gpb_croppers63

I'd give it 24 hours or so until it updates and then submit your match once this happens. The membership year update is normally pretty quick. If your BA Gold is showing as expiring next September once you get the match, don't worry. I have it in writing that the Gold will automatically renew next year and then you'll have another 12 months to get the 1500 TP to retain Gold. Whether this will actually happen or not is another question but I will certainly be persuing it if it doesn't as I have an e-mail and a PM both stating it will.

Hope that helps.

Gareth

janders

I was in the Great British Lounge the other day, and this was the view of the lounge dragon, also confirmed by a member of cabin crew later on. Of course, they don't know for sure when BA will stop status matching, but they suggested that the word within the company is that from November operations will switch to being BA (they pointed out that old BMi flights will then have 'real' BA codes, not the 8*** ones... It's not the news I wanted to hear, as my BA EC membership expires in early November, when I would be able to match my BMi Silver status. But I think I'm going to do the match now, for fear of losing the possibility. It's likely that I'll be able to retain silver after the twelve months, but it would have been nice to get nearly 24...

EDIflyer

If you don't have many Avios in your existing account then you might be better off creating a new BAEC account and getting the 24 months that way

janders

I thought about that, but I do have a load of Avios. In any case, I'm pretty sure I can reach 600 tier points in the twelve months following the end of my current year (early November). I'm not 100% certain though, which is why the extra twelve would have been nice...

so3003

Thanks for that. It's updated itself overnight, and I've just submitted the status match request - fingers crossed!

gpb_croppers63

Great! Good luck.

vindaloo

I'm in the same boat, with a November BAEC year end, and have been thinking for a while that this will probably be either the best or the worst date (although right now I'd be much happier if I had an October year end). I'm still hoping that they'll make the announcement about the end of the tier matching programme around the end of October and then give everyone a few weeks before they actually close it down, but I'm also worried that the last date for a match may be a couple of weeks too early for me.

I do think it's unlikely they'll pull the matching on zero notice, however. Though they did give zero notice of some of the other changes (which I found pretty annoying) I'm guessing and hoping that they actually want people to status match so their loyalty can be secured. If they were to pull the match without notice and leave me high and dry then that would be game over for me and BA, since A3 kindly gave me *G until December 2015. I imagine there are others who are in a similar position. BA obviously thought it worth offering a very generous status match to try to persuade BD frequent flyers to switch to BA, so they presumably want to make sure that everyone who wishes to avail of it does so.

On that basis I'll continue to hold off in the hope of a full 23 months of gold until there's a definitive announcement that this isn't going to be possible.

NWIFlyer

I agree with this. If BA wants to have any chance of gaining some or all of the 60-80k miles I fly a year, then it needs to give me a status match. If that doesn't happen, like vindaloo I already have *G through A3 (through flying in my case) and will just continue to fly *A and credit there.

There's very little BA has to lose - if I fly as a result of status matching (and likely I will to see if it's the right choice for me), the only cost is a bit of food and drink in the lounge. If for some reason I don't, it'll be a waste of just a handful of pounds printing and sending me some shiny cards. From BA's point-of-view, the balance of probability must say that keeping the status match open for as long as possible to capture the biggest possible customer base is the right thing to do.

vindaloo

With Nicci having confirmed that bmi Regional ceases to be an earning partner at the end of September, I think we can now officially say that there will be no way to earn status miles or destinations miles through flying after the last flights with BD flight numbers finish or switch to BA flight numbers around 27 October. This seems to increase the likelihood that other ways of earning miles will also be wound down by that date. They should then give everyone at least a couple of weeks (definitely until 10 November in my completely unbiased opinion) to make sure all miles have posted and give people a chance to make retro-claims for any that fail to post automatically, before finally winding up DC and pulling the plug on the transfer tool and status match.

In theory they could avoid a formal winding up of DC and let it wither on the vine, which it already has to a large extent. However, two things make me think they’ll want to draw a definite line under it at some point: first, they want to make sure that all DC destinations miles are either transferred to Avios or cleared from their balance sheet; and second, they don’t want to have to honour lifetime gold status, even if that status has been rendered virtually worthless.

rankourabu

for those of you that matched silver?

Once matched, does one require 1500 TPs for gold or just the 900 TPs for the upgrade?

I will have 860 from AA flights, if its 900, I just might take 4 short BA/IB flights to get to Gold.

sigma421

1,500 I'm afraid

rankourabu

well forget that then - looks like I'll be a one time BA Silver

phb

Does anyone have an idea how long the matches are currently taking to implement?

so3003

I submitted my application on 10/9/12 and still no word..... they say 21 working days on the website though.

zanderblue

Yep, I am the same, submitted match request on 11/9 and nothing since then.