Forums › Frequent flyer programs › British Airways Executive Club › BAEC changes – “2 yrs in the making” and based on “extensive modelling”? › Reply To: BAEC changes – “2 yrs in the making” and based on “extensive modelling”?
I gave up on BA and BA Gold several years ago. I let my status drop down all the levels to Blue.
When it came to online check-in I was offered a paid-upgrade to Business Class for about £60.
I guess this might have made a datapoint showing upselling might be more effective to low / no status passengers than those with status. To the extent they got a 100% increase in revenue from me.
What they don’t know of course is that I did not enjoy the flight experience nor much of my time in the lounge…and hence will be unlikely to repeat. Plus they don’t see that I spent my annual flight budget on carriers in StarAlliance instead of OneWorld.
Plenty of Gold and even GGL do (or did) these paid online upgrades (POUG).
They will know your annual spend with BA. If you stopped flying with BA they will also know that; had you continued to fly with BA, been offered more POUGs and declined them, their data would also show that. BA also records the prices at which people take up the offer or decline the offer, obviously.
When I was silver, I got plenty of free upgrades from WTP to CW and CW to F. It has been widely reported that silvers used to be offered these upgrades likely as a “taster” to see how many subsequently purchased the higher cabin outright. When my purchasing habits with BA did not change the upgrades stopped and I never got upgraded once as a gold.
I’m BA gold and will be next year but for the last time. I know BA won’t lose sleep about this on an individual level but now unshackled by BA loyalty my spending patterns have already changed. On my next trip I would have driven to Manchester and flown down to LHR and onwards all with BA and all in biz – now I’m flying from LBA with my now status match with KLM – I don’t care about biz (although KLM offer very cheap last minute upgrades) because LBA is so near where I live. Likewise an April trip to Dalaman I would have gone MAN-LHR-DLM in biz with BA now a direct flight from LBA with Jet2.
This is not in itself disastrous for BA but replicated across millions of customers it will be. Remember it was the leisure travellers that kept BA going during covid.
Which raises the question of why you didn’t do this before. Is it purely because of the KLM status match then? Had KLM offered a status match years ago, would you have switched to Skyteam regardless of the BAEC?
A £60 upgrade is probably because Economy is too full and someone must be upgraded anyway, possibly for free.
club return lhr-ncl out 6 aug 25, back 13 aug. Total cost £166.43. Air Passenger Duty – United Kingdom £28, passenger service charge £36.43, carrier charge £14, fare £88. Average each way cost of £83.215. Less APD that’s ~£69 each way. Less the passenger service charge that’s £51 each way. That needs to cover lounge, 1/2 blocked middle seat etc, etc. given the moving curtain in short haul club, surely they’re not selling seats this far in advance at a loss?
Well I guess £51 must be the break even / marginal sort of price.
They may want to operate the flight anyway for connections, so the rest of the seats can be sold at cost perhaps. Based on modelling of previous years’ summer school holiday data of how many long-haul connecting tickets they have sold.
Also NCL flights are amongst the first to get canned during bad weather or other disruption. Any issues and they will just send you on the train, or even a coach / taxis to and from Heathrow. If there aren’t enough seats sold closer to the date of the flight, they may combine two flights into one, or rarely, even allocate another flight if one gets overbooked. I have seen all this happen over the years.
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