My feeling is that this is coming and coming soon. I also do not trust BA not to introduce this without fair warning. Perhaps the furore about the recent BAC introduction might stall them a little from introducing this, but I’m not even sure about that.

All these steps seem so counter-intuitive for a European based loyalty scheme. Following American principles will iMHO kill off the scheme as it no longer makes sense to accumulate Avios, not that it ever really did but the incentive to pay cash for tickets to retain status rather than burn Avios has now clearly been removed for most of us. While earning Avios has become more difficult, if spending them becomes poor value compared to the cost of accumulating them then the whole scheme loses any reason to exist. In short, exactly the opposite to what the roadmap is supposed to be for IAGL.

Personally, I am now 50% of the way through burning my Avios stash. I am using GUF vouchers to book redemptions into revenue buckets due to limited availability, probably due to many ex-loyal flyers now doing the same thing.