golfmad

I would have thought that the Bronze free seat selection (7 days and in) is the best perk of being Bronze and you still have that.

golfmad

I should say first of all that this really doesn't affect me personally. I'm a June renewal so arguably have one of the best outcomes. I lost out on about 3K TPs that would have helped move me close to GGLFL but I'll get over it.

With that out of the way to my substantive point that I made earlier up thread. You view this as a non-issue because it doesn't affect you. To those it affects it's a real issue. You're making a value judgement which applies to you but is different for almost everyone else. As a result you're right. Your statement does come across as 'flippant'.

Ancient Observer

1757 posts and 118 pages over the Intern's letter? I would have thought that some flippancy is spot on.

Crampedin13A

Obviously I have no idea of the real numbers as to how many Gold,GGL,CCR make their levels with a large amount of travel between the UK and the US but considering BA's focus pre-Covid on the US market if as looks very likely the US does not open up it's borders this whole thing is going to be have to be re-evaluated by BAEC in 2021 anyway. Otherwise there is going to be a very large cull in numbers in all elite levels even with a 25% cut in the TPs to re-qualify

golfmad

There may be some positives after all then

Crampedin13A

That's not very nice

jjLDNY

maybe CWS can chime in here. But considering the other Concorde room is in NY I would assume a fair amount of their First customers are likely not travelling as much.

I’m, as probably gathered London > NY for a bulk of my trips and would have picked up CCR this year through natural flying. However now, with 4 months of no flying and likely 2-3 more before US is possible I may have to make a TP run to make it work. What’s more that TP run will likely have to include the US to get good value so again, the US being closed off I’d say may have more than a 25% hit.

OverTheHorizon

I seem to remember reading that airlines make the most profit from their business class cabins, so it's probably there rather than First where the most pain will be felt (US restrictions plus lower propensity to travel overall).

ThatT1Feeling

As a July, (had you guessed?!) I am looking at the situation in the US and South America and thinking that at current projections, there won't be any meaningful travel across the pond before winter in the UK, by which time the UK might well be having more problems again. So, either BA will decide to review the current policy or accept that up to 50% of their members will start to get twitchy about their ability to re-qualify (and all of the comms and frustration that this will bring). I know that not all long-haul travel is to the Americas but I would suspect it will have quite an impact.

TonyVD

Indeed I am also July and at the moment am basically not able to travel anywhere. Even short haul destinations have been cut back so far that I am having to use another airline to get to STR for example. At this stage it seems entirely impossible that I will requalify even at the reduced rate during the next year. Perhaps with a lot of travel next spring but I am not going to do a TP run. If I lose my status because of this policy I won’t bother any more. As it is I was reconsidering the wisdom of being loyal to BA. I will probably just switch to going with the cheapest carrier and forget about status. The only reason I wanted to maintain BA status is for seat selection as I tend to travel J or F anyway. And as we know on other airlines seat selection costs aren’t an issue in J... Had I received the “free year” I probably would have gone out of my way to use BA so at least for me they will lose revenue.

To be fair I would deeply miss the first wing...

Brighterside

I received some positive news in my inbox this morning - after many emails to EC I have been awarded Gold status. To be honest I had almost given up and accepted the situation but persistence has paid dividends. My TP year end 8th July 2021 and card expiry date remains Aug 21 but that to me is fair.

Sadly no flights yet from my local airport so I can't go anywhere but at least I feel that BA eventually listened but it took some doing.

EB2

I'd be v grateful if anyone can clarify whether I should qualify for a further years extension. I was Bronze with a July 8th collection year end with 580 Tp's but with only 3 qualifying flights . I then flew to Milan on the 5th July and my status showed I was upgraded to Silver on the 8th July but with a card expiry of Aug 2021. My understanding was that upgrading tiers achieved an extra year's validity at that level regardless of TP's earned. (If this is correct then it does seem completely arbitrary and unfair on members who have just retained status.) I have had a reply from BA via the web form which states I don't qualify for the extra validity just a lower TP threshold to retain Silver next year.
My apologies if I've totally misunderstood how this works.

BertieBadger

Welcome to FlyerTalk EB2. I'm sure someone will be along shortly with the official ambassadorial welcome. Just to let you know - in case you are unaware - that new posters are limited to 5 posts in their first 24 hours, after which they can post freely.

Now, to your question:

BA's official position on this is you will not be getting any form of extension. You may well feel, as many others seem to, that this is plainly contrary to what they indicated in their communication to you, but nonetheless that is their position. To understand this, it might help to lay out the timelines, and consider your expiry dates at each point in time, and how they were updated.

May 2020: Your benefits expire 31 August 2020.
June 2020: The BA extensions are applied based on your current expiry date giving you a new expiry date of 31 August 2021
July 2020: You took the 4th flight and upgraded to Silver. On doing that you get Silver with an expiry based on the remainder of the current collection year (theoretically 3 days, in practice 0 days in your case) and the next year, i.e. collection year ending July 8th 2021 - this gives the expiry of 31 August 2021 as your benefits always expire at the end on the month after your TP year ends.

The essence of the problem is that you stepped up a tier after BA had applied the extensions, so their position is that the year that you earned runs concurrently to the extension they applied.

If you had stepped to Silver before BA applied the extensions then the timeline would have been:

Step up to Silver: Expiry moves to August 2021
Extensions applied: Expiry moves to August 2022

Arbitrary, given that you'd have taken the same flights? You may well agree. Nonetheless, that is BA's position and they seem to be sticking very firmly to it.

EB2

Thank-you, that explains the situation very clearly, my misunderstanding was that upgrading at any point within my current year would lead to the extension for a further 12 months. At least I was able to get to Silver for a year anyway !!

SonicStar817

That's not what happened in my case. I was Bronze with 500 TPs and an initial expiry date of 31st August 2020. When the extension applied, my expiry date became 31st August 2021. When the lower thresholds were applied and my account finally changed over to Silver on the 7th of July, my expiry date became 31st August 2022.