The issue of upgrades is important, and indeed symptomatic of BA's attitude towards economy passengers, since they make it that much more difficult and expensive, compared to other airlines, to use miles for an upgrade, and even then make it impossible to do on all but the most expensive fares--which are really expensive!

Actually, that doesn't really bother me as much as the airline's overall attitude towards its economy passengers, and this detail shouldn't distract us from the main point here, which is that it clearly seems to alot of frequent flyers that BA is, needlessly, pursuing "premium" travellers (not even that well, given Gaza's story) at the expense of everyone else.

Bagold is right to point out that BA's economy service may not be worse than anyone else's (actually the new WT, which I flew on a 777 recently, is much better than the old economy, which is truly awful; it really is almost acceptable from a basic human rights perspective!). Improving economy service and upgrading the whole fleet to the New WT, as bagold says, is important.

But the main question is, why would any airline in its right mind want to go after the premium traffic at the expense of everyone else? Especially since the same passengers, as many people here have pointed out, often end up migrating between classes, or gradually moving from flying economy to flying Club or First. As most respondents here testify, BA has ended up polarizing the different levels of service into "premium" and "non-premium." And they ignore one and relentlessly pursue the other, rather than trying, as BearX220 says, to synchronize them and appeal to both sets of passengers at once, to work with passengers as they migrate between classes of service, inevitably for reasons way beyond their own control or influence (who would voluntarily choose to fly economy if they had any choice?!). Rather than alienating loyal passengers--why bother?!--the airline should try to build loyalty early on so that when passengers like bagold "graduate" from Economy to Club or First, or even just circulate between classes as chance and budget managers may have it, it's all done within a continuing framework recognizing and rewarding passenger loyalty in all classes of service, each according to its own.

I agree with Tim T and Gaza that awarding points and miles for all fares---even if points aren't distributed equitably, so that you get more points for flying Club on a particular sector as opposed to eco--would be a good start. I can't see what BA would lose by simply going after all passengers, the good, the bad and the ugly, rather than obsessively focusing on one group at the expense of everyone else. Such alienation is needless; they may save on the EC lounge peanuts and cheese and beer now, but they run the risk of losing a future stream of revenue into the future. As long as you're going to have an economy service at all, you might as well fill those seats with loyal customers, whose loyalty is offered even token recognition; what do you get for being Silver anyway? A faster queue to stand in, somewhere reasonably comfortable and quiet to sit, and a little mileage bonus. In return for a lifetime of loyalty, that's hardly very much to offer.