xenole

It's always possible that they might start restricting F redemptions to GGL / Premiers.
Or perhaps they might be looking at some sort of balance across OW to remove sweet spots.

I'm surprised with how hard it is to pick up things such as LHR-SYD, LHR-LAX, they haven't started charging say 500,000 Avios for a flight already. Someone with a high enough balance will pay that.

They might be cutting right back on F as well in order to add more Y seats.

chris1922Mk2

I hope you're wrong. As a lowly Blue I pretty much only collect Avios for F redemptions, that I could otherwise not afford. And Y redemptions are appalling value, you may as well just pay the cash price. In that case, what is the point in collecting Avios ? For some J flights I suppose, but not as lucrative or exciting as F. Or maybe reward flight savers, but again, not as appealing as F.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.............

KARFA

For the sake of those who aren't GGLs and reading this concerned that F rewards will no longer be available, xenole's comment is pure speculation.

Frequent flyer 101

Yeah, fair enough. I didn't consider the sale possibility as I thought it would be too far out for that.

BobServant

Hope this is a temporary thing, after an amazing trip to Hong Kong this month I was hoping to do something similar next spring....

Richardc77

Oh no I do not like the sound of this. Searched for First to Tokyo and zilch, normally always good F availability there. I have over 300,000 Avios which we use exclusively for companion vouchers in F

Tell me it ain’t gonna be so BA...

xenole

Yes it is speculative.
Doesn't LH, Singapore or something restrict higher awards to its top members?

PJSMITH0

Personally I believe restricting F to just GGL's would be unwise action for BA to take. This would alienate a very large percentage of their own frequent flyers who save avios with the aspiration to fly F as they would not normally ever get that chance. Whilst I choose BA because I personally like the F & J products and accrue 2500 to 3000 TP annually my loyalty would be severely if I was able to upgrade from J to F because I was only a gold. This would probably make an interesting poll

Should BA restrict F redemption's to just GGL's

Oaxaca

BA's problem in F is high NPS but low paid load factor. The solution to that can only be less redemptions and upgrades, although I think BA is kidding itself if it thinks that the decent NPS is not linked to the price (in cash or Avios) of the current product.

lost_in_translation

Exactly - not gonna happen. Frankly, hate to break it those that seem to think otherwise but this isn’t AF F, if F were restricted to GGL I imagine BAEC would lose droves of Golds/Silvers/Bronzes with the connected drop in BA flight activity. Restricting to those with status full stop is a less terrible idea but still probably not in BA’s best interests.

mrvincent

If BA's f was truly luxury, then maybe restricting it would make sense. However it isn't. And I, for one, am not willing to burn Avios/2-4-1 on CW seats. I'd rather spend 50% more cash, do an ex-EU on QR and earn Avios/TPs (and the perpetual cycle of earning and not burning continues).

BobServant

Quite agree - despite the impression you get on this board, the vast majority of BA customers have no status. For 90% of fliers, Bronze is difficult to achieve, Silver is a major achievement and Gold unimaginable. People who report seeing the briefing sheets at F wing in T5 usually say approx 6-7k Silver, Gold and Prem passengers a day. That's approx 2.5m per year, while T5 handles 35m passengers a year so I think you can safely say <10% of passenger journeys via LHR are made by passengers with status. Given status passengers will fly a lot more than non-status, you're maybe looking at a few % of passengers holding Silver or higher. GGL and Prem are a tiny subset of this (<1% of status passengers perhaps?). If you restrict redemptions to this tiny community then you undermine a lot of the rationale for BAEC for a decent proportion of the active population.

Remember, FF programs exist to (amongst other things) build loyalty and shift excess capacity. J and especially F redemptions fulfil both functions; they are aspirational rewards for loyalty and they also enable BA to monetise spare capacity. Avios is also a very profitable line of business for IAG; AMEX and Tesco and all the other third party programs apparently pay for the Avios at a decent rate. Someone who barely flies BA but collects 200K Avios and an Amex 2-4-1 is probably putting £3k into IAG coffers for their Reward seat. Maybe £1.5k-£2k for the Avios and voucher via Amex/ Tesco and approx £1k in taxes, fees and charges to redeem the voucher. That's a lot of money for a seat that might otherwise fly empty or be used to provide an op-up to let people ripple forwards if Y/W is oversold.

The differential between J and F may increase or there may be another devaluation or something like that, however I'm still betting on an IT glitch. Longer term, should the 787-10 and A350s come on stream with 8 seats in F (like the 787-9) and the older 747-777 fleet with 14F go into retirement then we will see a drop in F capacity and a review of redemptions but for the moment I don't see a major restriction on ability to redeem in F.

I hope I am right as have a personal interest in this at the moment!

lost_in_translation

Yes, but a bit of a chicken and egg problem, I think. BA has an extremely sophisticated revenue management system I would imagine and I don’t think the low yield in F is as a result of too many redemption seats (already no guarantee of F redemptions being released on any particular flight) but rather the high availability of F redemptions on some routes reflects the fact BA is unable to sell them as cash F tickets instead. In contrast on the likes of LHR-LAX F redemptions are near impossible already due to enough demand for cash F seats on the route.

BobServant

So, been having a play with this. It does look like F availability has generally been pulled after the end of 2018. Only exceptions seem to be middle east (DXB/DOH/BAH) and Bermuda.

Looking at LHR-NYC on desktop site
- I am seeing nothing for Feb-Mar 2019 in F for 1 passenger.
- If I search for EDI-LHR, I get some apparent availability; outbound it shows Mondays and Thursdays available and inbound most days show as available on the "find availability with . None of the days I have looked actually have any availability though.... This has always been a bit flaky so may not be a new issue....

Looking at Asia:
- LHR-SIN shows nil in 2019 in F for 1 passenger (perhaps no huge surprise there)
- it does however offer connections to SIN via DOH, using BA metal LHR-DOH in F then onto QR - e.g. LHR-DOH 11/3 BA123
- the DOH flights seem to be pretty widely available in the period
- LHR-DXB also has decent availability
- LHR-HKG and LHR-TYO (have checked HND and NRT codes too) shows 0 availability (TYO is unusual to have nothing, HKG less so). EDI-xxx also shows nothing.

And as a third idea, I tried a few long haul - long haul connections, mainly US - Asia.
- NYC-DOH shows availability, but involves JFK-LGW then LHR-DOH on BA metal. When you go through the JFK-LGW leg is actually in J

Broadly the availability on desktop BA.com matches the availability in the reward flight finder in the app, so I think the app is a decent guide, that's where the list of destinations still available came from.

xenole

This is one thing that made me suggest the GGL redemption thing.

BA have already shown that they're willing to reduce CE to a max of 7 rows, they're changing planes to densified seating and reflecting a "I want to fly cheaply with no frills" sort of market etc. They do tend to give with one hand and take away with the other, and have shown that they will rock the boat when it comes to their premium flyers (yet a lot of us still fly with them regardless of being tied into contracts or personal reasons).

If F seats aren't selling on various routes and the new generation of 787-10 and A350 planes are either going to have no F or a max of 8 seats, then demand for those seats would hopefully be higher. You may well find they only have F in future on say JFK,LAX,SYD,SIN,HKG,TYO routes where they can get easy cash sales, and then as I said, as part of the forthcoming making GGL more attractive, only offer F redemptions to those members. Yes it would cause waves, but perhaps BA sees cash sales even in CW as a better option than Avios redemptions (do the recent EU laws / Amex changes play a part?) for their bottom line?