British Airways has announced a major shake-up to its Executive Club loyalty scheme by switching all customers over to a fixed membership year from 2025.
It removes one of the major complexities of the programme by aligning the collection year for tier points – which determine status such as gold, silver or bronze – into a common calendar year, to run from April 1 to March 31.
At the moment, tier point collection years vary according to the date of first joining the scheme and run for 12 months from that date e.g. February-February or October-October.
It means couples and households often have different collection years, making it difficult to keep track of how many flights are needed to maintain the status needed for access to benefits such as lounges, priority check-in and free seat selection.
Does this mean a change to earning Avios?
No, this has nothing to do with the way Avios points are earned or spent.
British Airways last year announced changes to this, with members earning Avios based on the amount spent on the base fare of each ticket (excluding taxes, surcharges and seat selection fees).
How is British Airways changing Executive Club membership years?
British Airways is moving into line with other schemes, such as American Airlines’ AAdvantage and Iberia’s Iberia Plus, by having a universal status-earning year for all members.
Presently, Executive Club membership years are based on the original joining date and are fixed on the 8th of each month, making a maths puzzle out of tracking how many tier points are needed to obtain or retain the necessary status levels. It also means a family of four could have four different membership years, and creates further headaches for members nominating friends or family for ‘partner cards’.
From 2025, all British Airways Executive Club members will be aligned, and will have from April 1 to March 31 in every future year to earn the necessary tier points.
British Airways is changing its membership earning years from 2025
(Alastair Jamieson)
Why is British Airways making this change?
British Airways says the main reason is greater simplicity, “making it easier to manage travel plans for yourself, colleagues and family”.
Travel blog Head for Points speculates that it could also make it easier for British Airways to make wider cost-saving changes, such as a shared IT platform with…
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