Yeah, right. Because a GBP250 surcharge on a fare worth GBP8000 or more is obviously half.

BAH

Avios will be earned by flying, spending on cards, shopping in Tescos and in all sorts of new innovative ways. And you will be able to spend them in new ways too.

So if something like that was introduced would you change your habits? Fly less with BA out of disgust? No change? Fly more to get to a million? Start shopping at Tesco?

This was how many years ago?

EC is a frequent flyer programme. It exists to reward flying activity with other partners are bolt ons to make the programme more attractive. Avios is a common currency across EC - an FFP - but also Airmiles which is a frequent buyer programme.

1 million miles? No worries for my lifetime status.

Dear all

Many apologies for the delay in responding - I am sure you can appreciate we are both busy with the announcements but also ensuring we are ready for launch in November.

With regards to the pricing queries you have, we are working towards sharing the detail with you in a more structured manner as soon as possible. I'm sorry that we cannot publish the full details at the moment. We will be communicating more detail in the lead up to the changes actually happening. Can I please ask that you do not send me individual pricing queries by route via PM as I cannot answer these due to a rapid increase in queries and while I appreciate everyone has personal concerns, the wider community share some of these too as well as the general day to day account concerns. What I will say is that the general consensus concerns have been noted.

On another note, I will be out of the office now until Monday 12 September. Rather than put an out of office on Flyertalk at such an important time, I will check in from time to time and would also like to introduce my colleagues Helen and Gauthier who will keep an eye on burning issues and questions too so don't be surprised if you see a couple of new names posting. Please can I ask that you do keep PMs to a minimum during this time and use your local service centre as much as possible.

I really do appreciate your support on this as well as your feedback, questions and queries. Thank you so much for everything so far.

Warm regards

Nicci

I would qualify either way if it was backdated, but is the Executive Club still just a frequent flyer program?

As I have said before, I would love to know how much of BA's revenue comes from flying operations and how much comes from selling miles to partners and other similar revenue generators.

About 2 months, actually.

BAH

I raise my glass to you, Nicci. I can imagine you deserve a bit of time away after this little lot. Don't worry about us, we'll be fine (well, some of us will be ).

I think I'm going to unsubscribe from this thread. Like my attempt at doing Christmas dinner, it's now been greatly overcooked and isn't providing much of value...

Am I starting a rumor here, but if you have 1mil you get lifetime?

And NICCI, did you warn and train your colleagues for this board?


Hope you are going for fun and hope you have a wonderful time.

You must know a Taxes Fairy that I don't.

It seems very strange that so much angst is being generated about speculation as to what will happen when you spend BA miles to fly non-BA routes.

It seems to me that IF these changes occur, they are really just correcting a pricing anomaly; if it costs 100K miles RT to fly JFK-EZE on AA or on LAN using AA miles, why should it cost less to use BA miles to fly AA or LAN on that same route, when they are all One World partners? Sure, I used BA miles for that route several times, but it was always with the expectation that someday they would realize it was underpriced, so it is hard to get upset that they are 'correcting' the price.

And with what has been announced so far, using BA miles to fly on BA, only 3% of flights will rise in cost, and far greater number of routes will decrease in price. It is hard to claim that the miles are being massively devalued, and ludicrous to threaten class action lawsuits (unless you happen to be a class action lawyer looking to rake in some bucks!) And threatening to quit using your Chase Visa? Does BA really care about a relatively small number of people who aren't really loyal to BA, just using the miles because they got them so easily? Should they? Of course I participated in that promotion, because it was a great deal, but the T&Cs are very clear that the rules of the program can change anytime.. But after all, this is a FREQUENT FLYER program, and it really is appropriate for it to reward people who fly BA frequently!

Personally, I'm surprised that people are allowed to participate in more than one OneWorld FF program, given the ability to book flights on any OneWorld carrier from any program and given that you get status privileges across the program through OneWorld sapphire, etc.

If the changes announced SO FAR are enough to make people quit the program, then most likely they are not the customers that are important to BA.

Lest people think I am a BA apologist or hopeless optimist, I am extremely concerned that all of these changes are merely a smokescreen for a dramatic decrease in availability of award flights, which is really what should be the focus of attention, as taking away availability is the easiest and least transparent way to devalue the currency. Just one example, but last fall I booked 4 RT CW seats on the MIA-LHR-JNB route, and at this time availability was wide open for almost any T/W/R in the summer; looking at the availability calendar now, there is only 1 day all summer I see availability for 4 CW outbound and only 3 dates for return... Looking at some other itineraries, availability is also practically nonexistent.

Whether you think these changes are fabulous, horrendous or insignificant is really immaterial if the availability tanks, so maybe we should really focus on that issue, since without availability the cost of a redemption is moot!

I was on the Airmiles site. A later poster pointed out that the redemption rates need to be multiplied by 10 to arrive at the new currency rates. So the $100 LAX hotel rould be 11,000 miles. Not a good use of points, but better than nothing if you are a trapped U.S. based BA member who can't fly to Europe because of the BA fees and can't find availability on AA using BA miles. Will the new system cause an increase in the number of BA miles needed for AA travel to U.S. / Canada/ or South America? Sorry for the dumb question, but I don't understand the new system.

What are the new transpac redemption rates/award charts?
(Tried search and nothing turned up. Inbetween work, hard to catch up with 48 pages)

Nobody knows.

BAH

Unknown at the moment, but not likely to cause as much pain as the mindless speculation seems to be causing.