FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - The all new and updated Ultimate BRITISH AIRWAYS Guide
Old Jul 25, 2006, 6:52 am
  #10  
Dave_C
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: London, UK
Posts: 5,643
Tiers and Tier Points

Most airline programmes work on the principle that if you fly “n” thousand miles in a twelve-month period, you’ll get elite status. BA’s programme doesn’t work like that – it essentially exists as a reward programme for those flying in premium cabins and on flexible tickets, rather than purely from accruing miles from flying. So instead, each flight, if it’s booked in an eligible fare class, will earn a certain number of points. Get enough points, and you get promoted to the next tier.

There are four tiers in the BA Exec Club;

Blue
Silver
Gold
Premier


Blue is the basic level and is what you start on. Once you reach the required number of points, you will be promoted to Silver. From Silver, with another load of points you’ll get to Gold.

Premier is an invitation only level. There are only around 1500 Premiers worldwide. You can’t get to it by just flying a lot. They are generally given to people that BA consider are important, and each new Premier has to be approved by the board (BA’s Board of Directors, not the FT Board – would that it were so simple!).

Promotion

The promotion process is not as simple as it could be. First off, you need to have four flights on BA in your membership year that earn Tier Points. If you don’t have this, as your flights are all on partners, you will remain forever Blue! Also, the number of points required for each level, depends on where you live. The levels are given below.

Code:
		Normal		Europe (excl. UK/Ireland)
Silver		600		400
Gold		1500		800
The chart shows that if you are a UK/US resident, you need to get 600 Tier Points, before you can be promoted to Silver. A resident of the rest of Europe (or someone with a European mailing address) only needs to get to 400. To reach Gold, a UK/US resident would need a further 1500 points, and someone living in the rest of Europe, only a further 800.

When you reach or exceed the number of points required for promotion, your Tier Points will be reset to zero. Your membership year will also be rest immediately. This means that from that date you are promoted, you will have one further year to maintain your status.

So (for a UK member) to get to Gold from Blue, you will need at least 600 Tier Points to get to Silver, these will then be reset to zero, and you will need a further 1500 points to get to Gold. Once you hit 1500 points, these will again be reset and your new Gold membership year will commence. From then on, your points continue to build (for the next year) – if you exceed 1500 when you are already Gold, they do not reset (they continue to add up towards other perks such as the GUF2 or Partner Silver Card as mentioned elsewhere).

There are some additional pitfalls that you need to be aware of during the promotion process. For most people, it’s fairly unlikely that they will hit 600 points exactly. When I was promoted, I got to 680 points, which then got reset to zero. So what happens to those extra points over the 600 mark? Well, you lose them. BA will not credit them back to you. So if you’re on 580 points, and you take a FIRST flight, you are effectively losing 160 points. As with most “rules”, there are some exceptions. A few people have managed to get these points credited so if you desperately need the points, it may be worth a try.

Secondly, the promotion process itself can take a few days. This means that you can get several hundred points over the promotion threshold. When you do get promoted, and reset to zero, you will lose these points as well. However, do not fret. You will need to contact BA, and they will put a note on your account saying that you are “owed” how ever many points got reset. When it comes to getting promoted or renewed, you will need to contact them for them to manually process things.

You have probably wondered by now whether – if you live in the UK – you could get promotion to Silver or Gold more quickly by changing your mailing address in your profile to one in Europe? Well, yes, you can! However, there are five things to remember if you are thinking of doing this:

1. You can only have a BA Amex if your Executive Club account is UK based. If you already have a card, it WILL be cancelled right away.
2. You cannot transfer Tesco Clubcard points to BA if your account is not UK based. One way around this is to keep the paper vouchers (they are valid for 2 years) and move your account back to the UK for six months once every two years.
3. You will not longer be eligible (or targeted) for UK-based promotions (although you will instead be targeted for promotions in your new region, which may work out better or worse – but either way, you can’t really complain!)
4. The European address you give BA must exist, because they will send your shiny new card to this address.
5. You can only change your address once every six months (i.e. you can’t just move, get promoted then return).

If your account is moved to Europe when you already exceed the next new, lower Tier Point threshold you require, you will automatically be promoted and your membership date reset to the day you move. If you move your address back you will retain your current status until the end of your membership year (for example a Euro Silver who has 500 Tier Points and a membership year end date of September 8th moves to the UK on March 20th and does not earn any more Tier Points – they stay Silver until September 8th when they get demoted to Blue for not having hit the UK renewal level of 600).

Renewal

Renewal is fairly simple. Again, you need to achieve the required number of Tier Points and make four Tier Point earning BA flights within the year to maintain your status. The number of Tier Points required for renewal is exactly the same as the number required for promotion.

Gold card holders who do not retain their card benefit from a 'soft landing' in the first year - i.e. they will drop from Gold to Silver for a year and then either go back up to Gold or retain silver (if they reach the required number of points), or drop down to Blue the year after.

Earning Tier Points on one-way BA Flights

Tier Points can only be earned on oneworld flights. Tier Points cannot be earned on discount economy tickets. This means, if you only ever fly cheapo economy, you will never get status. In economy, you will only earn Tier Points on Y B H fares.

Below is a table that shows how many points you’ll earn for a single segment flight that has a BA flight number:

Code:
Cabin			Economy		WT+	Club		First
Fare Class		Y B H		T W	J C D I	F A
UK Domestic		20			20
Europe			20			40
Longhaul		60		75	120		180
Australia		110		135	220		330
A small point with the Australia flights; if you’re booked to travel to Australia, but with a stop over (i.e. booked as two flight numbers), it will count as two longhaul flights, so you will actually earn slightly more than it booked as a single flight.

I Class
Within Europe, a great way to earn Tier Points is to take advantage of Club Europe’s cheapest (discounted, totally inflexible) fares. These book in to the I fare bucket so you will see ‘I Class’ referred to a lot on this board. These can be a great way to ‘just top off’ your account if you’re short of a threshold…and great fun for weekend breaks or even daytrips. The list of destinations and the best fares is somewhat seasonal and will also depend on fare sales, offers, etc. However, LGW is usually better than LHR. You can check the official BA fare rules for the base fares (i.e. excluding taxes/surcharges) in the PDF files on their Travel Trade site:

http://www.batraveltrade.com/trade/t...ok&sec=farerul

You can search the European listing for the fare basis ‘IEUNBA’ to turn up the I Class fare to each destination (other possible useful searches/fares can be ‘IGOBA’ or ‘IEULGW’). These fares are perfectly valid Club Europe fares and you get all the services and benefits, including the full miles and 40 Tier Points each way.

Some flights also (for now) appear to earn longhaul Tier Points and miles, even though they are flown on a shorthaul plane and marketed as Club Europe. The current known example is SSH in Egypt. Whether it’s worth over 5 hours on an Airbus in a Club Europe configuration, however, is debatable!

Fifth Freedom Flights

Also, BA operates a number of short flights that do not originate, or travel to the UK, these are known as fifth freedom flights. The full list is below:

Abu Dhabi - Muscat
Antigua - St Lucia
Bahrain - Doha
Sao Paulo - Buenos Aires
Singapore - Sydney
Singapore - Melbourne
Bangkok - Sydney
Baku - Bishkek

These are available to book by anyone, and for the short flights, can be fairly cheap, sometimes as low as £300 for a return in FIRST for BAH-DOH. The Asia to Australia flights aren't that cheap but BAH-DOH-BAH in FIRST (for example) can be a potential bargain for 360 Tier Points if you’re already out there, and is a route well-travelled by some members.

Earning Tier Points on one-way oneworld Partners

Most oneworld flights (as long as they are in an eligible fare class) can earn you Tier Points. The only exception to this are flights with a oneworld airlines code, that are operated by a non-oneworld airline. For example AA put their codes on to Alaska Airline flights. These would not earn Tier Points.

Below is a basic table that shows the Tier Points earned on oneworld flights. Later, in the oneworld section of this guide, I will document which exact fare classes for each carrier are eligible for points.

Code:
				Economy		Business	First
Flights < 2000 miles		20		40		60
Flights > 2000 miles		60		120		180
YUP (pronounced ‘Why-Up’)
These are fares on American Airlines which carry an Economy (Y) booking code but as soon as you book them, they actually book in to a confirmed First Class seat. The great thing about them from our point of view is, they earn First Class miles and Tier Points as above too. With this in mind, there are some real Tier Point bargains to be had with YUPs (e.g. if you’re in America already on another trip). Our friends over on the AA Board:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=445

have lots more information. And there is a very useful tool on the FareCompare website where you can check what the YUPs are from a specific location:

http://www.farecompare.com/search/yu...rue&carrier=AA

Last edited by Dave_C; Jul 25, 2006 at 7:29 am
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