BIG NEWS: British Airways is changing your tier point collection year
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From 2025, British Airways is changing your Executive Club membership year. It will be aligning tier point collection years for all members to start on 1st April.
The official British Airways page announcing the changes is here.
British Airways has updated its Q&A during Tuesday to reflect issues which we raised earlier in the day, and we now have a little more clarity.
The biggest winners are families where everyone has a different tier point year end. You can currently have a situation where each family member takes exactly the same flights but some gain status whilst others don’t. This problem will go away.
The biggest long-term downside is that the ‘grace period’ is cut from 7 weeks to 4 weeks. At present, your year ends on the 8th of the month but you retain your old status until the end of the FOLLOWING month. Going forward, all membership years will end on 31st March and all tier statuses will adjust on 30th April.
Why is British Airways doing this?
The official reason is ‘simplicity’.
You can’t argue with that. The current trial of awarding tier points for British Airways American Express spend, for example, is not working as well as it should because of different membership year end dates.
The real reason is probably to align the BA system with Iberia, which already uses April to March membership years, in advance of a joint change to the BA / Iberia tier point system at some future date. This seems likely to involve some sort of revenue or credit card spend metric, given how the world is moving.
How BA tier point collection years currently work
At the moment, your tier point collection year is based on the anniversary of the date you joined British Airways Executive Club. Your tier points would reset on the 8th day of your anniversary month.
For example, if you joined in March, your membership year would reset on 8th April. If you joined in November, it would be 8th December.
This meant that the entire cohort of British Airways Executive Club members is spread across twelve possible membership year end dates.
(This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Whilst frustrating for families, it avoids any spike in call centre activity or tier point runs which will occur when everyone has the same date.)
How tier point collection years will work going forward
From 2025, British Airways is aligning tier point collection years for all members.
That means that instead of twelve possible combinations, everyone’s tier points will reset on the same date.
British Airways has chosen to follow the UK fiscal year, starting on 1st April and ending on 31st March.
That means you’ll need to earn enough tier points to qualify for Bronze, Silver or Gold status within this period.
The change will occur on 1st April 2025.
I’m not sure that 1st April is, logically, the best option because of how Easter moves from year to year and this tends to be a period with reduced corporate travel. In some years it will make it harder to push through additional flights in the weeks leading to 31st March. It will also impact leisure travellers who use long-haul cash flights over Easter to drive their tier points.
What this means for you
Depending on your current membership year, this change will affect you differently. For that reason, we have put together a separate article outlining how the transition from now until 1st April 2025 will be handled, which you can read here.
However, the bottom line is:
– If your membership year ends before the new rules kick in (1st April 2025), this year will be as normal
– Your next membership year will end 31 March 2025 regardless of how short this will be
– To make up for it, BA will re-credit any tier points earned in your old membership year from 1st April 2024 to your new partial membership year
Everyone’s tier point balances will reset on 1st April 2025, which will become the first full year under the new, aligned system.
What about your existing status?
Here is what British Airways says:
“No, there will be no change to:
- Your current Tier status
- The benefits you receive according to your Tier status
- The way you can renew or upgrade your status during your Tier Point collection period ending on or before 8 March 2025
Any Tier status earned in your next Tier Point collection period ending on 31 March 2025 will be valid until 30 April 2026.”
BA has now updated the FAQ following our queries to add:
Any existing status valid beyond 31 March 2025 will continue for the full duration.
These means, for example, that if you have already earned Gold status in your current membership year, which ends 8th October 2024, your status will remain valid until 30th November 2025. It will not be shortened to end on 30th April 2025.
However, your ‘soft landing’ period will be reduced. In the example above, even though British Airways is allowing you to keep your Gold status until 30th November 2025, your soft landing to Silver – assuming you don’t requalify – will only last until 30th April 2026 and not 31st November 2026.
Conclusion
The changes BA is making to the Executive Club mean it make it simpler to understand. Rather than twelve different possible membership years, based on your anniversary of joining, everyone’s years will start and end on the same day.
(Of course, this also means that a lot of people will be doing tier point runs at the same time. I suspect flights to Sofia in Club Europe will be fully booked for all of March 2025, as this route earns 160 tier points return for around £200 in a sale.)
The change will also align BAEC with Iberia Plus, and should also simplify the IT backend required to make it all work if the programmes are moved to the same platform.
The good news is that BA is implementing a year-long transition period. This is a fair way of moving to the new system and allows everyone to earn status under both the new and existing system.
You can read more on the British Airways website here.
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