rajsbasi

Aside from cutting the silver bonus in half which is a big change which waterside bean counting numpty came up with the UuA formula. Quite how a WTP to CW UuA can go from 10k to 24k escapes me? The current system was fine and easy to figure out. Given these changes and the daft surcharges charged on redemption BAEC is fast going down the drain. Anyone care to venture an explanation for the UuA rationale??

Dave Noble

Perhaps in their analysis , they figured that the current rate for upgrading was too low and seems to be in line with the view from some that the best value use of Avios was for upgrading from PE to Business

Dave Noble

Does it matter to BA who is paying for the tickets? BA seems to simply be skewing its scheme back towards high fare payers as it was in its early days

Obviously there are going to be upset people ; istr that it wasnt that long ago that the silver earnings were raised to 100% to the indignation of gold members

greg5

This is exactly what I was thinking when I saw the changes. I remember flying discount Y, getting 25% points, and NO TPs on the flights I would fly that were booked by my corporate TA. OTOH, the corporate TA tickets bagged either 5 or 10% discount. When it was clear I was never going to hit Silver, I switched to *A for the next 10 years, where I did get status.

MeltingAlf

Thanks to Yllanes for the Iberia Avios English table.

Unfortunately, due to IB using a round-trip calculation unlike BA, that thing was a PITA to read.

I hope I got my calculations right. I presumed that Iberia Avios miles are calculated with the entire trip, and therefore used that assumption to double the miles needed and mileage flown on redemption on BA to suit that.

If my assumption is wrong, please do inform me. I do have another table assuming that the miles flown on redemption is one-way each (which looks REALLY odd with BA having massive increases.)

shorthauldad

In the spirit of yesterday's changes, perhaps all tickets issued under a corporate deal should earn neither TPs nor Avios, the money saved can be added to the corporate rebate.

Should please the bean counters. Who cares what the pax think?

Dave Noble

BA cares about its profits

If BA thought that making such a change was worthwhile to it, I suspect it would.

I am sure that BA doesn't really care if certain passengers are adversely affected and knows that it will lose some customers

greg5

Actually, at this time, the company policy was that you were not allowed to collect points on corporate travel. It changed shortly thereafter. Then I collected the points with UA, and got the corporate discount as well on my private travel.

From my point of view, it looks like BA waited to see what came out of the other programs, then set the bar slightly above that. With my traveling, there's no way I would get status with M&M, with BAEC I can still get up to Silver. But it still sucks quite badly.

Yllanes

Great work, but we should point out that this is the cost for redemptions on partners other than BA or IB.

If I understand correctly, you have generated this chart assuming that BA redemptions on other OW parterns will cost the same as on BA metal. Are we sure about this? It seems a little strange (notice, for instance, that the BA announcement does not even list the cost for IB redemptions, whicjh we know from the IB+ chart in http://www.ibp2015.com/Avios-y-puntos-elite_en.pdf is lower than on BA in some classes).

MeltingAlf

Ah, yes, I forgot to specify that these rates are for other oneworld carriers (although I did label the top of the Excel document as such)

Unfortunately, I suspect Iberia and BA pricing are fixed with respect to their own programme/airline.

Here's what BA's FAQ said:

There's one odd anomaly in the Madrid-London flight though - whilst the better BA redemption rates apply, the Iberia calendar applies. A bit weird, in my opinion.

MeltingAlf

Yep.


From the BA FAQ:

So that means while IB+ uses a separate table, BA relies on their own pricing (unfortunately the peak one) for oneworld partner redemptions.

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I've managed to condense the table, but I'm not sure if my fat fingers caught something off. This is a lot neater compared to the other version.

paul4040

The explanation is that this was previously a sweet spot for UuA.

BA now would like to take more Avios off you for the privilege. Because they can. Affects all of us, but that's life!

benjyyy

Of course it matters. It's a loyalty program. In the new format the vast majority of people it will be rewarding are the people who have no choice in the matter as their tickets are being bought for them. What's the point in that?

Dave Noble

Yessss... BA is tailoring its scheme based on the customer base that it wishes to reward

One point would be keeping those that are having to fly BA happy and not encourage the company to change to another carrier

BA is a company and it doesn't care about individual people generally; with few exceptions, I expect that those that have been "loyal" to BA are simply "loyal" based upon it being the best for their purposes rather than some sense of fealty to a corporation

PeacefulWaters

I'm loyal because, despite the inconvenience of having to tag an additional flight onto my trip, BA ensured I wasn't penalised for doing so.

I'm loyal because, despite rarely being cheapest BA rewarded me for using them to a level that made it worth doing.

I'm loyal because, occasionally, I'm able to reach a higher status level and can usually get round company policy to incorporate paid for BA flights that would reward me for doing so.

You think I'm niche? They've shafted me for living outside the South East. They've made achieving higher status not worth the effort and they've made going in the face of company policy to get on a BA flight an effort not worth making.

After I've spent the outstanding Avios I can't see any reason why I'll fly with BA again.