Originally Posted by
firstlight
I think with the shrinking of F and the difficulty in seeing F redemption for the remaining routes that BA has already achieved this aim. Hands up anyone here at silver or below who gets regular redemptions in F. However at a 35000 ntp Gold or higher it is relatively easy with a GUF or a joker to do so if you plan it right.
I don't think they have to be honest. The jokers are what they are, but precisely, the reason why getting F redemptions is hard is because everyone can. Your BA blue, your BA Prem, and your AA anything all have access to the exact same space at the exact same time - and yes, with AA frequent buyer stuff, the AA ones may have loooads of miles to spend on BA F awards.
What you describe is not protecting F award space for frequent flyers rather than frequent buyers and is not reserving them for the highest BA flyers as opposed to members of other programmes or lower status members, it is simply that as you rightly point out, F has become rarer and demand for F awards is higher than ever (especially with AA deserting that market), ergo F award space has become rarer for everyone. That other ways to travel in F exist for people with Jokers (GGL and Prems only, not gold) or to upgrade is an entirely separate question from access to award space.
Originally Posted by
firstlight
F redemptions also cost a lot in avios unless you combine them with vouchers.
Frankly, compared to FB they absolutely don't. It's of course harder to compare nowadays given the number of avios-cash combinations, peak/off peak on ba and dynamic pricing to last seat (except in F) on AF, but if we use the "old" rate as the standard for J and use LHR-JFK as an example, then a standard F award on BA is 1.5 times the standard cost of a J one (if you use the cheapest cash combination, the J award is in fact cheaper than the F one!) . By contrast, with FB, the cost of a P award is over 5 times (nearly 6 times) that of the standard J award.
Or to put it differently, if we take a tatl route on which both BA and AF charge the exasct same 50k as standard in J (both with reduced taxes), F on ba will be offered at 72.5k and F on AF at 290k. I'm afraid that any suggestion that those orders of magnitude are in any way comparable just doesn't seem tenable to me.