New BRONZE tier announced [and changes to membership year calculation]
 

Searched but didn't see this latest news:

Bronze brings more benefits
The British Airways Executive Club has today launched a brand new ‘Bronze’ card for its frequent fliers.

The Bronze card is a major boost bringing extra benefits to customers when they travel. The card is further evidence of how the airline is backing up its recently launched customer promise, ‘To Fly. To Serve.’, with enhancements that improve the customer journey.

The new Bronze card will bridge the gap between Blue and Silver tiers will be awarded to members who achieve 300 tier points + 2 eligible flights or who book 25 single flights (or sectors).

Bronze cardholders will benefit from:


· Business class check-in
· Seat selection from seven days before departure
· Mileage tier bonus of 25 per cent every time they travel (1.25 Avios for every mile flown)
· Access to a priority free phone number
· Priority at the Baggage Arrival Services desks
· Priority stand-by and wait-listing

Within the first year, approximately 120,000 of the airline’s frequent fliers will benefit from the new card.

The addition of the card is part of several changes being made to improve the scheme. Earlier this year, the airline announced its plans to introduce Avios, the new name for the currency for all the loyalty and reward programmes owned by International Airlines Group.

Ian Romanis, British Airways’ head of customer engagement said: “ The customer is at the heart of everything we do at British Airways. When we launched our customer promise: ‘To Fly. To Serve.’ we made a commitment to back these words up with over £5bn worth of investments.

“The launch of the bronze card is signal of the investment we’re making in our loyal customers, who deserve proper recognition and reward.

“ We want them to feel like they truly belong to the club. That ethos is at the heart of all the changes we have and are making to the programme.”

From November the airline will launch a brand new identity for the Club. The redesign is intended to broaden the Executive Club’s appeal, to attract new members and give a stronger brand identity.

Good spot. What is the source of that?

Well, free seat selection is of value, although of course this only puts you back in the position that most other airlines put you in from Day 1! The rest is a waste of space.

It is actually a degredation of benefits for those on paid J tickets, and of course Silver / Gold, since there are now 120,000 more people blocking the way to the J check-in desk.

What is not clear is whether your 300 tier points reset or not. If they do, it is now 900 points for Silver .....

Interesting to see that 120,000 people earn between 300 and 595 TP's each year!

Where did you see this?

I wonder if this will give you Ruby status with OneWorld

The mileage bonus is a nice little benefit for people.

The seven days thing is good, leaving a decent choice for Silver and Gold, perhaps even more than usual with Bronze's unlikely to want to spend the cash now, knowing they're likely to have first pick.

Personally I think I'll invest in the £300 or so extra it will take for me to get to Silver, mainly due to the mile bonus, if this is cut to 50% at the announcement though, I think I'll just lapse to Bronze.

I am not familiar with either AA or IB, but the 25% bonus could show that Silver will go back to 50%. Or was the adjustment up 100% the alignment?

I wonder what will happen to those people between 300 and 600 tier points when this comes in? I'd be mightily p!ssed if I was currently on course to get Silver before my current year ended but got Bronze instead and had to get another 600 tier points.

I think that's pretty much a given.

Do the tier points reset? Everything else is irrelevant ....

Given they say "on your way" I assume you just continue up to Silver.

This just motivates me to make sure I make Gold each year. :)

I can't see where they say that, but uou need to learn to speak BA. Never take anything in their communication literally.

If I was to guess, I'd say your points will be reset to zero when you reach Bronze. It'd be nice if they aren't though.

So what we can now assume, as we already knew.

To get from Bronze to Silver you need 600 + 300 if you are starting out new.

To get to gold you will need 2400 from new.

Its possible that Silver will reduce to 50% bonus miles with gold staying at 100%

Silver will become out of my reach if tier points reset to 0 at 300.