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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.

British Airways changes your tier point collection year

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.)

British Airways changes your tier point collection year

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:

British Airways changes your tier point collection year

“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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Comments (358)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Rob T says:
    5 Feb5 February 22:54

    Hi, apologies if this has already been covered, but everything in the article (and BA’s announcement) seems to refer to earning status and not retaining status. I expect most HFP readers will be retaining rather than earning and if so when are you deemed to have ‘earned’ your status – on your renewal date or on the date you hit the required number of tier points? I have an August TP year end, but will get to just over 1,500 tier points (to retain gold) during March with trips that can’t be moved. Will I be deemed to have earned gold during March and therefore have my status extended on 9th August 2024 to 30th Sept 2025 (like Joe Smith in Rhys’s example above) or will I be deemed to have earned gold on my renewal date in August when my tier points reset and therefore have my gold extended on 9th August to 31 March 2026 (like Jane Doe in Rhys’s example above). Very confused…?

    • Rhys says:
      5 Feb5 February 23:20

      I believe it is the date you cross the threshold.

      • wee Paul says:
        6 Feb6 February 00:07

        I think this a point BA should be much clearer about. If by having done my flying early in my current collection year (qualified in Feb for August collection year end), then my next status year is being cut by many months – this means changing the rules halfway through the game. If the renewal gives an expiry date of 31 march 26 then that feels like a transition. Double counting of some of the previous period months does not offset this.

    • Charlie says:
      6 Feb6 February 00:19

      You’ll be gold from March 2024 until 30th September 2025. You’ll then be silver until 30th April 2026, unless you have accrued 1,500 TP between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025, in which case your gold will be bumped for a further 7 months until 30th April 2026. Alternatively (and presuming everything else remains constant) if you give BA nil revenue until after 1st April 2026 (bearing in mind you will be silver between 1st September 2025 and 30th April 2026), and then say, yield 1,500 TPs in April 2026, then you be gold until 30th April 2028. Presuming no other changes to the BA programme occur between now and 30th April 2026.

  • Track says:
    5 Feb5 February 23:25

    But I support the notion that BA can focus on something more productive, like training their staff in boarding process better, or maybe starting check in for EU flights at outstations earlier than 2:15 hours before the flight and creating the queues the first place.

    Rather than meddling with IT and established rules.

    Maybe I be a winner under the rules because my personal year ended in Summer and it was always an inconvenient point to catch some extra TPs (summer cash flights expensive).

    • Track says:
      5 Feb5 February 23:26

      But I simply can’t follow all the implications of the change like this and treat it as a major inconvenience from BA.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
      6 Feb6 February 07:26

      The people doing this work have no control over staff training or when check in desks open or a whole host of other issues people would like BA to address.

      Their job is the loyalty scheme and that’s it.

      • Track says:
        6 Feb6 February 14:21

        It’s not our job to deal with BA compartmentalising.

        When a company is doing busy work shifting program rules and rewriting contracts, instead of continually improving customer service/facing operation..

  • His Holyness says:
    6 Feb6 February 05:19

    How will it affect guesting?

  • John says:
    6 Feb6 February 06:09

    Is it me but I m clueless after reading these pages, may be the article needs simplifying focusing just on the mechanics of the change. Valiant first attempt though! I m hoping BA themselves have done a better job with their expert PR and Comms teams

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:
      6 Feb6 February 07:27

      BA have scads of info on their website.

      Read that and you’ll see that articles like this are the model of simplicity.

  • Ian says:
    6 Feb6 February 06:17

    A bit clearer now since the original release.

    A Gold member now, if they didn’t earn any tier points this year would drop to Silver at the end of their current year (say February 25) and remain at Silver until 30th April 26.

    Even if they would have dropped say to Bronze earlier that year under the old system.

  • Jim says:
    6 Feb6 February 06:48

    I don’t understand the Jane Doe example. The FAQ says
    “Collection period + Tier Point Adjustment = your Tier status until 30 April 2026”

    So she would only be gold until 4/26 if she collected enough points, with the adjustment in that period.

    For example, if she collected 1,400 points in 12/23 and then another 100 in 11/24, she would have ‘crossed the threshold’ to be gold in November 24, but would not have enough points to reach gold in the transition.

  • Mouse says:
    6 Feb6 February 06:57

    I think there’s an ambiguity about “transition period”.

    BA’s FAQ page is perfectly clear before the monthly examples section. Basically you will have two overlapping tier point collection years that operate independently. If your year currently ends month x then points earned from x/2023 – x/2024 count for status up to x/2025*. You also have a partly overlapping year from 4/2024 – 4/2025 determining status up to 4/2026. Fairly simple.

    But then they throw in “Any Tier status you receive during the transition period will expire on 30 April 2026”. Now if “transition period “ means x/2024 – 4/2025, the above remains correct. But this article assumes “transition period” runs from 4/2024 to 4/2025, which is the source of almost all the perversity. I’m sure the article is right but it’s weird (if not surprising) that BA took a simple system and added one quirk to complicate it so much!

    (* If x<4 then this reads x/2024 – x/2025 for status up to x/2026)

    • Goldflyer40 says:
      6 Feb6 February 07:49

      That’s exactly how I read it. If you want to determine what your status will be after 04/2025 for the next 12 month you look at the amount of tier points you collect between 04/2024 to 04/2025, regardless what your current membership year is. “Simple” as that. In addition, I would assume you have to do your 2 or 4 flights with BA within 04/2024 to 04/2025 to get/retain Silver or Gold.

      • Mouse says:
        6 Feb6 February 09:09

        Yes exactly, with the only exception being if you reach a status level from earnings between x/2023 – x/2024 then it will still run its course until x/2025 even if you don’t manage to regain it in the 4/2024 – 4/2025 period.

  • Stephen eaves says:
    6 Feb6 February 07:18

    Good morning everyone. Still confused. I am presently sitting on 285 tier points. We are talking a five day holiday in club to ace in April which should produce 320 points. My year finishes on May 8th. Will I still retain silver. Thank you.

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