This is the be all and end all.If you spend £15k and think spending another £5k will get you to some holy grail of BA treating you unfathomably better than the unwashed masses, then that's entirely on you. There's a real cognitivie dissonance among some here that spending more money with BA should somehow shield them from the business realities of airlines or indeed the physical realities of technical or logistical challenges.

There are incredibly valid criticisms in the post, notably about aircraft swaps; but to frame it as a customer service issue is to mischaracterise the situation. The core problem is that BA's hard product can vary wildly, even between flights on the same route.

If there's a cachet that comes with Gold status with BAC, it's source is either generated by oneself or overly judgmental fellow travellers. To BA, you're just another flyer...that's handed over £20k