-
Where I work we’ve never done much business class travel (about a dozen members of the exec only) so I’ve never understood companies spending what Rob says is £12k on a flight to NYC. Is that really a credible target market?
What I’ve not seen mentioned before is that these people on £12k tickets now find it EASIER to leave BA.
Assume I am flying all my NYC trips in fully flex J at £12,000 a time. Before, I had to fly 7 returns a year to get Gold. Now I only need to do 2.
There will be people who will do 2, say ‘thanks very much, that’s my lounge access on short haul sorted’, and clear off to Virgin or whoever for their remaining £12k flights to build top tier with another alliance.
You already see this with the heaviest hotel stayers who will ensure they do just enough to retain top tier with multiple chains.
One chunky BAH every other year would keep you at Silver, unless they tinker with the system again. So £3750 spend per year. I spent around £3k getting gold this year, but more than half my bookings for 2025 are really cheap cash fares on IB, all under £50 per leg. A couple of BA award bookings, mainly to try out the CX First lounge in T3! The rest spread between Virgin, AA, Ryanair and Silver Airways.
One chunky BAH every other year would keep you at Silver, unless they tinker with the system again. So £3750 spend per year. I spent around £3k getting gold this year, but more than half my bookings for 2025 are really cheap cash fares on IB, all under £50 per leg. A couple of BA award bookings, mainly to try out the CX First lounge in T3! The rest spread between Virgin, AA, Ryanair and Silver Airways.
Not with soft landings removed.
£3750 is also clearly bad value for Silver. The going rate in smart wine for a mate who has a Silver Gold Guest List nomination to give away is £500 and that covered you for 26 months.
I did a lot of travelling, CW to NewYork amongst many other places, fully flexible business class, our corporate deal was half the quoted full fare. I doubt if things have changed. So big corporate customers will pay nearer £6k . I doubt if there’s much business in the occasional £12k fare, from companies with no deal
However even at £6k this will suit business customers, 4 CW to get Gold, and emptier lounges. The more frequent flyers will stay because this will make GGL with true perks easier to get
It makes no sense at all to try to hit this spend as a leisure traveller, it’s cheaper to pay for seats and a decent meal at the airport each time. That’s assuming BAH is the cheaper option, which it probably won’t be. I really hope Amex bring the lounge booking option back for next year.
@Rob, there have been suggestions both ways on soft landings, but this actually isn’t an issue if you don’t care about Bronze anyway. Unless BA changes the status system again, one qualifying trip in April should give you status for nearly 2 years – hence you’d only need to book a £7500 BAH every other year.
@strickers, this is just our circumstances but each year we have an expensive trip to GCM which easily costs £3-4k for flights, accommodation and car hire (and a fair bit more if both of us are on cash flights). We may as well put this spend through BA, especially as BA runs the only direct flight there, and get Silver for the benefits when travelling on other OW airlines in economy.@NorthernLass I get that, but with only half the BAH cost crediting towards each account it’s still going to be quite a stretch to hit Silver? The fact that hotels booked through BAH aren’t qualifying for hotel status would be a problem for me too.
You need to be craftier than that, @strickers! I will be travelling on a £7500 BAH and will get all the TPs. OH will accompany me on an avios seat and share the car and hotel, as we have already been doing for years.
I usually have a mix of BA hotels plus direct bookings on our trips as well. I’m also HH gold from the Barclaycard for as long as that exists, so that’s not a problem yet …
You need to be craftier than that, @strickers! I will be travelling on a £7500 BAH and will get all the TPs. OH will accompany me on an avios seat and share the car and hotel, as we have already been doing for years.
I usually have a mix of BA hotels plus direct bookings on our trips as well. I’m also HH gold from the Barclaycard for as long as that exists, so that’s not a problem yet …
But surely what you are describing is workarounds or reliance on products that no longer exist.
So not really of benefit to the majority of travellers who will be impacted by the changes?What product doesn’t exist any more? I did say in my initial post that our personal circumstances just happen to lend themselves to this method, however anyone who spends similar sums on BA should be able to tweak it to the same effect.
@NorthernLass Crafty indeed, time for a forum name change?
You need to be craftier than that, @strickers! I will be travelling on a £7500 BAH and will get all the TPs. OH will accompany me on an avios seat and share the car and hotel, as we have already been doing for years.
I usually have a mix of BA hotels plus direct bookings on our trips as well. I’m also HH gold from the Barclaycard for as long as that exists, so that’s not a problem yet …
I’m not familiar with this but I understood the rules that if I book the holiday for four (say) via BAH and only I have an Executive Account, I will still only get a quarter of the pound->tier point conversion even though I paid for everyone else. Either the other travellers need to have Executive Club accounts or ‘their’ share of the points are lost.
I will be travelling on a £7500 BAH and will get all the TPs. OH will accompany me on an avios seat and share the car and hotel, as we have already been doing for years.
That is indeed a cunning plan. Have hotels have ever been sniffy about two people turning up for a room booked for one?
Not really. In Athens last October they made us pay a supplement to cover a 2nd person and breakfast but there was no issue with having 2 people in the room per se.
Some years ago I chose a family suite at a Hilton on a BAH booking to Rome as OH and son were also travelling. They were totally fine about it and even gave us all free breakfast for my HH gold status! You can chose from all the available room categories during the BAH booking process.
I normally contact the hotel in advance anyway and let them know how many people to actually expect. As long as the room sleeps that many, you should be fine.
Another tip – OH does most of the holiday driving, so I always book with Avis as you get a free extra driver, so it doesn’t matter that I’m the only person named on the booking. The 2nd driver just has to show their licence when you collect the car. We did this at OPO and GCM this year.
What’s going to be interesting is if they award TPs on BAHs with no flight element. You can put several car hire bookings, for example, on one BAH and currently you get the BAH terms for that. I don’t know if it’s some sort of glitch, so probably not something to be widely publicised!
I’m about to test the water with a BAH booking consisting of flights to Oslo and hotel in Bermuda! I think I’ll probably include a hotel in Oslo or Bergen to try and help legitimise it. The Bermuda hotel is over £400 cheaper via BAH, now plus a load of new low denomination TP of course.
You need to be craftier than that, @strickers! I will be travelling on a £7500 BAH and will get all the TPs. OH will accompany me on an avios seat and share the car and hotel, as we have already been doing for years.
I usually have a mix of BA hotels plus direct bookings on our trips as well. I’m also HH gold from the Barclaycard for as long as that exists, so that’s not a problem yet …
I’m not familiar with this but I understood the rules that if I book the holiday for four (say) via BAH and only I have an Executive Account, I will still only get a quarter of the pound->tier point conversion even though I paid for everyone else. Either the other travellers need to have Executive Club accounts or ‘their’ share of the points are lost.
You book a holiday for one – just with a big room. If others happen to independently book the same flight, and you are generous enough to let them sleep in you large room, then so be it! They’d miss out on all inclusive etc, but I’m sure the hotel would do a local deal.
When do you complete the trip? This is going to be a whole new set of data points to look forward to!
A long way off I’m afraid. The Bermuda (reward) flight is November, Oslo is in the planning stage for early December.
I’ve noticed that MMB now reports how many Avios you should earn ‘Plus your eligible tier points’. No commitment there then! It even says that for reward bookings (correctly showing zero Avios).
Hmm. I have a couple of BAHs consisting purely of car hire, completing in October. I might try and book something else sooner as an experiment!
There’s no way I’m going to be reading the whole FT thread unless I break my leg and end up confined to the settee for a few weeks, but post 1449 contains a screenshot from X wherein BA tells someone that soft landings are not scheduled to change …
Here’s that post with the screenshot in it
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/36774613-post1449.html
We haven’t made any changes to our ‘soft landing’ proposition.
BA twitter have been known to get things wrong on occasions though.
Unpopular opinion: BA has made a bold move to
preserve exclusivitysave moneythere @Thaliasilje, I fixed it for you
Here’s that post with the screenshot in it
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/36774613-post1449.html
We haven’t made any changes to our ‘soft landing’ proposition.
BA twitter have been known to get things wrong on occasions though.
The fact that BAs response says ‘If you would like us to take a look at your account in detail’ tells me that whoever wrote it didn’t understand the question and the context. However, the response does have a 50% chance of being correct….
Isn’t a potential problem with traveling on separate tickets that your partner without status will be more likely to be targeted for downgrades/offloads?
Not happened yet, though he did get upgraded to CE on our LYS trip in August! We don’t really fly on overbooked routes or at super-peak times these days so I imagine the risk is low. But we’re talking about travelling on separate bookings on ONE trip which would get one person to Silver – all trips between that and requalification could be on the same booking.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Popular articles this week:
