Originally Posted by BadNewsFairy

As an example of who BA wants to ‘win’ here, think of the following example… a senior exec in a multinational who flies regularly but not frequently, e.g. to a quarterly board meeting. They travel enough to get Silver but not Gold, so can’t use the F lounge. They have a second home in the Loire Valley so most leisure flights are on Ryanair, but their one annual longhaul holiday is on Virgin to Disneyland. Rightly or wrongly, several BA senior managers have had a bee in their bonnet over this for years… and have been known to rant about cheapskate TP runners (their words!) getting Gold but not someone they think ‘deserves’ it more. And with more leisure customers taking up space for longer in the lounges than business customers used to, they decided the balance had tipped too far in the wrong direction.

And the changes have a secondary benefit in being more attractive to higher-spending Americans, who are the prime target base at the moment.