First, I admit I haven’t been reading the posts here for quite a while. I apologize if my following post has already been addressed and flogged about.

Yesterday I was looking to book a few future TA flights (PHL-LHR) on BA and MFU to CW as I’ve done many times in the past. I nearly fell to the floor when I saw that BA now wants 48,000 avios (plus $$) for an MFU from WT+ to CW. Before April 28 (when it seems that nearly everything changed for the worst for BAEC), I used to pay 20,000 avios plus $$ for this UG.

Since this is 2.4x the old rate, is this a typo, or is this the beginning of more bad things to come? The “new” awards chart apparently won’t be posted until next year – enough time to let us get over some of these initial surprises before hitting us with more. BTW, I found that for a 2-4-1 voucher, it now cost 136,000 avios for FIRST (formerly 120,000), and 100,000 for CW (formerly 80,000), in addition to $$, to fly TA from PHL to LHR. I've used these 2-year vouchers for each of the past three years. I currently have one and my wife and I will each have an additional new one by the end of this year. We will then have three vouchers to use before the end of 2017 with potentially another two new ones in each of the following years.

As a retired person for the last 10 years, I had always been able to take 5-6 TA flights annually in addition to the one voucher trip. I’ve been one to use my miles/avios rather quickly to avoid losing them. We currently have 200,000+ avios in our household account so it looks like, despite getting lots of vouchers, we will not be able use most of them in the future.

With these increases plus the sky-high taxes one incurs on booking flights through LHR (in many cases, the taxes and fees nearly equal the base fare), one now might be discouraged to drop BAEC membership in lieu of a different carrier (e.g., Lufthansa) and avoid the UK altogether.