British Airways has announced that it is officially transitioning its Executive Club Avios program from distance-based earning to revenue-based. This brings the program in line with the its primary competitors, including the US legacy carriers, Air France/KLM, and the Lufthansa group. British Airways had been one of the last holdouts, and I generally think that has been the result of bad IT.
At this time, nothing about BA tier points, which determine status, is changing.
Fundamentally, a business rewarding its most profitable customers does make business sense. It’s not great for those who book cheap fares on long routes. Back in 2015, Delta was the first to switch to revenue based, and that change was relatively dramatic because discount coach tickets went from earning 100% miles based on distance to 5x the base fare (for a base member). However, British Airways current only rewards 25% miles based on distance for a discount coach ticket.
Until October 17th 2023 (the ticketed date, not the flight date), British Airways flights earn Avios as follows:
Economy: 25%/50%/100% of miles flown (deepest discount/discount/full-fare)
Premium Economy: 100%/150% of miles flown (discount/full-fare)
Business Class: 150%/250% of miles flown (discount/full-fare)
First Class: 250%/300% of miles flown (discount/full-fare)
Bronze members earn 25% bonus on the actual miles flown, Silver members earn 50% bonus, and Gold members earn 100% bonus.
The new British Airways earning system is: 6x Avios/£1 spent for Blue (base) members, 7x for Bronze (Oneworld Ruby), 8x for Silver (Oneworld Sapphire), and 9x for Gold (Oneworld Emerald). The base rate is vaguely on par with that of US legacy carriers (5x/$1). These bonus points multipliers are much worse by comparison. The bonuses were roughly cut in half from 25%/50%/100% to 17%/33%/50%. British Airways severely decreased the value of Gold Priority Award tickets (except in First Class) when they introduced reward flight saver tickets, so this is the second time in the last year that BA has worsened the value proposition of Gold Status (which is my status).
The one substantial improvement from this change is that ancillary fees will earn Avios, which they didn’t before. Specifically, BA states that you will earn Avios based on the fare and carrier fees, seat assignment fees, cabin upgrade fees, and additional bag fees. However, it’s very important to point out that on BA, unlike on most other carriers (i.e. US legacy carriers), you actually already indirectly earned Avios from cabin upgrade fees because BA awards Tier Points and Avios based on the class you travel in, not your originally ticketed cabin. So that’s not actually a new perk.
There has been a lot of back and forth online in the last few weeks about these changes, and, in general, the consensus is that change is negative. Let’s investigate that with some examples of flights I’ve taken with British Airways over the last couple years:
Long-haul BA flight example: SFO-LHR
I flew SFO – LHR in June 2023. The flight in WTP cost $780 and then I upgraded to Club World for $405. In WTP, I would’ve earned 5 368 Avios as a base and then earned another 5 368 bonus Avios based on my Gold Status. Upgrading to Club World gave me an additional 2 684 Avios. The total amount was, therefore, 13 420.
Under the new system, I earn Avios on the fare and carrier fees but not taxes, so I can roughly convert my flight to around £614 (minus taxes), so let’s say £600. Then I upgraded for £319. I now would earn 3 600 Avios as a base and an additional 1 800 Avios based on my Gold Status. Upgrading to Club World gives me an additional 1 914 Avios. My new earning would be 7 314 or a mere 55% of my previous earning. Most of that difference (27%) is, in fact, not a result of my flight being “cheap” but of BA cutting the bonus multiplier for Gold members, which is horrendous.
Long-haul BA flight example: LHR-SFO
I have a flight booked from LHR-SFO in November 2023. The flight in WTP cost around $1 000. I had planned to upgrade the flight, but BA wanted 25 000 Avios and $500 to upgrade the flight, so I just paid the extra $800 for a Club World ticket. In total, the flight cost about $1 800, which is a bit more than I’d usually like to pay, but here we are.
Since I have already booked this ticket, I will earn Avios based on distance, not price. Under the current system, I will earn 8 052 base Avios and 5 368 bonus Avios for a total of 13 420 Avios, just like before, even though I spent $600 more. However, it’s not quite that simple because the UK has extremely high departure taxes, and so my eligible spend is actually only about $1 500 or £1 200 (compared to about £920 before). Under the new system, I would earn 7 200 base Avios and 2 600 bonus Avios for a total of 10 800 Avios (80% of the old system). Here’s the theme of the day: if the Gold Status multiplier weren’t half of what it’d used to be, I’d actually come out ahead with 14 400 Avios earned.
For context of why I’m complaining so much about this: going forward, if I were an American Platinum Pro (their equivalent to BA Gold), I’d earn 5x base miles/$ and 4x bonus miles/$. I’d earn 7 500 AA miles and an additional 6 000 AA bonus miles for a total of 13 500 AA miles. You really shouldn’t earn more miles for crediting a flight to a partner than to your own program if both programs are spend based.
Short-haul BA flight example: LHR-TLS
After the long-haul example really underscored how terrible the new bonus multiplier is, let’s look at some short-haul flights I took in 2022. These are, arguably, where the new system might do better.
First, I flew London to Toulouse with Valerie in July 2022. I paid £169 for a Club Europe ticket. Before taxes/fees, this was probably around £140 of airfare. Valerie paid around £58 for a handbag-only economy ticket, so probably around £40 of airfare. Before the change, I earned a base of 750 Avios + 500 Avios bonus = 1 250 Avios. Valerie would have earned 125 Avios if she credited to BA.
For the same flights, I would now earn a base of 840 Avios + 420 bonus Avios. For a total of 1 260 Avios. I come out slightly ahead, but not by much because of the bad bonus multiplier. Valerie, on the other hand, would have earned 240 Avios, which is nearly double. This is the key point I was making about discount/deep discount economy. Valerie didn’t go from earning 500 Avios to 240 Avios; she went from 125 Avios to 240 Avios because of that 25% multiplier that previously existed on deep discount economy tickets.
To underscore just how bad this change is for Gold members, if I had flown the same type of ticket as Valerie, I would have previously earned 125 base Avios + 500 bonus Avios. Now, I would earn 240 base Avios + 120 bonus Avios, which is over a 75% reduction in my status bonus.
Medium-haul BA flight example: OTP-LHR
In July 2022, I flew Bucharest to London I paid €151 for a Club Europe flight, so this was probably around €130 of airfare = £112. This trip had a bunch of problems with it, and so when all was said and done, I actually ended up flying on a full-fare Club Europe ticket, so I earned a total of 4 575 Avios, which was a lot more than I should have. The switch to revenue-based earning will probably fix this bug, unfortunately. What I had expected to earn was 1 961 base Avios and 1 307 bonus Avios, for a total of 3 268 Avios.
Under the new system, I would now earn 672 base Avios and 336 bonus Avios, for a total of 1 008 Avios, which is just under 1/3 of the amount I earned before.
In summary, as can be seen, the main point of this change is to better reward customers who pay for more expensive, shorter flights. But the way they’ve implemented the changes hurts Gold Status members very substantially. In theory, those with Gold Status are BA’s best customers, and that’s not a group that one should be alienating. However, I don’t ever book full-fare Club World flights, so I’m probably not really one of their best customers anyway.
Since I’ve moved back to the US, I’m still frequently unsure if I should switch to collecting status and miles on AA instead of BA, and the reduced earnings are definitely pushing me more toward AA, but I’m already on track to requalify for BA Gold for 2024, so we’ll see.
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