BA Executive Club change to spend-based status earning

madrooster said:
You mainly lose:

1. Hilton diamond
2. Partner cards (though they're being enhanced™ from 23 months validity down to 12-13 months as part of these changes)
3. Showing on AA's system as "BA VIP" with CK service (hit and miss)
4. Being able to change/cancel redemptions for free
5. Jokers
6. CCR access

Between QR/JL/AY/EI I'd say you would be quite well covered.
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Yep and I was milking the ex EU fares and benefitting from a very "flaky" IT system. GFL was not my goal when I set out, I wanted to fly J or F at low cost - under AUS$5k to the UK and back. LTF was just the side benefit after four and a half years.

One thing I would say though, how confident would you feel about BA not changing the program again if a bunch of people pursue a strategy of achieving GFL through the QR/AY/JAL route? I'd be feeling very nervous if I was sitting on 25k TPs' today.

I'm still nervous that BA will add a yearly segments criteria to GFL or worse do away with it.
 
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TonyHancock said:
One thing I would say though, how confident would you feel about BA not changing the program again if a bunch of people pursue a strategy of achieving GFL through the QR/AY/JAL route? I'd be feeling very nervous if I was sitting on 25k TPs' today.

I'm still nervous that BA will add a yearly segments criteria to GFL or worse do away with it.
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Earn rates can always change year by year and partner carriers can change.

There's nothing new about this concept - there's been a variety of changes over the years here and there. You just have to factor that in and work with the changes.

The successful ones are the ones who can adapt.

They could change the earn rates on QR/AY/JL which would make it potentially double the difficulty to get to LTG, but outside of that I cannot see them making it too much harder than it currently is.

You can actually now earn BA lifetime gold purely by flying 100% EI (or oneworld non-BA). That's made possible by the fact the 4 segment requirement has been dropped entirely with these new changes.

Given that BA has only just majorly changed the program, we probably won't see too much in the way of major changes for a while. Virtually every other program out there hasn't gone and successively made multiple major changes.

The fact that they are going to the effort of maintaining conversion for lifetime TPs suggests that they don't plan to go and majorly piss off lifetime status holders who have done their time.
 
madrooster said:
Given that BA has only just majorly changed the program, we probably won't see too much in the way of major changes for a while. Virtually every other program out there hasn't gone and successively made multiple major changes.
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BA made significant changes in Oct 2023 when they moved to revenue based Avios earn. 😳

I'm glad I am out of the game these days......although I plan to redeem Avios and QF points for a while hopefully. 🤞
 
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TonyHancock said:
BA made significant changes in Oct 2023 when they moved to revenue based Avios earn. 😳
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To be fair, I would have considered going revenue based as one change just implemented across two years given how major of a change it is. Anyone who couldn't read the writing on the wall is stuck under a rock...
 
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madrooster said:
In oneworld it's operating carrier.. but there may be exceptions.

When you're flying on a codeshare, the operating carrier issues the BP and often the BP will have SOLD AS xx_X or MARKETED AS xx_X printed.

However, the BP barcode almost always does not contain any info in the bar code about the marketing code you were ticketed on. This barcode is what lounges use to scan you in, so all they get from the barcode is the operating carrier flight number.

Thus there'd be no way for the lounge operator, to know who's the marketing carrier for billing purposes. I'm not aware of any oneworld carriers doing deep dive matching against the reservations system to check who's code a pax was booked under, for the sake of lounge access billing.
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After making further queries, without other overriding contracts, it may well be effectively be the operating carrier in most cases that pays. The airline running the lounge will generally bill the operating airline based on the BP scan as indicated. It is then up to the operating carrier to discern codeshare bases entry and forward the cost to the marketing carrier. Many such codeshares are not frequent enough to make much of a difference or be cost effective for the operating carrier to do so.
 
I realise it’s, generally, a slow news period but the changes have been reported in The Times & The Financial Times. Associated comments are, overwhelmingly, negative
 
Viridis said:
I realise it’s, generally, a slow news period but the changes have been reported in The Times & The Financial Times. Associated comments are, overwhelmingly, negative
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I tend not to take MSM too seriously and particularly the comments when it comes to FF programs. Most of the commentators on the latest piece in The Times simply do not understand the difference between BAEC and BA. Whilst I am sure that a large number of BAEC members aren't happy and I stand in solidarity with them, I'm not sure it is accurately reflected in the many inane comments.
 
If you follow UK news and politics Andrew Neil has been a journalist/reporter for a long time and he was very scathing
 
There is a relatively more balanced article in the Mail.
Betrayal
It’s referencing Gib’s narrative from GSTP about toys being thrown out of cots alongside the community betrayal letter from Michele at TLFL.

Will be interesting to see what if anything BA do about this back lash against the changes.
I suspect it may be either nothing at all or some token, minor change.
 
Princess Fiona said:
There is a relatively more balanced article in the Mail.
Betrayal
It’s referencing Gib’s narrative from GSTP about toys being thrown out of cots alongside the community betrayal letter from Michele at TLFL.

Will be interesting to see what if anything BA do about this back lash against the changes.
I suspect it may be either nothing at all or some token, minor change.
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It could be very much like Delta IIRC, where they walked back some of the change but said ...... it's still coming, but now you have a little more warning.
 
Princess Fiona said:
There is a relatively more balanced article in the Mail.

Will be interesting to see what if anything BA do about this back lash against the changes.
I suspect it may be either nothing at all or some token, minor change.
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That’s the first time in all of human history that anyone has ever referred to the Daily Mail as ‘balanced’ 😜

The articles in The Times & The FT were balanced; it’s just the comments that were a little unhinged

And of course politicians and industry leaders read both those newspapers - things may change if they have ‘skin in the game’ 😉 and the story gets traction. But I agree with you, things are unlikely to change
 
I've built a spreadsheet to track/compare earning of all my upcoming sectors to work out where best to credit to going forward (in lieu of official written confirmation of soft landings, change in goalposts, etc.) and as I haven't used QFF in a long time ......... can someone confirm my reading of https://www.qantas.com/gb/en/freque...ng-tables/partner-airline-earning-tables.html is correct in that as Western Europe to Jordan (AMM) doesn't show up, I therefore use the All other flights table at the bottom? i.e., it'd be as follows:
  • FCO-AMM (D) 1,482mi = 751-1,500mi earn = 60 SC
  • AMM-DOH (D) 1,047mi = 751-1,500mi earn = 60 SC
  • DOH-CMB (D) 2,247 = 1,501-2,500mi earn = 80 SC (there's only XX city in Aus to CMB, or Western Europe to SMB; so assume I'd still be on the All other flights table)
?

Also, when I try and login to https://www.qantas.com/au/en/frequent-flyer/log-in.html I just get a blank page (ad blocker is off). Is anyone else able to login to QFF currently? I need to check my year end/start date.
 

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