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[edit] Overview
Most airline programmes work on the principle that if you fly “n” thousand miles in a twelve-month period, you’ll get elite status. BA’s programme doesn’t work like that. Instead, if a flight is booked in an eligible fare class, it will earn a certain number of Tier Points. Flights also earn miles which can be used for reward flights etc., but earning sufficient Tier Points is the only way to advance through the tier levels.
There are four tiers in the BA Exec Club:
- Blue, Silver, Gold & Premier
Blue is the basic level and is where you start. Once you reach the required number of points, you will be promoted to Silver (OneWorld Sapphire). From Silver, with another load of points you’ll get to Gold (OneWorld Emerald). Premier is an invitation only level. There are only around 1500 Premiers worldwide. You can’t get to it by flying a lot. They are generally given to people that BA consider are important, and each new Premier has to be approved by the board.
[edit] Promotion between levels
The promotion process is not as simple as it could be. Firstly, you need to have four tier-point earning flights on BA. If all of your flights are on partners you will remain blue forever. The number of points required for each level varies depending on where you live; continental Europeans have a lower threshold than others.
| UK, EI & elsewhere | Europe | |
| Silver | 600 | 400 |
| Gold | 1500 | 800 |
The chart shows that if you are a UK, EI or non-european resident, you need to reach 600 tier points before you can be promoted to silver. A resident of continental Europe (excl. UK & EI) (or someone with a European mailing address – see Moving to Europe) only needs 400 TPs. To reach gold, most people would need a further 1500 points, and continental Europeans only a further 800.
When you reach or exceed the number of points required for promotion, your tier points will be reset to zero. Your membership year will also be reset immediately. This means that from that date you are promoted, you will have one further year to maintain your status.
So to get to gold from blue, you will need at least 600 tier points to get to silver, these will then be reset to zero, and you will need a further 1500 points to get to gold.
There are some additional pitfalls that you need to be aware of during the promotion process. For most people, it’s fairly unlikely that they will hit 600 points exactly. When I was promoted, I got to 680 points, which then got reset to zero. So what happens to those extra points over the 600 mark? Well, you lose them. BA will not credit them back to you. So if you’re on 580 points, and you take a first class flight, you are effectively losing 160 points. As with most “rules”, there are some exceptions. A few people have managed to get these points credited so if you desperately need the points, it may be worth a try.
Secondly, the promotion process itself can take a few days. This means that you can get several hundred points over the promotion threshold. When you do get promoted, and reset to zero, you will lose these points as well. However, do not fret. You will need to contact BA, and they will put a note on your account saying that you are “owed” how ever many points got reset. When it comes to getting promoted or renewed, you will need to contact them for them to manually process things.
[edit] Moving to Europe
You have probably wondered by now whether – if you live in the UK (or anywhere at the higher TP levels) – you could get promotion to Silver or Gold more quickly by changing your mailing address in your profile to one in Europe? Well, yes, you can! However, there are five things to remember if you are thinking of doing this:
- You can only have a BA Amex if your Executive Club account is UK based. If you already have a card, it WILL be cancelled right away.
- You cannot transfer Tesco Clubcard points to BA if your account is not UK based. One way around this is to keep the paper vouchers (they are valid for 2 years) and move your account back to the UK for six months once every two years.
- You will not longer be eligible (or targeted) for UK-based promotions (although you will instead be targeted for promotions in your new region, which may work out better or worse – but either way, you can’t really complain!)
- The European address you give BA must exist, because they will send your shiny new card to this address.
- You can only change your address once every six months (i.e. you can’t just move, get promoted then return).
If your account is moved to Europe when you already exceed the next new, lower Tier Point threshold you require, you will automatically be promoted and your membership date reset to the day you move. If you move your address back you will retain your current status until the end of your membership year (for example a Euro Silver who has 500 Tier Points and a membership year end date of September 8th moves to the UK on March 20th and does not earn any more Tier Points – they stay Silver until September 8th when they get demoted to Blue for not having hit the UK renewal level of 600). hgh
[edit] Renewal
Renewal is fairly simple. Again, you need to achieve the required number of tier points and make four BA flights within the year to maintain your status. The number of tier points required for renewal is exactly the same as the number required for promotion.
A Gold card holder who fails to reach the renewal level will receive a soft landing to Silver for the following year.
There are no requirements to renew Blue level, although after a period of 36 months inactivity on your account all miles will be lost.
If you have a Household Account, there is conflicting information on whether you need activity on any one account, or on each account individually. BA Executive Club posted this information which is especially good news for HHAs with a Gold or Silver card holder. However, others have had information from the EC suggesting otherwise.
[edit] Earning Tier Points on BA Flights
Tier points can only be earned on oneworld flights. Tier points can not be earned on discount economy tickets. This means, if you only ever fly cheapo economy, you will never get status. In economy, you will only earn tier points on Y B H fares (often described as full-fare or semi-flexible).
Below is a table which shows how many points you’ll earn for each single segment flight that has a BA flight number (so a return trip counts double):
| Cabin Fare Class |
Economy Y B H |
WT+ W T |
Club J C D I |
First F A |
| UK Domestic | 20 | 20 | ||
| Europe | 20 | 40 | ||
| Long haul | 60 | 75 | 120 | 180 |
| Australia | 110 | 135 | 220 | 330 |
A small point with the Australia flights; if you’re booked to travel to Australia, but with a stop over, it will count as two longhaul flights, so you will actually earn slightly more than if it was booked as a single flight (e.g. 240=2*120 in Club vs. 220 for straight through).
It's worth noting that as of November 2009, Club-class flights on the LCY to/from JFK route ("Club World London City") earn First-class tier points (180 each way).
[edit] Earning Tier Points on Oneworld Partners
Most oneworld flights (as long as they are in an eligible fare class) can earn you tier points. An exception to this are flights with a oneworld airlines code, that are operated by a non-oneworld airline. For example AA put their codes on to Alaska Airline flights - these would not earn tier points.
Below is a basic table that shows the tier points earned on oneworld flights. Note that as for BA flights, discounted economy tickets may not earn any TPs.
| Economy | Business | First | |
| Flights < 2000 miles | 20 | 40 | 60 |
| Flights > 2000 miles | 60 | 120 | 180 |
[edit] Cost Efficient Ways to Earn Tier Points
[edit] Fifth Freedom BA Flights
Please note that as of March 2008 the anomaly in BA's system has been corrected, and the flights below are treated as short-haul, and earn only short-haul tier points.
BA operates a number of short flights that do not originate, or travel to the UK, these are known as fifth freedom flights. The full list is below:
Abu Dhabi (AUH) - Muscat (MCT) Antigua (ANU) - St Lucia (UVF) Bahrain (BAH) - Doha (DOH) Sao Paulo (GRU) - Buenos Aires (EZE) Singapore (SIN) - Sydney (SYD) Bangkok (BKK) - Sydney (SYD) Baku (BAK) - Bishkek (FRU) (does this service still exist???)
These are available to book by anyone, and for the short flights, can be fairly cheap, sometimes as low as £300 for a return in first for BAH-DOH. The Asia to Australia flights aren't that cheap. These flights used to earn the full, longhaul tier points, so BAH-DOH-BAH earnt 360 tier points – which was a very good deal! Sadly this loop-hole is now closed.
[edit] I Class fares (BA)
Within Europe, a great way to earn Tier Points is to take advantage of Club Europe’s cheapest (discounted, totally inflexible) fares. These book in to the I fare bucket (discount business) so you will see ‘I Class’ referred to a lot on this board. These can be a great way to ‘just top off’ your account if you’re short of a threshold…and great fun for weekend breaks or even daytrips. The list of destinations and the best fares is somewhat seasonal and will also depend on fare sales, offers, etc. However, LGW is usually better than LHR. You can check the official BA fare rules for the base fares (i.e. excluding taxes/surcharges) in the PDF files on their Travel Trade site.
You can search the European listing for the fare basis ‘IEUNBA’ to turn up the I Class fare to each destination (other possible useful searches/fares can be ‘IGOBA’ or ‘IEULGW’). These fares are perfectly valid Club Europe fares and you get all the services and benefits, including lounge access, full miles and 40 Tier Points each way.
Some flights also (for now) appear to earn longhaul Tier Points and miles, even though they are flown on a shorthaul plane and marketed as Club Europe. The current known example is SSH in Egypt. Whether it’s worth over 5 hours on an Airbus in a Club Europe configuration, however, is debatable!
[edit] KUP/YUP (pronounced `K-Up' / ‘Why-Up’) fares (American Airlines)
These are fares on American Airlines which carry an Economy (K or Y) booking code but book into the next cabin (First on 2-class services, Business on 3-class). The great thing about them from the BAEC point of view is that they earn miles and TPs for the cabin flown.
Perhaps surprisingly, you will usually want to avoid the 3-class flights by choosing a 2-class one - you'll then get First class TPs instead of Business class ones.
There are some real TP bargains to be had with KUPs/YUPs (e.g. if you’re in America already on another trip). Our friends over on the AA Board have lots more information. And there is a very useful tool on the Fare Compare website where you can check what the deals are from a specific location.
[edit] Silver & Gold Benefits
Note that BA have no equivalent of the oneworld Ruby status in the Executive Club. A useful tier comparison table is shown here on ba.com.
| Executive Club Silver For members who earn 600 Executive Club points during a membership year (400 if based in Europe). Benefits include:
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| Executive Club Gold For members who earn 1,500 Executive Club points during a membership year (800 if based in Europe). Benefits include the above listed, plus:
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