Originally Posted by
Dicksbits
It's a real pity the effect all these changes make. Some of us pay for all our travel out of our own pockets - true leisure GOLD passengers.
I'm sure ba don't give a hoot who pays, as long as the money comes in.
I'm currently nudging up towards 3,000 TP for the FIRST time, with an Apr membership year end. Now there's no incentive to reach a higher plain. No way I'd ever get to 5,000 TP, and as has been pointed out: there's a bit gap between 1,500 and 5,000 with just two upgrade voucher benefits in-between. Come on BA: Invent some more incentives for loyalty from your pure leisure passengers!
Baec is a tool to get you to fly BA, not a loyalty scheme. If you are gold, you have an incentive to fly BA rather than Emirates because of the lounge access and other benefits.
If you fly enough to get gold equivalent in two schemes, chances are you can get GGL in ba under the new requirements. As star gold is at most BA silver, generally you're looking at 100k miles elsewhere for an equivalent scheme, plus 1500tp in BA. Put that 100k into BA and you'll be probably up near the 5k mark anyway. Given an R class ticket is 3 times the price of an I class ticket is hope Ba will also be factoring in CIV when deciding GGL.
Nothing stops BA giving GGL to valuable passengers either, even if they don't make 3k, let alone 5k. They just renewed a collegue who ended up on 410tp last year, and was no doubt more profitable than someone doing a 1500tp run to HNL for £1200.
That said, if I wasnt GGL already, I would probably be flying Virgin next week to LA rather than US and BA, as I could easily keep VS gold as well as ba gold, and having a bit of variety is neve a bad thing. I've never used the clubhouse either.