British Airways has found itself in the midst of a furious frequent flyer backlash after what was once the ‘world’s favorite airline’ started extending loyalty status to passengers who had hardly flown with the carrier, while leaving others who were tantalizingly close to reaching a new status level on the hook.
The decision to extend the loyalty status of some passengers, while allowing others to drop, comes as the full effects of BA’s controversial changes to its frequent flyer program are set to be felt next month.
British Airways announced it was reinventing its frequent flyer program in late 2024 (between the Christmas and New Year holidays, when the airline thought there might be less attention drawn to the sweeping changes it was making).
As well as changing the name from the ‘Executive Club’ to the ‘British Airways Club,’ the airline completely changed how passengers earn status and unlock frequent flyer perks like airport lounge access, priority boarding, upgrades, and more.
Rather than earning status based on how much a customer flies with the airline, British Airways adopted a revenue-based program, which awards passengers based on how much they spend.
To unlock BA’s Silver status, frequent flyers now have to spend at least £7,500 per year with the airline. Meanwhile, access to more luxurious premium lounges, as well as first-class check-in at London Heathrow, as part of the Gold tier, will require a minimum annual spend of at least £20,000.
Frequent flyers have complained that the new status requirements will price out loyal customers, while rewarding passengers traveling on business who have their premium tickets paid for by their company.
In response to a deluge of negative feedback, British Airways has already been forced to make some tweaks to the new program, adding new ways to earn the so-called ‘tier points’ that are needed to achieve elite status, and introducing bonus tier point schemes.
Frequent flyers accept that British Airways was going to move to a revenue-based loyalty program at some point, given that many other airlines had already made the switch, but believe that BA’s status thresholds were set far too high.
May 2026 is the end of the full status earning year, where the full effects of the new program are meant to be felt. Frequent flyers have predicted a loyalty bloodbath, with many loyal customers who had long held Gold or Silver status losing their hard-earned elite status.
Except, it now appears that British Airways has unexpectedly started to extend the loyalty status of flyers for another full year.
That would seem to be a positive, customer-friendly development, until you learn how BA appears to be applying this status extension policy. It turns out that the airline is targeting status holders who had shifted their flying to other airlines and had acquired a few tier points.
Meanwhile, loyal fliers who were within reach of unlocking a status upgrade or merely just retaining their current status aren’t having any extension applied.
Why British Airways is doing this hasn’t been fully explained. In fact, what’s happening is based on anecdotal evidence, although more and more reports are emerging that seemingly confirm what is happening.
On the face of it, it looks like British Airways is trying to attract back its once loyal fliers who followed through with their threats to avoid flying with BA if the airline didn’t back down on its changes to its loyalty program.
Others, however, have suggested that BA is extending the status of some passengers who aren’t likely to use the airline in an attempt to show that the total number of elite status holders hasn’t changed as a result of the new revenue-based program, while not putting pressure on airport lounges.
In January, the conservative columnist and former editor of the Sunday Times, Andrew Neil, ripped into BA’s management over the changes they had made to the British Airways Club.
For years, Neil has held BA’s second-highest frequent flyer status, known as ‘Gold Guest List,’ which, under the new rules of the program, requires customers to spend at least £65,000 (US $87,000) in a 12-month period to retain.
“The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first,” Neil slammed in a post on X. “I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over.”
Neil continued: “BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!!”
