Originally Posted by
eefor jfp
So, I'll try once more to clarify / summarize the possibilities.
1. If you earned 1200 tier points between July 9, 2022 and yesterday (September 4, 2022) and by "just" you meant during this period, then you will have gold status until August 31, 2024 (the rest of this membership year plus the next one).
2. If you "just" qualified by earning 1200 points between July 9, 2021 and July 8, 2022, then your Gold status is good until August 31, 2023 and you have until July 8, 2023 to earn 1500 points to retain Gold (keep your status until August 31, 2024). You only need 1200 tier points if you earn them all before 31 December, 2022.
3. You will have silver for one year after you lose Gold.
I appreciate your spelling this out; I already understood it until reading another post in this thread, higher up, which caused me to pose the question.
Personally, I significantly exceeded the (currently necessary) 1125 ( or is 1135, I forget) TPs required to attain gold status almost 4 months prior to the end of my TP year, in early August. I will get something exceeding 1300 TPs from trips in Sept/Oct and in December of this year, so obviously with the reduced requirements needed before the end of this December, I'll "retain" gold through my '23-'24 TP year. Had they not reduced the TPs needed, then it would have taken a couple of extra months, and I'd hit 1500 TPs anyway, many months before the end of my 2023 TP year; the foregoing assumes that BA doesn't cancel or change my flights in some sort of irrecoverable manner that would force me to cancel the already planned and ticketed trips.
I asked the question for strictly "academic" reasons, being as I am going to retain status no matter what, barring a full-throated re-emergence of the pandemic.
I used to book some paid trips and some Avios trips, resulting in Silver status, which I never got any real benefit out of other than occasional lounge access from AS when traveling in the USA using my BAEC number in the ticket record, that plus the opportunity to pre-reserve seats in CE before the day of check in (although I had been Bronze before that, so technically I could reserve 8 days in advance with that). The absolute absence of any First Class Award inventory, and precious little CW inventory with BA has pushed me instead to buying paid FC tickets when I can find them at a price I can stomach, many months in advance and with lots of flexibility. Unless something changes on that front, I expect to get enough TPs for gold status going forward. Since I typically fly in the front or towards the front of the plane anyway, hence having lounge access with my ticket, the major benefits I personally get from gold BAEC status over Silver or Bronze is having a phone number I can call that they might actually answer. Most of the rest of it I would get anyway by virtue of the tickets I use and the classes I fly in.