Well this is all a bit of a downer. Like several other posters above I fall into that group of leisure flyers where LTGGL was never ever a possibility, but LTG was on the near horizon and a definite goal. I had told myself that I would retain GGL (on the cheap, obvs) until I got there, which would have been about 2 years away, probably a little less. Two years has now become closer to ten years and that is very disappointing. I knew this could happen, but there is only so much travel I a) can afford and b) have the time to undertake. My bad I suppose for not getting there earlier, as despite being something like 82% of the way there, under the new arrangements I am not sure I ever will.

Despite 90 pages of moaning we should be under no illusions that we matter. This is an incredibly niche board of a small number of people who enjoy travel, aviation, but most of all gaming the system. Yes we probably spend a lot more than the average person, but there are many many more average people that make up the numbers.

It was fun while it lasted, and I have genuinely enjoyed the last decade or so. However this announcement is actually quite liberating. In fact very liberating. I frequently (but in no way exclusively) planned holidays and trips around TP and the BA network, and as I was never especially sophisticated at using the breadth of the OW alliance my destinations were rather capped. I look forward to travelling to new places. There are only so many times I can fly to Bucharest etc, and as I planned each year out versus a finite number of days of annual leave it was always with that slight trepidation that I wouldn't be able to make it, especially when aiming at 3000 old TPs (OTP haha). The fact that this won't be a consideration any longer is actually a relief - you do get sucked into these things. Even before this I had actually considered diverting my spend to membership of some other nice organsation that aligned to my hobbies like 67 Pall Mall. Much cheaper than trying to retain status and with better Champagne.

I'd already managed to retain GGL for next year - albeit that this is just 7 weeks as I used to have a February collection year, and I've worked it out such the 'carry over' will also be sufficient to see me through the next one to April 2026. But after that it would appear to be over. I guess I'll convert to something like 450,000 NTP and frankly I don't know how I could justify spending another £100,000. This would actually be in excess of all money I've ever thrown at BA since I started keeping track of it in 2014. It's kind of ludicrous that a GGL today might struggle to hit the new Silver. Then again I am not the kind of GGL worth retaining. I'd imagine few of us on here are.

My only question now is whether I quickly book a few pre-April flights to earn a repeat 2xGUF1 at 3500 OTP. My short year requalification is 3300 OTP, another 200 would come in at under £500 mosty likely, not only getting a second set of GUF1s but also "saving" £2800ish of new £1 per NTP spend for the same result. That only makes sense if I somehow despite these changes see myself going for LTG, but as mentioned above I think it could be time to simply chuck in the proverbial towel. I suppose one more set of GUFs would be helpful in burning the avios I have saved up at this point.