British Airways Changes: Adult Babies Throwing Toys

Attaining British Airways Club Gold elite status is an aspirational feat.

The perks are aplenty and the feeling it gives during travel can be really meaningful. Many people believe it somehow instantly makes them more attractive and simultaneously absolves them of all their personal flaws, like an instant symbol of being “somebody” and being superior.

That’s something nobody wants to lose, but the whole reason it’s aspirational is because it is not for everyone. If everyone is in a VIP lane, the regular Joe/Jane lane looks a lot better.

It’s not quite like the people who die and put their favorite sports team on their tombstone as part of their identity in a show of true loyalty, but elite status with BA carries a lot of weight.

Accordingly, It was no surprise yesterday as I watched grown adults act like children after a sugar crash; or babies throwing toys, all because an airline made a data driven commercial decision to ensure that people are extracting program value in more logical proportion to what they offer out, putting in enough value for this to make business sense.

Many are finding out they simply aren’t as frequent flyer “elite” as their fantasies would like. For those who felt genuinely loyal to the airline, weren’t actively gaming the system and now feel dumped, I have major empathy. For everyone else…

Taking It Out Of The Air

The biggest issue is what this does, or did, to the self aggrandizing glory of many.

Many people who drank enough of their own Kool-Aide to believe they were truly VIP for life, just by engaging in shenanigans to beat a system for the lowest cost, while maximizing every bit of reward at the greatest cost to the airline, won’t be able to next year.

Was that loyalty? Please. Cry me a river. Despite this, many travelers, perhaps rightfully, still very important and deserving of perks — but not quite top tier VIP. That’s the whole point of stratification. It’s a data exercise to figure out how many people giving how much, deserve how much in return. I mean, geez, it’s not like BA would have years of historical spending and behavioral data to analyze… oh wait.

Taking this out of the air for a moment, imagine you’re the general manager of a restaurant.

How would you feel if a customer comes in, buys just a water but then demands to drink all your booze for free, running up $100’s in tabs, taking up all your tables for paying customers and then demanding to invite a friend in to do the same. All, because they showed a minimum modicum of loyalty a year ago?

At the very least emotional level, that’s going to create tension.

Delusional Hobbyists Are Running Out Of “Games”

Can modeling be wrong? Always. Is it often wrong by magnitudes? Rarely. Can any potential flaws with how many people should reach each tier be quickly corrected with promotional tier point multipliers or bonuses? Of course.

Is there any consideration that the travelers this commercial operation wants to attract may find themselves way better off, with better travel experiences as a result of these more sound and vetted economics? Of course not! That’d be non-delusional.

For many, on small hobbyist forums masquerading as broad gospel — which they’re not — this game has never been about loyalty, but about rinsing a program for all that could be taken with the lowest economic input to that program.

That’s how programs die – plain and simple. That’s how meaningful benefits get killed. Plain and simple. That’s how dissatisfaction with a program appears and aspiration is lost. Simple. It’s vital to compare program costs and benefits so you should keep doing that. All programs gotta’ bring value, but it’s a two way street.

These people fail to consider that if they were chasing status to maximize a benefit at the lowest possible cost to them, while utilizing the perks with the greatest cost to the airline – almost to a point of spite – they might have been more expensive than they were worth, and even truly economically diabolical.

Some flyers can actually have negative economic value – where the cost of providing lounge access with guesting, seat assignments and other “freebies” across the year costs the airline more than they make in profit from flying that passenger.

Remember: the average airline profit per passenger sits around $5 per journey.

Players played the game and that was fun while it lasted, but anyone with a logical pulse knew that it was economically unviable in the long term to give away so many perks with so little bonafide spend behind them. What’s got the authors and readers bees in a bonnet, is that they’re running out of hobbyist games to play, which means fewer things to write about and exploit, far beyond commercial intent. For anyone with normal travel patterns, life goes on.

Remember: riling you up is a great way to build audience engagement, especially under the guise that someone’s on your side, while of course selling you the financial products of the very brands they’re telling you to loathe, to keep the lights on.

If you’re an even quasi-normal traveler, you should care, because these people make it harder to reward those who play the game without malintent, who have remotely reasonable travel patterns. These people deserve better loyalty and this is how you achieve it. Money talks, y’all!

Top Tier: Dollars And Sense

It costs an airline every time someone uses a benefit. When that person uses their status to access a partner lounge and bring a guest, the airline pays even more to an external party. It’s real money out the door. All the “freebies” as we move up the elite ranks, like seat selection and waived baggage fees, have real cost and commercial impact on a business. That’s the cost of keeping loyal business, but again – it’s a two way street.

To give them away, an airline needs a business case, not a plea for self aggrandizing elitist glory from people who simply want to beat the system and feel better than others, for less.

To properly vet yesterday’s British Airways Club changes, we need to level set. The US is the most important market for BA, where it competes squarely against many US major airlines and extracts similar spend, if not more, due to the more predominantly long haul focus versus US domestic airlines.

To hit top tier ‘Executive Platinum’ on American Airlines — a fair equivalent to BA Gold — someone achieving this from scratch will need to spend a little over $27,000 on flights alone, if they don’t have an American Airlines credit card or won’t book hotels. That’s £21,535. United currently wants a little over $28,000 for their comparable 1K status and Delta is about the same for Diamond. That’s about £22,000. BA remains the most attainable of that lot.

I watched when the US programs went revenue based and covered them all the same. The comments back then were also full of people who were going to jump ship and leave, but in the subsequent years all I’ve seen is record earnings from those airlines. The two can be conflated but there’s usually some correlation in loyalty success. The angry forum mob is not indicative of the broader public.

And really, it wouldn’t have mattered if BA made Gold £15K and Silver £5K – people still would be whinging endlessly. And remember, it’s now SO easy for BA to steer people through the tiers with multipliers under the new system, so it’s all too possible that some people could spend less than the £7500 or £20,000 Silver and Gold stickers to hit, if stars align with the right incentives.

Still up for the fight?

There’s always the martyr argument, that someone could jump ship and go to a European competitor. But for most practical people, adding a connection adds time — and potential delay — in another city to every single journey, bringing complexity to what could be a point to point journey. Businesses don’t like long connections on their hours and nor does my wife.

This risk was always a risk before any program changes and people who book travel based on price alone are likely already engaging in this when it makes sense financially, regardless of loyalty. It’s actually totally fine and sane!

Contrary to the hobbyist forums, MOST people prefer direct flights over any connecting option. Few serious travelers are ever going to spite themselves on every trip, just to not participate in a loyalty program. And if they don’t want to participate in the British Airways Club, they can just not add their frequent flyer number, which is another unique form of masochism.

Money Has Become The Proxy For Loyalty

Money is not a perfect proxy for loyalty, but it’s the best model adapted by virtually every major US airline and now with these changes, British Airways and many others globally as well. By the end of 2025, I’d expect few programs to still use any other form of tracking for tier progress.

What’s important is that airlines focus on not just butt in seat spend, but holistic loyalty, like the spend on financial services products, vacations and other lifestyle choices which bring in revenue to the airline and program, and therefore deserve recognition in exchange.

The good news is that in this system, money talks in ways the bean counters can understand, so there should be less need to pull away the rich benefits or devalue the points as often as before.

This brave new world of rich data and financial modeling meeting the old school fluffy and romantic idea of loyalty (which I adore) has not been an era without turbulence. Some of the best loyalty driving anecdotes are nowhere to be found on boring spreadsheets, but a lot is. This is a flywheel everyone involved in the business can understand.

The better news, for those who can make it, is that tying loyalty to money spent makes it much easier for airlines to invest in perks, since they’re able to know and show the wider business what giving that perk to someone drove in revenue.

It should make status perks better, and it damn well better!

The hard pill to swallow for many is that not everyone is VIP, not everyone gets to be George Clooney in Up In The Air and that’s something we can only change by buying the ticket in the cabin with the treatment and sophistication we’d like, if we can’t do it with loyalty status alone.

I fly all the time on airlines without status and… it’s fine. I stand like every schmuck, sit like every other schmuck and leave the plane like every other schmuck. If I want better, I pay for what I need.

Opportunistic Not Loyal

Loyalty is an interesting game. In some regards, it is always opportunistic on both sides. Loyalty is an opportunity for a brand to gain better traction, new business or share of wallet from consumers and in exchange — consumers look for the most opportunistic program to unlock their personal needs and goals.

An equilibrium must exist, but everyone’s perception of that equilibrium or balance will be different.

Many who think they’re valuable are actually not, so the bluster of defection is hot air or air programs need not focus on. Planes fill up. Many of the most egregious abusers (like many on a certain UK site who go to a lounge to drink all day and then cancel their refundable ticket) bring negative value after they sneak through a tier and then spam the loyalty program with bills for lounges on partner airlines and guesting.

Reading the comments there, the amount of people who alluded to “gamed my way till I reached Silver and then only purchased the cheapest economy tickets and used my free lounge access with a friend all year” is an example of why these changes, although imperfect in some ways, address a real brand problem.

Again – this is a business – not a charity for ego indulgence among middle/upper income thresholds.

People gaming a system for a brief period of time, so that they can then cost the airline an arm and a leg in benefits, while intentionally purchasing less expensive tickets – where the lounge access may cost more than the profit from the transportation itself – does not drive any of the business goals of an airline forward.

You see, points can be opportunistic. They’re a game where arbitrage is the inherent goal, and that’s why they operate separately to elite status. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing max value, because they are financial instrument and not necessarily a pure measure of loyalty. Separate the two. You can be a points King or Queen and not be an airline VIP.

Becoming Actual Preference

Another comical theme in reaction is the number of people who said they spent on their BA Amex Cards (UK) JUST to hit their companion voucher, and then not another dime. And not because they couldn’t – I’d totally empathize with that.

The perceived “negative” of these changes is that if someone wants to take advantage of this new opportunity to be rewarded with extra tier points without flying, making it easier to hit the new elite Bronze, Silver and Gold thresholds from their card spend, they might need to actually keep spending on their BA Amex Card.

Shock, horror, the airline actually wants you to use the financial services product you took out more than just to hit the minimum threshold to earn the perk. I bet supermarkets want you to see food you hadn’t considered too! Ahhh, omg!

This is another perfect example of people pretending that loyalty, rather than opportunism, was the driving force in their travel preference. But, there are plenty of people who are actually loyal and value what these opportunities unlock for them. It’s not about beating a system, but about benefiting from a good system in furtherance of their desired travel lifestyle.

A seamless, integrated, path of least resistance way to get more out of travel just by living your life is a great one and looking down on that is just kind of crazy. I am thankful these seamless loyalty opportunities exist- regardless of which airline is offering them – because they make my travels better, in exchange for winning my preference.

There are connections I never would’ve made, upgrades I’d never have received and time saved that I’ve been able to spend with my family because I’ve shown enough loyalty to get it back.

There are plenty more sane and logical people than the loud mob. I don’t care who you fly, I don’t care if you are more or less loyal to any airline. What I do care about is that you don’t lie to yourself about what the real issue is when airline changes happen.