British Airways is making significant negative changes to its Executive Club frequent flier program, which it announced between Christmas and the New Year (wonder why) with only three months’ advance notice.
I only started with BA when they acquired BMI, and I ended up with a few hundred thousand miles in my Executive Club account. Then I found Oneworld RTW fares that were, at times, really fantastic and ended up crediting those to BA, and I slowly earned a significant amount of lifetime TPs.
You can access BA here.
The change that BA is instituting at the end of this month is also significantly affecting the lifetime program, and not for the better.
Under the current program, you need 250 long/medium haul paid business class segments to reach 35,000 TPs (you can forget this if you are flying in economy).
This may sound a lot, but my RTW tickets were usually optimized for segment length, and you can easily get 30 long/medium haul paid business segments per year.
Here’s one RTW that I booked, which was optimized for TP earnings:
Buying Premium Fares: Case Oneworld Around-The-World In Business DONE4 Ex-Japan
New BA Lifetime Tier Point Rules:
Gold: 550,000 (£550,000)
Gold Guest List: 1,500,000 (£1,500,000)
My BA Lifetime TPs On January 1:
I had 30,365 credited and another 340 coming from flights that I had already taken but that were not yet credited.
Then there was the tail end of last year’s RTW, which would earn 160 TPs for flights that I have yet to take.
I was then looking to be 4,135 Tier Points short of lifetime Gold, which would translate to more than 50,000 GBP in additional BA spending in the coming years if I were to reach this tier.
What complicated things was that BA only gave a 3-month window (it must be on purpose), and I had other commitments for the first five weeks of the year.
Here’s What I did:
I looked at premium fare options that could work. As I have already stated, I refuse to take pure Mileage Runs, but trips should always serve some other purpose as well.
There are some reasonable Finnair fares from Oslo and Stockholm to Southern Spain and Portugal that earn 140 TPs for the HEL-LIS/AGP sectors due to their length, but then you would need to spend 4 to 6 hours on Finnair short-haul business, which is essentially torture (non-padded, barely any recline economy seat with middle seat blocked). I couldn’t see shuttling 10 or so times and taking 20 of these segments. Also, the connections from Oslo and Stockholm for these services were awful.
The goal was to have proper long-haul equipment so that I could sleep/nap on these flights.
I decided to book three Royal Jordanian fares ex-Paris, two Cathay Pacific ones ex-Chitose, and one Malaysia Airlines one ex-Osaka. The Royal Air Maroc fare from Sao Paulo to Paris was good as well.
The issue with Cathay Pacific and its flights from Japan is that only the flight from Chitose is more than 2,000 miles, and BA’s current system awards 140 TPs.
I have already flown trips 1, 2, and 3. Trips 5, 6, and 7 are nested within trip 4.
Surprisingly, all the flights have been posted, and I currently stand at 32,365 TPs. The flights today and tomorrow will push me over the 3,500 TP requirement for another set of Gold Upgrade Vouchers.
If I have calculated everything correctly, once I am done with all the flying, I will also have earned the Gold Guest List for the very last time, as my last tracking period will essentially be the current one + 1 month.
There were some irregular operations on my last return from KL to Paris. I was rebooked on a direct MH service to London and then on BA to Paris, losing 120 TPs. I will file a claim to see if I can recover those.
My lifetime TPs at the end of March should stand at 34,645, and getting the rest under the new, much “improved” (read significantly devalued) system is doable (perhaps 5K GBP in spending less possible promotional Tier Points).
Does This Make Any Sense?
I have asked this question a few times.
Tickets 1, 2, and 7 were entirely paid by points, and trip 5 was partially paid. The cash cost of the other tickets was approximately $6,500 to $7,000, which is much less than what the new system would have required.
I now have Gold Upgrade Vouchers that I can use to upgrade from business to first or from premium economy to business. Each voucher covers a round-trip (multiple sectors). The account also has close to 800K Avios.
My plan is to combine Gold Guest List space release for long-haul awards that I then upgrade to business or first, depending on the destination. This should take care of the Avios stash before the dynamic award pricing kicks in.
Conclusion
This was a difficult situation, as I don’t enjoy flying that much anymore, even in long-haul business. However, I was so close to the lifetime requirement that I was probably going to regret if I didn’t do it, so I decided to go for it (or at least get as close to it as possible).
The GGL with the space release should take care of the award availability issue, which will also help me with burning down the Avios stash (you should use these suckers, too, as they soon have even less value).
I see no reason to continue crediting anything to the new BA Club, as you can do much better elsewhere award-wise, but it is good to have the lifetime Gold from them (Oneworld Emerald). At least, one less thing to consider in the coming years when it comes to travel.
The only two lifetime tiers that I will wrap up after this are Hyatt’s lifetime Globalist (75% done) and Flying Blue Platinum (7 out of 10 years done).
