Originally Posted by orbitmic

I think that the potential effects of the changes to lifetime status are also noteworthy.

Just like FFP, lifetime status is not meant to "reward" anything, but rather to bring additional business by holding people at the heart of their flying potential years captive. The idea is that for a significant period of time, despite potential problems and disappointments, changes in circumstances, etc, you tie those customers to your airline because they will work towards the lifetime target when they might otherwise be tempted to switch to some of your competitors.

To achieve that, you need to reach a fine balance: the target must be high enough that you hold people sufficiently captive, but achievable enough that it is worth their sticking to you rather than just trying others.

A number of posters who are relatively close to lifetime status have expressed their disgruntlement upthread and said that they feel that the lifetime target is now unachievable. What does it mean in practice?

Well, under the new system, someone with, say, 25k lifetime TPs by 31 March would feel that lifetime status was slowly coming within sight. A few years of strong commitment to the airline and that would work. Instead, based on BA's own conversion promise, that same person who will arrive with 25k lifetime TPs on 31 March will still need to spend an eyewatering further £160k to achieve lifetime status, which will buy you a small house in many rural parts of the UK.

The issue here is that for instance, if you wanted to achieve lifetime platinum status on AFKL Flying Blue, you would just need 10 continuous years of platinum status. You can most certainly achieve FB platinum for well under £16k/year so to put things simply, if your goal is to achieve lifetime status and you have already accrued 25k lifetime TPs on BAEC with the intention to make the old 35k target, well, you are arguably better off giving this up entirely and starting accruing with FB from scratch: you will reach lifetime status in 10 years which is likely a lot shorter than the remaining time it would take you to do so on BAEC, for a fraction of the price, and in the meantime, you'll get the best standard status on FB (Platinum) every year as opposed to merely qualifying as silver on BA.

Taking another example, if you accruing 80k lifetime TPs, many of us with decent GGL flying patterns would feel that GGLfL was finally slowly in sight and something we'd be able to achieve with 3-5 years of intense flying. By 1st April, with the conversion BA have disclosed, that 80k lifetime TP member will suddenly need to spend a further £300k + taxes for lifetime GGLfL to become a reality, something many of us simply won't be bothered to wait for.