Which partners should you fly under the new British Airways tier point system?

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• Tom says:

  20 Jan20 January 12:36

  How about moving programmes ? I’ve been an AAdvantage flyer for decades as it always gave a better return for my travel than BA (even though BA flew long haul from my home airport of GCM and AA didn’t).

  • Joe says:

    20 Jan20 January 13:38

    I’ve always thought that the main disadvantage of Murican Airlines’ scheme is that it doesn’t cover you for lounge access on most short haul itineraries.

    • John says:

      20 Jan20 January 16:16

      Only in the US though?

• inman says:

  20 Jan20 January 13:05

  I have an upcoming flight on fare class C, which was booked last October for travel in May this year on QR and RJ under one PNR booked via Expedia. I noticed that the most significant carrier is QR but the ticket code is 512 (RJ). I added the BAEC number at the time of booking. Would anyone happen to know if tier points would be awarded under the new or old scheme? If its under the new scheme, would it likely be 25% or 50%? Thanks in advance.

  • CalvinF says:

    20 Jan20 January 13:28

    I’m in a similar situation with a booking on AY. Because the fare paid isn’t visible to BA it’s most likely going to be under the new scheme. I did read a comment from one poster that said he had received assurances from BA that these sectors could be manually adjusted by the NTP/OTP multiplier to ensure that the member received the correct number of tier points but I don’t know how feasible that is.
    I’m afraid I can’t help on the second question.

  • Karl says:

    21 Jan21 January 00:34

    I mentioned earlier that BA haven’t said what’s going to happen so who knows? There’s a link in the article that shows you what % of miles flown to expect under the new system.
    Surely BA will honour the contract made at the time of booking though? This will likely require manual chasing up, providing screenshots of booking confirmations and possibly credit card statements to prove payment date.
    If will be incredibly poor form if they renege. I have a flight from LHR to LIS via HEL and there’s obviously no way I would have chosen that routing if not to get TPs.

• Ishan says:

  20 Jan20 January 14:00

  My experience of manual tier point adjustments in 2024 was swift and automated where it was in my favour – a couple of upgrades to PE awarded as PE tier points not Y.
  Tedious and requiring me to submit the same evidence several times where it was to my detriment. A cash ticket in Y upgraded to J on Qatar required me to submit my e-ticket and boarding pass three times to be rejected three times as ‘We don’t award tier points on an avios booking so that’s why you got zero for each sector” On the final occasion where I asked for the address of the complaints department, an agent apologised and corrected the error.

  I can’t imagine it will be better under this more complex system

• Paul says:

  20 Jan20 January 14:25

  I gave up chasing airline status just before covid hit. I took the time to work out what flying one airline costs against the cheapest airline for my routes and class. I then worked out the value of these benefits.

  It worked out so much cheaper to buy the extras i want such as lounge access, seats, luggage, fast track.

• Not Long Now... says:

  20 Jan20 January 15:48

  Guess I’ll just have to wait and see what I earn as it’s clear as mud to me now. I have MAN-HKG-MEL-HKG-LHR-MAN business, booked “back in the old days” (September 24) on Cathay in July.
  This would have been 160+140+140+160+ ?(last leg economy for some reason, who cares, it was very cheap!), so 600 old TP, enough points for straight to silver. It’s all in I class (and a Y domestic finish!). About 20400 miles in the new world, at 12.5% so 2550 NTP, or is it 600 old TP factored up to 7500NTP and still straight to silver ( yes ok 4 BA flights, or is that not still a thing? Or do I need a certain percentage flown on BA), and do I get a cabin bonus too or is that BA only?

  • CalvinF says:

    20 Jan20 January 17:06

    Yes, my run was a straight 600 TP also if they honoured the terms at the time of booking. The same run gets me 28% of the way to OWS on Finnair’s programme and 38% on Qatar’s Privilege Club. So I have to decide whether to credit to one of these alternate programmes or take the risk of crediting to BA and being stuck with some pretty useless orphan miles.

  • Karl says:

    20 Jan20 January 17:16

    Who knows what you’ll earn. I’ve spoken to BA three times and got 3 different answers about partner flights booked before 30 Dec for next summer. 1) Will honour TPs at old level x 13, 2) Percentage of miles flown, 3) Still TBC
    1 Will get me Silver, 2 will leave me 2k TPs short of Silver.
    Could do with BA Silver as got about 20 OW flights booked after my current Silver status expires.
    May have to bite the bullet for the RJ match to guarantee status although it could potentially be a waste of a status/fee if BA eventually decides to honour the TP terms from the time of booking

  • JDB says:

    20 Jan20 January 20:11

    My understanding from what has been said so far is that for flights booked before 30 Dec but taken after 1 Apr, BA will honour the old TP x 13.33 for flights on BA, AA & IB but for any other partners the new system will apply.

    • LittleNick says:

      20 Jan20 January 20:51

      Have to tend to agree with JDB. Only read people saying that partner bookings before 30 Dec would be old TP x 13.3 or whatever it is. That won’t be automatic as I don’t think BA can see booking date for partner flights. So you’ll have to request a manual adjustment which isn’t fun, and there’s no obligation to provide it so they’ve stuffed anyone with partner bookings too! You honestly trust BA to give the old TPs? I would find somewhere else to credit personally

• AviosTraveller says:

  20 Jan20 January 20:32

  It should be good to add on the article that any flights booked on ba.com under a BA code (marketed), no matter what is the operating carrier, will be awarded TP on revenue based.

  • Rob says:

    20 Jan20 January 20:43

    Done.

• ST says:

  20 Jan20 January 23:08

  “Note that if you book a codeshare flight on ba.com which carries a BA flight number but is operated by a partner airline, you will earn tier points based on the BA model, ie money spent.”

  Good point. For LHR-HND, BA operated flights business class is around £4k round-trip. For JAL operated flights (non BA codeshare ticket), it is around £4k, which is similar. However, if it becomes BA marketed JAL operated flights, it becomes more than £6k.

  The distance between LHR and HND is 5,900 something miles. If I book the JAL non-BA marketed flights, I will earn 5,900 x 25% x 2 = 2,950 something TPs. It is still less than £1=1TP. I think I can’t use this trick on this route?

• Anthony says:

  21 Jan21 January 21:44

  Looking for a sanity check here – assuming I understand correctly; I generally only chase BA Silver/Sapphire. Until now, 3 x transatlantic flights in PE + a few EU short-hauls got me to the magic 600. Total spend I don’t know but I guess ~£8k-£9k max?
  Under the new scheme it sounds like that might not be enough?

  If I switch to Finnair’s scheme (still predominantly flying BA out of LON and collect Avios) then I’d need 45,000 points to get to Sapphire.
  LHR LAX in PE could generate me approx 10,800 points. Looks like I’ll probably need closer to 4 x long-haul’s p/annum + a few shorts to make the number?
  But potentially doable if I up a class/cabin here and there perhaps.

  But the benefits would be I can still earn Avios and I’m not obligated to fly a certain number of flights on Finnair (I generally don’t head east), I can continue flying BA + One World (AA, Iberia) out of the UK to retain status.

  Did I get it….?

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