MPH1980

I'll give you a prediction:
You might also get a variant that offers some Avios in compensation.

My money is on a 90% match for what I've just written.

shorthauldad

As the Germans say, "don't trust any statistics you didn't forge yourself"

It's entirely possible my numbers are off. I'll go back and check! <sigh>

Collectively we must have re-invented the wheel Avios earnings calculator about ten thousand times over the last week. Some more accurately than others, apparently

irmster

So I've bitten the bullet and cleared out my Avios before the changes come in. I usually use them for long haul premium cabins in the new 'peak periods - summer and christmas - to LAS - either full avios or UUA - and I simply won't earn enough from travel and no longer shopping at Tescos. Plus I have got rid of my Amex PP.

So have booked an ex-DUB UUA to LAS at Christmas for my mother and I and have just used to rest of my meagre collection to fly a friend from GRU-LAS next month to join me for a weekend for the grand total of 69k miles and Ł40. Not a bad deal for a Y ticket with the lack of YQ.

I guess all my long haul holiday travel will now be ex-EU or on other airlines.

HIDDY

Most years I fly 15,000 miles.....that's much more than many status holders on here.

I'd say if someone flies twice a week they could call themselves a frequent flier.

pianoamit

Sixth Freedom - your calculations are correct, but your conclusions are not (or at least they are misarticulated). The reduction is in the number of sectors (and consequently round-trips) needed for an off-peak redemption. The number of avios remains unchanged regardless of peak or off-peak times.

Incidentally, for the sake of pragmatism, all decimals should be rounded up to the nearest whole integer. It's is impossible to fly a part of a sector - when it comes to avios earnings - unless BA credits you avios only to the point where your airplane crashed. (forgive the morbid humour)

T8191

Fair enough. Neither of us are frequent flyers. I shall amend my signature when I'm back on the proper device ... OK?

At least I fly BA

shorthauldad

I don't think BA - or indeed any other airline - cares about BIS miles any more.

Spend, not miles, is what's important. I work quite hard to keep that down

Calchas

For this year, at least?

T8191

I've paid for it already ... Although quite a bit of it is on US

Even at my age I can move with the times

lsi

So, pardon my various levels of ignorance here, but:

Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I represent a fairly large section of BA's customer base. I'm probably not a frequent flier as such, but between work and leisure I get through some 20-30 sectors per year (mostly domestic or within Europe). I'll book CE if the price is decent, ET the rest of the time. Like most people who pay for their own flights price is an important factor, but 99% of the time I'll pay extra to stay loyal to BA - partially because in a good year I'll hit silver - which is very handy to have.

I may not represent a majority on this forum, but from speaking to colleagues and friends I get the sense that my consumer pattern is a fairly common one. Again, please do correct me if I'm wrong about this.

What I'm wondering is: Don't these changes, combined with the new shorthaul cabins, pretty much screw me with regards to BA?

I know the stuff about loyalty schemes being there to "reward" loyal customers is all marketing guff, the reason reason they exist is to keep customers and to convince you to pay more money to fly with a specific airline - but with the new changes I'm going to have a very hard time convincing myself that I'm not better off just consistently booking EasyJet and paying for exit row seats. Am I wrong or are BA really eroding the gap between themselves and the LCCs here? At least for customers such as myself.

MPH1980

As a silver doing domestic or european travel - yes - you've been hit hard.

On a ET booking in most discount booking codes - you'd have previously earnt 200% of the traveled miles. Now you'll earn 100%.

If you book the very very deep ET codes (O,G and Q) - you'll be losing TPs too.

It'll make retaining silver much harder, and earning sufficient miles to redeem harder.

lsi

That's what I thought. Now, beyond my own selfish needs, surely it's not good news for BA if semi-frequent fliers such as myself all stop paying extra from BA and decamp to LCCs?

With silver no longer a realistic target and the new EasyJetesque seat pitches, the equation simply doesn't add up anymore. And I can't possibly be the only person for whom that's the case.

MPH1980

BA have obviously done their calculations and figure it's worth it for them to make this change.

We cannot say whether it's good or not. Perhaps they don't make a good margin on your kind of flying - who knows! The only people who know whether a down turn in business on European legs is a good thing or not is BA. To simply say that someone not spending money is bad is not necessarily true - if the margin is below target, or is negative then it *might* be better not to have that particular bum on that particular seat. But I'm not a revenue manager at an airline.

I understand your position. I barely scrape into Gold each year (1570 last year!). If I wasn't gold - I'd be making some serious considerations about whether BA is the right programme for me. Equally I'd be wondering if BA are the right airline and I might be inclined to try others.

lsi

Yeah, those are all fair points - and I fully accept that I'm not really qualified to pass judgement on whether or not BA's logic is sound.

And only time will tell, I'm definitely "leaving" BA when my current period of silver ends, and I don't expect I'll be back. I suspect I'm not alone in this, time will tell if that's a good or a bad thing for BA.

paul4040

I feel the same way. I'm an even more marginal Gold btw, at exactly 1500TP (!), though in my defence 1480 of those were on BA with 20 on Finnair.

If my travel pattern was of bargain basement Y travel then I think I would be off to EZY now, Flounge or no Flounge.

I'm not quite 100% understanding why BA is essentially ceding passengers to LCCs at the bottom end of their market. Perhaps there's an optimism that more profitable passengers are waiting in the wings, or that simply running a points scheme like Avios is far more profitable.