Having had a discussion with my uncle who is very much a UA loyalist (he previously worked for AA's finance department), here are some thoughts:
- If BA truly aims to make the British Airways Club more exclusive as it seems and with the increased threshold, perhaps a nice **new** benefit for Bronze would be lounge access for the card holder only and be limited to long haul flights only and potentially a pay to access use lounge. This is currently seen with airlines like CX (have been for a while for CXMP Silver members), Emirates (DXB lounges only), Lufthansa (Lufthansa business lounges only for the card holder), and Qatar Airways (Silver members only). Additionally, BA can transform one of the T5 lounges into a frequent flyer lounge for these flyers (including front paying passengers) and transform the other two (South and B gates) to a more premium lounge following a refurb - similar to what LH has (LH Business lounge and Senator lounges) in FRA and what Delta is currently working towards (Delta Sky Clubs and Delta One lounges).
- In addition to the above point, perhaps a mid-tier benefit for Bronze members holding the most flexible tickets i.e one time lounge pass.
- I could also see BA unbundling business class in the very near future, similar to what LH and AF-KL has now. The extra ancillaries, bag and lounge access could work well from a revenue standpoint with BA. I am pretty sure this is working well for airlines that already adapted to this.

Another discussion that we had was that some of the real winners here are US residents. Currently, they do get good sign up bonuses and if BA is really aiming for non-flying based tier point scheme, this is potentially or is already unfair for UK and Europe residents. Given the heavy usage of credit cards in the USA, is it fair that someone spends £7.5k and immediately get BA Silver (oneworld Sapphire) for the purpose of accessing domestic lounges within the US for domestic flights. Given that BA currently stated that tier points are capped at 2500 Tier Points with AMEX - this could potentially change in the future. One could argue this is probably the easiest way even with the capped TP as some CW could easily cost £5k after taxes to the West Coast.

I think this truly beats the whole point of a 'Frequent Flyer' programme as I do think that the flying habits SHOULD also be taken into account. BA could have easily increased the flying activity requirement for each threshold i.e 6 for Bronze and 10 for Silver and Gold on BA/IB marketed and operated flights.

Also, looking at the calculations for oneworld partners, they appear to be very low. This would put travellers flying with BA to destinations that BA don't fly to and having to rely on codeshare flights at an unfair disadvantage especially to routes to Aus/NZ where BA heavily codeshares with QR, QF and CX via DOH, SIN, and HKG.

Lastly, BA could potentially adapt or introduce a club membership scheme similar to the US3 and Qantas but the caveat would be that the lounges could get busier. Perhaps they could limit it to Bronze and above members only?

Some really interesting discussions from many sources with these changes!

Happy to hear more thoughts from anyone.

Happy New Year!