Montacute

The Points Guy is based in NYC. The Avios change is bad for people in the Northeast US unless they only like to fly to LON or domestic short-hauls. I agree it is even worse than that for US flyers not near a BA served airport.

beltway

People, anyone who could write the doubletalk above is not amenable to persuasion through rational discourse. I suggest you avail yourselves of the handy mechanism thoughtfully provided by FT so that we might return the discussion to substance rather than endless tail-chasing about whose outrageous statement was ironic and whose was just foolish.

Mountain Trader

Here's a perspective from one USA based BA customer.

I don't care who BA is catering to-after the changes, they aren't catering to me. They have eliminated from BAEC its biggest competitive advantages (stopovers and attractively priced long distance routings), so I have no reason to use them.

The roll-out promise of 97% turned out to be a joke, and the joke's on us. Was that on purpose? Answer: I don't care. I was told one thing, then given another. Fool me once......

I have a plan to burn my BA miles soon, and my Chase BA card will be gone even sooner, and I'll be sure to let Chase know why. To be clear, I'm not angry, I just have no reason to play around with BA any more.

HilFly

RobDBA

Do BA really have many frequent flyers in their loyalty scheme who are not based near BA served airports? Or are these individuals actually not loyal to BA at all and were actually in the scheme to take advantage of a quirk of the old redemption scheme or an opportunistic miles offer?

Is it wrong that BA should skew it's loyalty club slightly in favour of people who actually want to fly on BA planes and/or will redeem on direct routes that must cost a lot less than buying/providing multiple flights for redeemers?

It is now easier to achieve status on BA for those who fly BA and cheaper to redeem on many BA flights - surely that means the majority of BA's loyal customers are better off?

Royce

I thought BA was a British subsidiary of a company registered in Madrid.

Oh puh-lease. BA has to appeal to foreigners to keep its business model even remotely viable. Why shouldn't all customers be treated equally? As it is, I was once a "countryman", and I still live closer to LHR than GLA, ABZ and EDI, yet thanks to the changes, I'm burdened with an extra 9000 miles avios for the privilege of living beyond the UK's borders.

I despair, I really do.

China Clipper

Thank you, that's exactly what I was thinking by that point.

HilFly went above and beyond the call of duty in patiently explaining the analogy. Patience of a saint imho.

GUWonder

Do you think BA's interline agreements would be as extensive as they are if BA weren't for wanting to keep and/or acquire many frequent flyers within the fold?

To get back to your question in yet another way, yes. There are many, even as probably not as many as are within an hour or less drive to a BA-served airport on all ends of the ticketed journeys -- then again keep in mind that the increased use of code-sharing and being a polygamist airline married to more global airline alliance partners is about going for more than just that.

lkar

Devaluation is what it is. Bad notice is, well, bad notice. If there were people truly snookered and lulled into not making awards they could have made because of the statements by BA, that stinks. It's no way to run things, and loyalty really needs to be a two way street or, well, someone needs to pick a new word for these sorts of programs.

But to me, those are issues that will recede as time goes on.

The part that's bizarre to me is how non-user friendly the whole deal is at this point for anyone that wishes to fly between cities that have more than one routing. BA declines to make their mileage requirements transparent. Fine. People will figure it out through trial and error. The problem is the uselessness of the calculator, because of the segment pricing. Having to check segment by segment for availability before you can go back to the calculator to check the mileage requirements for each segment is absurd. I guess the way to go about it is figure out all routings on your possible journey, and calculate the mlieage between each point using the calculator, and then check for availability by segment with some understanding at that point of what it will cost. Is that what BA was hoping to achieve? For those of us who save up miles to hit certain targets (e.g., when I make it to 120k, I can fly from XXX to YYY in J), this is not really going to work all that well.

The combination of a non-transparent system, combined with a segment-by-segment approach to pricing, and a calculator with the only variables of origin and destination is silly. It is either extremely poorly thought out or a deliberate attempt to obfuscate. I suspect the latter, although given the ridiculous language about one stop being permitted, the whole thing is just a mess that reeks of poor planning and lack of foresight.

HilFly

Isn't that the point of being part of a global alliance? Using partners to create supposedly seamless itineraries which benefits the members and the airlines. AA gains from having BA passengers connecting to / from its flights and vice versa.

HilFly

Ooh, I like that! Saint HilFly! I don't have to die or anything first do I?

China Clipper

Hmm, on second thought I'd be leery of fouling up the existing peerage with yet another increment

You want to go where?

I am not sure why we should expect transparent pricing with Avios, when pricing hasn't been transparent when paying cash for many years. Since airlines have gotten away with that for years, it isn't surprising that an airline would do the same with their FFP, however unwelcome it might be.

Swanhunter

For those of us that recall the great US EC changes in 2004 there will be a strong sense of deja vu. Much wailing and upset, cutting of cards and ties and promises that BA would be dead in the water within 18 months.

lkar

It isn't solely the lack of transparency that bothers me, it's the lack of transparency in conjunction with a useless calculator for many trips. On your main point, I think lack of transparency is kind of silly with a major rewards program. Unless the assumption is that people simply accumulate without goals. But a company that wants to give it a try may find it desirable and profitable. B6 and WN actually do it that way, although most figure out the math pretty quickly. My opinion may not be the right on that, so I take your point solely on transparency.

My problem is the lack of transparency is coupled with what may be unprecedented for major airline frequent flier programs -- a new points pricing scheme that varies the miles required between points A and B by as much as tens of thousands of miles based solely on routing even without a stop-over. If you're going to do that, having no transparency plus a calculator that uses origin and destination is, IMHO, nuts.