With the changes coming into place on 1st April it’s not so much about the number of miles flown but the spend. It’s difficult to say how much because BA’s new arrangements are not transparent due to non-qualifying spend components but it would probably have cost me something like GBP 70K to get across the line. I will have achieved it for a small fraction of that by doing this trip.

Lifetime status means that there’s no need to re-qualify each year. BA’s new program requires a very high spend per year to quality for Gold Guest List with a stipulation that a large percentage is spent directly with BA. In addition, my understanding is that Lifetime Gold Guest List status is classed with a customer value of 100 where I think Gold Guest List achieved through annual spend is a little lower and this means BA treat Lifetime members a little differently. I hope to find out more in a few weeks but there are others (e.g. Markie who may wish to chip in with more information?)

Other than that the main benefits are:

• Access to Gold Guest List customer services and better handling where operational problems occur
• One Gold card and two Silver cards to give away each year (golfmadsmrs has been Gold for well over a decade!)
• Two space releases per year to open up reward availability. golfmadsmrs enjoys her Club World travel to the UK as a result of this! I also use these for colleagues on last minute business travel or where flexibility is needed as I’ve had several extra.
• Access to the Concorde Room in LHR and Chelsea in JFK (latter subject to conditions)
• Group 0 boarding privileges (on the occasions where it works can be useful for short haul)

I couldn’t possibly comment and if I did I don’t think it would help me very much. Golfmaddaughter has had her SIlver card for a decade too but is now pushing for two of them so she can take her family into the lounges 😂! Golfmadotherdaughter doesn’t tend to fly BA so I’ve been giving the other Silver card to a work colleague.