ajs123

BA announced yesterday the introduction of Lifetime Gold which requires 35000 tiers points without the need to consecutively earn BA gold level. Those who pass the minimum yearly threshold of 1500 points it will require 23 years to get the lifetime status. Fo those who get the concord room card annually it takes just 7 years.

https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb...ource=MoreInfo

FT reports also the Lifetime Gold Guest List at 100k tier points...
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...-launched.html


I think it's a great addition for the BA program. Although LTPE is easier to earn, the BA Gold benefits are much better...

mogoy

A pity that they did not introduce Silver for life.
35k TP is really difficult to achieve. It's a longtime before actually getting reward for long term loyalty.

QF is more earthly with its LT scheme.
BA TierPoints are more or less equivalent to QF status credit :
- you get QF silver (OW ruby) for 7000 SC
- you get QF gold (OW sapphire) for 14000 SC
- you can't get QF plat for life

irishguy28

I slightly disagree with this statement!

Lifetime Gold is not the only reward on offer - do not forget that. There are annual thresholds that one can aim for too, which give anywhere between 12 and 23 months of status benefits, too.

(And besides, it's an improvement on what went before - when there was no lifetime loyalty level).

Ah, I didn't realise that Qantas had lifetime Silver and lifetime Gold levels, which is what you have written above.

cityflyer369

I think "earthly" just meant here: something easier to reach with a lower level of TPs.
And yes, if they had LT Silver, I personally would go for it. (I am not going for QF Gold because QF's FFP is (for me) worse than FB with respect to its earn/burn ratio.)

irishguy28

Well, Qantas' thresholds are lower, because they apply for lower status levels.

If we apply the same algorithm to Qantas' lifetime thresholds as that applied above to BA's, which said 23 years of Gold, then it is at least in line with Qantas:


To reach QF Silver, you must first reach 300 credits in a year, and thereafter 250 credits in a year to retain. Lifetime, at 7000 credits, would therefore take the "minimum Silver qualifier" 27.8 years to reach.
300 + (26.8*250) = 7000


To reach QF Gold, you must first reach 700 credits in a year, and thereafter 600 credits each year to retain. Lifetime, at 14000 credits, would therefore take the "minimum Gold qualifier" 23.2 years to attain.
700 + (22.2*600) = 14020 (just exceeding the necessary 14,000 points)

mogoy

Well spotted !
Reward and effort are effectively following the same pattern if you value the different levels benefit in the same manner as QF or BA value qualification requirements.
Grossly stated, that is Emerald = 2 Sapphire = 4 Ruby

But remains the fact that being sure to accumulate the equivalent of 23 years as BA Gold requires a lot of faith !

And I am not so sure that this scheme would be more enticing than QF or - to refocus the debate on AF KL - Flying Blue.
After all, FB is 10 years only of higher status to get the higher status for life (thx to rollover of status miles), when as we have seen, QF or BA effort is equivalent of more than 20 years.

Another idea is that the more time you spend to chase the LT status, the less you actually benefit from it (main benefit being, not being compeled to achieve requirement levels each and every year) before you ... errrh ... are terminally unfit for travel.

So
First plus : easier to achive on FB Plat LT.
Second plus : you benefit longer from your LT status.

Finally a reason to cheer up FB (even if FB plat does not compare w/ BA Gold) ?

irishguy28

The second may be true if you do manage to put the ten consecutive Platinum years together - but if you can't manage this, or miss a year, all your flying counts for nothing as you have to start from scratch again.

Of course, it is easier to get lifetime Platinum, but BA doesn't penalise you for going through the odd fallow period.

mogoy

True but in the same time, achieving 23 years of Gold card in 23 years is already a feat and a pretty long journey. Factoring some pauses in that duration push the LT status even further making it a bit more irrelevant. Of course BA has the advantage to account for extreme spurts of flying well over the 1500 TP for Gold.

But, AFAIK, FB has a full rollover of status mile. So it's not as flexible as BA scheme but help with the FB 10-year in a row condition.

So if we summarize :
BA : more effort to get LT and consequently less time to enjoy it before *the end*, better benefits as OW E and more flexibility to qualification.
FB : less effort and more time, "average" benefits, and a rather rigid qualification process eased by rollover.

I see another point :
- with QF/BA, cheap J tickets are the most rewarding for Status qualification.
- on AF, cheap J tickets rate is just over 100% so not really a fast track to status.

I compare the $ spent on a fare to the % of LT status earned for each fare.
Among my 3 FFPs (AF/OZ/QF), it's QF with cheap J-fare (esp shor-haul) that are the most cost efficient.
My finding is that it might be 'longer" or more demanding with BA/QF measured by yearly qualification requirement equivalent but cost-wise the gap should be thinner.

cityflyer369

Noone doubts that QF's life status levels are lower. I think the previous poster would just have been happy to have BA Silver for life, which would be reachable with a lower number of TPs if it were offered.
------------------------------------------
Entirely Independent of this, I disagree with those who suggest that BA Gold is in general(!) more difficult to achieve than FB Plat. BA Gold can in principle be achieved with ticket costs of eur 2500. (See BA thread.) Unless you qualify on very cheap segments, it is very difficult to get FB Plat for this amount.
And given that you get LT BA Gold for about 25times the yearly Gold qualification level, LT BA Gold is, in terms of absolute flying, not necessarily more difficult than FB Plat for life.

brunos

Three comments:

- BA has been improving its FFP over the past few years, including earn/burn ratios. There has been some minimal reductions, the major one being the equalization of qualifying threshholds across countries and that was an issue of fairness. FB has been constantly dowgrading its FFP. The Gold for Life (GFL) is a NEW positive feature that did not exist before.

- BAEC qualification (TPs) is geared towards premium pax, while FB is geared towards European frequent-segment flyers. Although BAEC has been made more attractive to non-premium pax recently, it is a great program for premium pax. When you fly premium cabins, it is easy to get BA Gold, actually easier than to get FB Plat. I usually gets tons of TPs above qualification level each year.

- In the BA GFL, the logic is quite different from FB PL. You do not need to qualify every year. But if you earn well above the 1500 annual TPs required for qualification, you get rewarded after some years. It is an incentive to earn as many TPs as possible every year. When you try to qualify on FB, the incentive disappears every year once you reached the threshold. Again keep in mind that BAEC is more geared towards premium pax than FB. In my modest case, I have re-qualified for BA Gold after 3 months. They have given me even more motivation to earn the 3 or 4,000 TPs that I usually earn every year.

bodory

When one knows that AF/KL is losing money on the European market, it is allowed to question the consistency of this strategy.

Gajan

Though this would be the initial thought, I understand that the majority does not qualify on segments.

brunos

This is a well-kept secret, and rightly so. I would not trust any off-the-cuff remarks by an AF staff. Furthermore, in years where AF open a status match, the gates are flooded with non-segment qualifyers. Even the short-time Scandinavian mistake last year led to a huge number of status match because it was amplified on all FF websites.
But let's assume that among those who REqualify for Plat, 70% do it on miles and 30% on segments, it still is a program geared toward segment-qualifyers because they are the marginal ones making an effort to requalify. Anyway I would doubt that there are 70% of current Plat (not for life) that requalify on miles since French AMEX stopped granting status miles. Certainly not on this board.

stimpy

Really? First of all, both the French and Dutch Amex are back to giving status miles again, on AF/KL purchases only this time. But still that can be a lot of "free" EQM's for business class fliers. Secondly, LTPE is super easy to earn now with the rollover miles. You really don't have to requal each year if you are loyal in the good years. I have colleagues who rack up over 200,000 EQM's in a year, thus they can take a couple years off and still requal for Plat each year. And while I know a LOT of people who requal on miles, I'm not sure I've met anyone who does it on segments? I'm sure there must be some, but it has to be rare. I even know plenty of people based in Nairobi who requal for Plat each year almost entirely on KQ miles.

As for BA, I have flown a huge amount of business and first class miles with BA for 17 years now, as Gold most of those years. But I am only half way to LTG. I doubt I will ever make it. FB's lifetime is vastly easier. And cheaper.

I also have UA Lifetime earned back when it required a million BIS miles on UA metal. I consider that the "hardest" one I earned.

GenevaFlyer

Yes, but ....

1. FB, with the reduced earnings, is focused on people who fly business class only. You don't reach 200K EQM on coach fares (or you live in a plane)

2. If you are a flyer like me, who was doing 100K EQM for a while (6.5 straight years as plat), and then had a drop in travel, you start from scratch. As a result, I now split my loyalty, maintaining FB Gold, but also flying * and OW when it makes sense.

3. At least, on UA and BA, I have a shot at long term lifetime status (ok, BA is still many years away, UA is closer as they used to be my primary program for a number of years), so there is a reward for continued loyalty.

It's like hotel status. I'm now Marriott lifetime Platinum which results in me looking for Marriott properties first when I start looking for a hotel. It does not limit me to them, but they have an advantage over the others.

Compare that to FB. In an 9 year period, I have 733K EQM, but rollover kicked in the year I did not requalify for Platinum (the previous year, I actually passed the old 115K rollover threshold). What do I have to recognize that loyalty? Diddly squat.

Do I still need it? Much less, as I am back to flying business class on longhaul, so the elite benefits are less important. I also have a complimentary Priority Pass again, so can choose to pay for lounge access at times. The result: I'm less loyal to Flying Blue, because I don't feel the reciprocity of the relationship.

Anyway, everyone's case is different, but this is just looking at it from another angle.

GenevaFlyer