Tier points grace period – still available in 2024?

[baflyer12345]

Hi everyone, new here! Tried to piggyback on an old chain on the same topic but it didn’t seem to work so starting a new one 🙂

I wondered if anyone has had any experience with getting the two-week grace period applied recently? I took an additional internal UK business flight for the sole purpose of pushing myself above the 600 TP threshold for silver within the grace period (within the two weeks after my tier point collection year ended in January). After the tier points hit my account, I contacted BA to ask if they could manually change my status to silver as people have suggested but after well over a month and multiple follow-ups (responded to by customer services with assurances that someone in the Executive Club team was investigating) I have not heard anything back and I’m starting to get a bit nervous. I have booked quite a few flights for the rest of the year on the assumption that I’d be able to retain my silver status by utilising the grace period…

If any one has had any recent experiences or tips on who exactly to contact/how to ‘escalate’ would be much appreciated!

Thanks a lot in advance

[Richie]

Were the flights before 23:59 8th January 24?

[Jerseyboy]

They seemed to have become a lot stricter now as same issue with me (this was to maintain Gold) No joy for me and I was moved down to Silver – Tried to appeal through Gold Line and no joy!

[tiriavpo]

Richie wrote:

Were the flights before 23:59 8th January 24?

Although the term ‘grace period’ is ambiguous (used variously to refer to the 7 or so weeks of status after the end of the TP collection year – or the mythical 2-week period after the 8th when BA was historically quite happy to ‘backdate’ TPs to the previous year) I think the OP is referring to flights taken after the 8th, and hoping to have them allocated to the previous year.

Pre-covid, this was so commonly applied that it was accepted as standard behaviour. During covid, they cracked down, especially when people were asking for back dated TPs to achieve the already reduced TP thresholds. Since then I’m not sure it has re-appeared – and with all of the staff turnover, and the fact that it was never a published procedure, I fear you might be lucky. It would be interesting to hear of any success stories.

Conversely, there have been several reports recently of people not achieving their target (not even close) but having their status retained. So who knows.

[Richie]

Thanks for that @tiriavpo I understood the grace period was all about posting delays.

[baflyer12345]

tiriavpo wrote:

Richie wrote:

Were the flights before 23:59 8th January 24?

Although the term ‘grace period’ is ambiguous (used variously to refer to the 7 or so weeks of status after the end of the TP collection year – or the mythical 2-week period after the 8th when BA was historically quite happy to ‘backdate’ TPs to the previous year) I think the OP is referring to flights taken after the 8th, and hoping to have them allocated to the previous year.

Pre-covid, this was so commonly applied that it was accepted as standard behaviour. During covid, they cracked down, especially when people were asking for back dated TPs to achieve the already reduced TP thresholds. Since then I’m not sure it has re-appeared – and with all of the staff turnover, and the fact that it was never a published procedure, I fear you might be lucky. It would be interesting to hear of any success stories.

Conversely, there have been several reports recently of people not achieving their target (not even close) but having their status retained. So who knows.

Thanks very much all, although not the confident “it’ll be fine” response I was hoping for! (Especially jerseyboys directly analogous experience…)

Yes this is the situation – I am referring to the “mythical two weeks” after the 8th. What’s a bit annoying is that I had a perfect plan to upgrade a flight in early Jan to club Europe (in which case I would have cleared the silver threshold without needing the grace period) but then that flight got cancelled and I got shoved to a non-one world airline so I never got the opportunity to do my planned upgrade hence had to rely on a last-minute additional flight in the grace period.

I’d been under the impression that the covid ‘strictness’ was in relation to people trying to combine the 2 week grace period concept with the special reduced Covid thresholds. It does seem to be an “unofficial” policy but I’d seen it mentioned enough times (including by the official BA account on twitter) that I thought I could safely rely on it.

Either way, I’m a bit surprised they’ve taken over a month to get back to me – feels like it should have been a quick yes/no in principle.

[AJA]

@baflyer12345 Is it too late to apply for ORC Original Routing Credit for the flight that got cancelled in January?
This is when you contact BAEC and ask them to give you the TP and Avios for the cancelled flight. It only works where BA cancels the flight.

[baflyer12345]

Hey @AJA, unfortunately my plan was to upgrade it to business before I flew (there were loads of spare business seats available)… but it got cancelled before I did so the ORC would just be for the economy tier points (which wouldn’t have quite got me there). Really stupid of me.

Think I’ll give them a call on Monday and try to plead my case!

[jonr405]

Hi @baflyer12345 please let me know how you get on. I am in the same situation for 8 March year end. I currently have 1000TPs and am Silver. Will fly 560 TPs in the 2 weeks after 8 March.

I phoned up when the new TP year period was announced, and was told that the 2 week grace period would still be honoured…. Now I’m reading the opposite here.

I also wrote into customer service a few weeks ago, but still haven’t heard back from them. I doubt just the call will be enough to convince BA if they don’t want to play by the same rules. According to this thread in Flyertalk it was still being honoured in 2023, so after COVID but I guess BA could have changed the unwritten rules without notifying anyone….

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/2124982-ba-2-week-grace-period-tps.html