I'm not sure if they'd have tested these ideas that explicitly with focus groups or customer groups. If they showed their hand too soon, you may have had people game it. It's possible they have quietly tested a range of possibilities with a small group of people that have signed NDAs (so don't expect anyone to come here to say the idea was tested with them).

I think many people anticipated BA was moving to a revenue based model. The writing was on the wall - given they had not announced anything regarding the BA Holidays Double Tier Points promotion, which ends in June. This leads me to believe the decision was made a long time ago (perhaps at the same time as when they aligned everyone's tier point years).

I also think forums like ours represent a small subset of the total user base. Most of my friends and family know almost nothing about tier points so this won't make a difference to them. But enthusiasts like us also likely represent a percentage (even if single digits) of their revenues, and given how quickly airlines can find themselves heading into the red due to changes outside their control, BA should thread likely when pissing off that user segment.

At the end of the day, I can see the appeal for BA to switch to a revenue based loyalty model - it was probably the right thing to do. Where I'm really dubious is how they've priced it. It should be hard but not so hard that people won't bother trying. Setting the thresholds at half of what they went for would probably have worked best £10,000 is probably still really hard, BUT it then offers them the flexibility of using promotions to get people to push for status. I fear what they've done is remove that incentive entirely for customers so now they'll have to work harder for every ticket they sell, which will harm their bottom line.