The way I see it, BA always wanted to go after corporate travellers who have the discretionary power to do extra trips (like joining the marketing guys for a convention or customer event, or making an additional trip to that off-site team in mainland Europe).

I think it was never their intention that people make three or four connections and maximize the hell out of deeply discounted business class tickets.

The incentives for lower spenders are supposed to come mostly out of the earn-and-burn proposition. Give people additional partners for earning and burning. Introduce features like free stopovers on award tickets or something like that. Aeroplan is a good example of a FFP which does that.

But the elite status tiers with the exception of the lowest tier or two (which is supposed to ease young people into the program) are for corporate travellers who don't pay most of their tickets out of their own pocket but have some discretion in the choice of airline, choice of travel dates, and frequency of travel.

As bitter as it is for the nerds on FT, I think this is a natural recalibration for the most part. I despise BA for the sneaky way in which they are doing it. But a major adjustment of the thresholds was necessary IMO.