It's an interesting conundrum - I too thought some of the equation *must* have been about reducing lounge cost - but Sixth Freedom marvellous graph largely debunks that theory....I love that modelling!!!

So it must *largely* be about increasing revenue/profit through people going 'oooh - just another £10k spend and I'll make Gold' or through a reset of the value of Avios/Tier Points, through driving greater credit card usage like we see in the US. But there isn't the interbank margin available to exploit in the EU...so that's a harder objective, than simply reducing cost by making it harder to get status.

We will see how it plays out - the interesting thing, for me at least, is I no longer feel invested because they made such a pigs ear of it. I'll watch from the comfort of whatever airline I'm flying, because BA unwittingly broke my loyalty to them with their crass implementation, and the other airline's value proposition is probably now better...