies enough to qualify by segments will be spending a lot of time in the lounges.

    A lot of Golds weren’t actually flying that much – 7 x long hauls was enough, remember, which is usually 7 visits to a BA lounge assuming there isn’t one at the other end. Someone doing 26 return trips to EDI to requalify via segments will be doing 52 BA lounge visits.

    You can now earn Gold with just 2 x fully flex J flights to New York. Not a lot of lounge action going on there.

    • Charlie says:

      6 May6 May 23:05

      ‘…The power with Avios is moving to QAPC…’ I always understood the QAPC to be the Quality Assurance in Pathology Committee at the RCP. Which is rather appropriate 🙂

      • ADS says:

        7 May7 May 10:57

        i think it’s Qatar Airways Privilege Club !

• Chris D says:

  6 May6 May 17:36

  Soft landings happen because they’re an easy IT solution to the common problem of: “What happens if I’m Gold, but only accrue 8000 tier points?”

  Such a person should “morally” obviously renew at Silver, whereas a Gold who accrued 4000 should renew at Bronze — but without specialist IT work / reports (and according to the programme rules) they’d just be dumped back to Blue. Far easier to just soft land everyone.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    6 May6 May 21:37

    This is why it is ridiculous to say soft landings aren’t policy when to have had an IT solution developed to implement soft landings it would have required some sort of directive for resources to be used and a specification issued for the work to be done!

  • John says:

    6 May6 May 22:01

    How exactly is it easier, given that you need to check whether they’ve met the requirements to renew anyway. Without soft landing the logic is

    if TPs>20000 then gold
    else if TPs>7500 then silver
    else if TPs>3500 then bronze

    If you want to implement soft landings then you need an extra line to make them silver if they are currently gold but have between 3500 and 7500 (not the only way to do it but still not easier)

• Rob H not Rob says:

  7 May7 May 06:12

  I’ve never had any interest in tier points or BA status thankfully.,

  It’s quite refreshing to be watching this one from the terraces, and not the hospitality section.

• jonnyfly says:

  7 May7 May 07:48

  Is there any additional requirement be eligible for a soft landing?

  Eg to do 4x (or any) paid/revenue segments on BA/IB metal or on a BA flight number?

  I vaguely remember that used to be the case or am I imagining that..?

  • Rob says:

    7 May7 May 08:42

    Used to be the case that you needed 4 segments plus tier points to earn status, this has now gone.

• Adrian says:

  7 May7 May 09:20

  BA is just such a mess at the moment. I was on FT yesterday curious about nTP’s and the amount of errors (flights not posting or the amounts being incorrect) is incredible. This is so hard for the average flyer to work out what they are going to earn. When you book BA can’t or won’t tell you what tier points you will earn, it’s ludicrous. If you were trying to get silver or gold for next year then BA need to make it easier else people may just not bother.
  As many have said the trust has gone, soft landings may survive for this year, but you can’t trust BA at all that this will be the case in the long term? I am silver a year early as due to surgery i couldn’t travel the back end of last year and tbh there wasn’t much difference on our latest flight, slightly less Avios, slightly worse lounge, but travelling in J the rest is pretty much the same, in fact BA was so late with our first flight that we didn’t make the lounge at all and just about made our connection. It’ll be BA for another year as we burn through our Avios then we’ll see.

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