British Airways succeeds Jaguar in public spotlight after rewards changes
British Airways has become the latest household name to incur the wrath of a high-profile public backlash in the wake of its decision to significantly change its rewards scheme for loyal customers.
The airline revealed earlier this week that it was changing its tiering system for rewards to be based on spend and upped how much it would cost to achieve gold status.
The move has prompted a strong backlash from business customers in the last 48 hours in a reaction reminiscent to the one Jaguar endured over its rebrand at the end of 2024.
Under the new rules, it would take 3,500 points for British Airways customers to achieve bronze status, 7,500 for silver and a huge 20,000 for gold.
One point is the equivalent of £1 being spent on flights only marketed by the airline itself.
It only applies to the base fare while surcharges imposed by British Airways are also included in the calculation as well as seat selection and luggage fees.
However, the likes of airport charges and Air Passenger Duty are not included.
BA is ‘washing its hands of the leisure market’
In a LinkedIn post explaining the changes, Head for Points editor Rob Burgess said: “This is, clearly, a pivotal move by British Airways.
“It is effectively washing its hands of the leisure market and going all-in to attract the dwindling band of full fare business travellers.
“Realistically, it will now be impossible to earn gold for small business travellers, economy travellers or self-funded leisure travellers. Even silver will be a major stretch.
“British Airways Holidays may look like an option but the tier points are equally split amongst all travellers – spend £20,000 on a family of four and you get 5,000 points each, not 20,000 for yourself.
“It’s not clear to me why BAEC [British Airways Executive Club] members asked for this, since it was done ‘based on member feedback’ but that’s people for you.
“The long term issue remains. Business travellers have their flights paid for by their employers.
“Many of these are tied to BA or oneworld via a route deal.
“Many get huge end-of-year rebates which means their headline spend is not what they actually pay.
“BA is rewarding ‘loyalty’ from people whose loyalty is contractually enforced on them.
“Remove status from those people who do have a choice of airline – leisure travellers, small business owners – and their reasons for flying British Airways shrink dramatically.”
Business leaders voice concern over changes
Similar to the Jaguar backlash, the British Airways changes have also been the catalyst to launch seemingly endless posts and comments on LinkedIn.
Reacting to the news, Stephen Slessor, chief executive of water tech firm RSE, said: “As a long time business traveller on BA, this will probably be the final nail in the coffin for my loyalty to BA.
“This along with the nonsense around Brunch on long haul flights further degrades the BA brand and ‘premium’ experience it’s supposed to represent.”
However, Spencer John, CEO of Ethos Chain, said: “As someone who flys London to Australia monthly and London to Middle East every six weeks, this change from BA is actually welcomed.
“The lounges at Heathrow have been full to bursting for years, it’s ridiculous the volume of people in the First Lounges (Galleries and CCL).
“Whilst the multipliers seem excessive (from Old TPs to new) the word ‘business’ seems to have been lost over the years for business lounges – packed with people not on business.
“I appreciate I’m swimming against the tide with the above contrary view but I for one applaud BA for the tier point threshold reset.”
What has British Airways said?
Colm Lacy, British Airways’ chief commercial officer, said: “The changes we have announced today underline our continued investment in our loyalty programme and in our customers.
“Based on our members’ feedback, we’ve built on the changes we’ve already made – including how customers collect Avios and their membership year – in a way that we believe better rewards their loyalty and reflects their changing travel needs.
“While we have announced a number of positive changes today, I particularly wanted to highlight better rewarding our customers who book through British Airways Holidays and making this a permanent part of our proposition, removing the limit on earning.
“We know that many of our customers make their holiday plans during our annual January sale period, so it’s great to be able to announce this today.”