This is fair but a loyalty programme is supposed to generate additional spend, not reward spend that would happen already.

So if this revenue model is going to generate additional spend, rather than heaping tier points and Avios on people who have no choice but to fly BA for work, it can do so in a number of ways:

• Encourage people to book more flexible fares or to delay booking until closer to the day of travel, when fares can be expected to be higher
• Encourage business travellers to put all their spending in one place to get over a status threshold (if a return J long-haul was typically 280/1,500 TPs for Gold, this model works better for people who are paying an average of £4k+ for O&D tickets)
• Make it harder to retain BA status so that people will abandon secondary statuses, and/or encourage them to focus their loyalty on BA and JBV partners, e.g., to fly LHR-DOH-MEL rather than LHR-CMB-MEL (the latter earning half the tier points of the former under the new model)

It will kill the incremental loyalty business from

• Leisure travellers who don't also book long, 5* holiday stays
• Anyone who is fairly flexible about bookings but who would pay a small(ish) premium for BA/OneWorld products
• Anyone who might be ambivalent about flying in a higher cabin (and paying more to do so) but for whom loyalty/status benefits might have tipped them over the edge.

(Unless of course they're already close to a tier threshold).