Again, all true and well for UK-based members but simply not true for the rest of us. When I joined in the 1990s, you could join on any fare, accrue on any fare, and generally get far more miles and far less expensive redemptions. At that time, the programme in the UK was rubbish, but programmes in the US/Canada (which I joined then) and in continental Europe were very good.

Then progressively, BA chose to unify its programme using deteriorations in parts of the world where it had a good FFP because it was a less obvious choice as an airline in order to subsidise an improvement of the UK programme where it ceased to be the "obvious" choice because of the emergence of VS and the LCCs.

I am not saying that it was right or wrong to do that, all I am saying is that believe it or not, there is a world beyond the UK and that for much of that world, it very much is the case that BAEC is worst now than it has ever been. For those members, those repeated statements that BA is worse than a few years ago but better than before/back to standard/back to basics etc is simply and plainly wrong, even if for UK-based members who make the bulk of this forum that may indeed be the case.

Overall, for US-based members, I would say that the "golden age" of BAEC was very much the 1990s and for continental European members the "golden age" of BAEC was very much the 2000s.