bmifly

Now BA have launched a lifetime Gold I wonder if they might be persuaded to make those of us who were lifetime Star Alliance Gold with bmi BA Gold. We were comped but at the time BA said we could not have lifetime status because they had no similar status. I suspect combining my BA lifetime tier points and bmi miles earned over the years I probably would have enough for BA lifetime Gold on a tier basis rather than the bmi 10 years rule anyway but a bmi-BA status match for lifetime members would be good!

I’ll certainly be writing to BA to question this.

bmifly

Airways45

Two things of course here. Firstly the issue of BMI lifetime gold (of which I was one), and, the second is whether there's anything that could be done to convert our BMI tier points into BA Tier Points. I have no idea about either but I hope something can be done for us that are now loyal BA golds.

Also, for those who are against this consider those tier points earned by BA flyers flying on non-BA metal (e.g Qantas / Cathay etc). Given BA bought BMI they also gained their flyers. I'm sure they haven't forgotten this.

Syamyael

Technically, the gold in star is at best equivalent to silver in BA.
, isnt it? So it isn't a valid conversion. Unless you are talking about life tier points. I guess it only make sense they convert whatever you have flown in BMI with the equivalent tier points. But I think that would be supper tedious unless they have your miles to miles record for every destination you have made.

irishguy28

There was no conversion of BD status miles to BA Tier Points. The status match was provided to overcome this "problem". Destination Miles were transferred to Avios, but status miles were not transferred over. BD status miles haven't existed for a while now.

I thought it had been announced as part of the new arrangement that bmi status miles were not going to be considered, but I can't verify that now. (I wonder if there are even any records remaining of what all Diamond Club members had accrued in their lifetimes. Perhaps such records were never even maintained).

But as you've noted, status miles are not earned only on the "native" airline of the FFP. Status miles earned in Diamond Club would have, in many cases, been earned on other Star Alliance carriers, or on Virgin Atlantic, etc. So even if you can somehow ignore the incongruity of BA accepting miles flown on bmi when it was a competitor, I just can't swallow the concept of BA recognising all that *A/VS flying.

layz

irishguy28 - you could never earn status miles on VS, only destinations miles.

Still, I do agree that it's very unlikely that BA would give someone lifetime gold status on BA to award them for their many years of loyalty to BAs competitors. The original status match was to encourage people to switch their flying to BA and see the benefits that could be gained by flying BA and their oneworld partners.

As for diamond club records, I think BA still has all the records they had at the time of the bmi takeover, the diamond club computers are still ticking over as usual and on diamondclub.org you can actually search transactions further back than you could on flybmi.com.

irishguy28

D'oh! Of course. How silly of me.

gcuk

Although I would benefit immensely from BA recognising years of flying on bmi and Star Alliance, I was grateful they honoured the miles accrued when diamond club closed. I can't see them rewarding me with lifetime gold on BA for spending years not flying with them.

Airways45

Here's something to consider. My company was acquired two years ago by a bigger competitor. They took over my years of service so that even though i've worked for the new firm for 2 years, they refer to me as being a long time employee. They don't say i was working hard to compete with them on every previous contract! This is standard when mergers happen. Now, this has nothing to do with whether BMI was going bust (or would have done).

I'm in agreement that BMI gold was easier to reach, but, there are loads of us that earned it many times over. I was getting over 150,000 miles as did many others. My frustration was there wasn't an even higher tier at BMI.

My suspicion is that for us current Golds BA may actually enhance things to differentiate between the lounge full of retired people with Gold and those who are currently. CIV score would probably be one way and GGL also of course the other.

irishguy28

I'm not sure the analogy of comparing the treatment of employees (vs customers) after a merger/takover is a valid one. There are probably labour laws that govern a minimum standard on how newly-acquired employees are to be treated, for instance.

BA could have just decided not to have a lifetime Gold level (though it smacks of sour grapes to say that that is indeed what they should have done). It's quite a challenging target to aim for - and no doubt a lot of time and effort was put into selecting the "sweet spot" - they don't want to give away lifetime Gold too easily. So, if they had made the unusual decision to "reward" loyalty to bmi (and how would they convert status miles to Tier Points? Clearly, the 1:1 ratio used to convert destination miles to Avios cannot be used. And would they single out the status miles earned on bmi and not count the status miles earned on Star Alliance?), then surely the pool of in-play travellers would be quite a bit larger than under the current system - so the target would surely have had to be set quite a bit higher, no?

That would then seem to be extremely generous to a (small?) group of relative newcomers [though, of course we know that many of those would have already had an ongoing relationship to BA, and many of them probably do now feel aggrieved at having put possibly substantial amounts of business *A's way given the way things turned out with bmi and now given that a career's worth of flights spread all over could instead have counted with BA and brought them closer to attaining this if they had only flown with BA to begin with] and, conversely, unfair to everyone else, thereby annoying a (somewhat larger?) group of (possibly more loyal) BA fliers. Though, of course, several of those may also have many years of dallying with BA's competition too, but don't get a similar recognition of "loyalty to the competition" by having banking all those dis-loyal status miles in the wrong (non-bmi) FFP!!!

Airways45

irishguy28 - great comments and fair and I for one never expected (or felt it necessary) to give BMI lifetime golds the equivalent. That wasn't part of the deal (obviously) nor should it have been hoped for or expected. I think the majority of people who wanted this were those unlikely to get BA Gold by flying with BA. I say sit on the seat and earn the miles like most of us have to do.

DELLAS

Well sadly they will not offer it because ''Lifetime'' Gold was for the life of BMI and now BMI is dead and buried that was their life.

BA is a different airline and program. It would have been great especially for me personally having made Lifetime Gold just when it all went down the pan but I would not expect BA to offer me Lifetime Gold.

Just a fact of life nothing lasts forever. Ive moved on a long time ago and loving BA Exec Club. ^

antichef

Those of us that had bmi gold and BA gold running side by side would then gripe than five years simultaneous gold with both should equate to ten years in total

This would never end!!

bmifly

Of course it does no harm to ask especially if you’ve maintained BA Gold for a few years.

bmifly

bertheike

Them never get me/us to be aloyal BA (oneworld ) customer, also if them would give me LT Gold !
Bevore them need the right offer for me !
*** Routing FRA/AMS/BRU/PAR- BKK/HKT with reasonable rates ( incl, taxes & fees )
***Award availability for resonable rates ( for Europe -TH , Europe Southafrica ) and this in premium cabins

But both of that is not given !
the only reasonable OW Partner is CX with taxes/fees aprox 100 Euro per lonhaul Segment and 60k for FRA-HKG
But then I have to spend aditional 10 to 15 k for to get to Thailand and availability is much more poor than with TG/LX/LH which we used bevore !

Not even think about to use BA ! DE-LON-BKK never has 4 or 5 seats in J/F Awards available. And if you calculate the high fees BA charges I also let my 2 for 1 pass away !

But of course , that's only because of my flying pattern.
Other members living in UK , or even in the US may find AVIOS much better to use ( for example on AA )

small em

So did anyone write to BA regarding this?