In late 2022, Iberia Plus moved to revenue-based Avios earning for flights, and it was announced that British Airways Executive Club would move in the same direction in 2023. We now have the full details of what that will look like.
In this post:
Executive Club goes revenue-based as of October 2023
As of October 18, 2023, British Airways Executive Club will be changing how Avios are earned for flights. British Airways is describing this initiative as “offering members a transparent, consistent and simplified way to collect Avios.”
Executive Club members booking flights from October 18, 2023, can expect to earn Avios at the following rate, depending on their elite status:
- Blue members will receive six Avios per £1 spent
- Bronze members will receive seven Avios per £1 spent
- Silver members will receive eight Avios per £1 spent
- Gold members will receive nine Avios per £1 spent
Note that qualifying spending for airfare includes the base fare and any carrier imposed surcharges on revenue tickets (but not award tickets). Only government taxes and fees don’t qualify for earning Avios.
Furthermore, for the first time, Executive Club members will earn Avios for ancillary fees, including upgrades (online or at airport), pre-paid seating charges, excess baggage, etc.
As you can see, this means that distance traveled no longer factors into how many Avios you earn for your ticket. When it comes to qualifying for elite status,
Tier Points will continue to be the method by which you can qualify for status, and that’s sort of distance based (in the sense that the number of Tier Points you earn correlates to the distance of the individual segments you fly).
Ian Romanis, British Airways’ Director of Retail and Customer Relationship Management, said the following about this change:
“We continue to listen to our customers’ feedback and ideas to evolve our Executive Club. This is a simpler and more transparent system offering more opportunities to collect Avios than ever before and rewarding loyalty based on customers’ cash spend. It’s a tried and tested model already used by a number of global airlines, including our sister airline Iberia.”
That’s right, folks. British Airways is switching to revenue-based Avios earning because the company continues to listen to its customers!
My take on these British Airways Executive Club changes
We knew that British Airways Executive Club would switch to revenue-based Avios earning, and there aren’t really any surprises here. What’s my take on these changes?
- This was inevitable, since most of British Airways’ competitors in Europe already had this system
- In the US it was terrible when airlines switched to revenue-based earning, because they otherwise awarded at least 100% miles for all tickets; the change won’t be nearly as bad for British Airways passengers, where discontinued tickets only earn Avios equal to 25% of the distance flown
- Some members will appreciate the ability to earn Avios on ancillaries, which weren’t previously rewarded
- These revenue-based systems give business travelers on someone else’s dime a strong incentive to book the most expensive ticket possible, which is no doubt part of the motivation for a change like this
Bottom line
As of October 2023, British Airways Executive Club will be introducing revenue-based Avios earning, whereby members will earn 6-9x Avios per £1 spent on airfare and other ancillaries. There are no real surprises here, other than British Airways claiming that this change is being made because the program always listens to customer feedback (okay, that claim isn’t actually surprising either).
What do you make of these British Airways Executive Club changes?
Terrible for frequent leisure travellers as will be less earnt unless s0ending maximum in fares.
NOTHING that BA does is for the benefit of its customers or as a result of listening to them. This latest change damages my points earing capacity as a Gold member that only travels in Business or F. I have tried to stick with this Alliance if only for the convenience of using the F check-in facility at LHR. All the new changes will do is to cause me to run up my BA/One World...
NOTHING that BA does is for the benefit of its customers or as a result of listening to them. This latest change damages my points earing capacity as a Gold member that only travels in Business or F. I have tried to stick with this Alliance if only for the convenience of using the F check-in facility at LHR. All the new changes will do is to cause me to run up my BA/One World points up to Gold each year which I normally achieve in 3-4 months and I will then fly with the best ticket pricing for the class of travel I want regardless of alliance and of course bearing in mind that BA and One World very rarely have the best deals out there in Business with some Star Alliance carriers offering fantastic long haul deals at less than half the price of BA. Sean Doyle's latest move is yet another home goal and eventually his chicken will come home to roost!!
It's worth noting that under the current system you do actually already earn Avios for cash upgrades because you earn Avios/TP based on the cabin you travel in.
Lucky's point that BA already penalizes discount coach fares at 50% or even 25% of the miles traveled is an important one because it means that switching to revenue-based is much less extreme
Using LHR-JFK as an example given it's one of their biggest / most lucrative markets, it seems if you were blue and bought the cheapest tickets you could win out here unless I'm missing something?
Let's say you spend £500 for basic economy x 6 as blue = 3,000 under new earning
Current basic economy return is 25% of ~7,000 miles flown = only 1,750 avois
If you flew a non flexible business ticket...
Using LHR-JFK as an example given it's one of their biggest / most lucrative markets, it seems if you were blue and bought the cheapest tickets you could win out here unless I'm missing something?
Let's say you spend £500 for basic economy x 6 as blue = 3,000 under new earning
Current basic economy return is 25% of ~7,000 miles flown = only 1,750 avois
If you flew a non flexible business ticket (lowest fare bucket) and paid say £3,000 x 6 = 18,000 under new system.
Current system 150% of ~7,000 miles flown = 10,500
Even if you go to silver status and spent £3k on a lowest fare J ticket £3,000 X 8 = 24,000
Current system = 13,832
Seems you'd significantly gain under the new system unless I'm totally missing something here? I'm sure there are routes where this will not be the case - perhaps this opens a whole new world of "sweet spots" compared to what you earn currently
"British Airways is switching to revenue-based Avios earning because the company continues to listen to its customers!"
Ahhahahaa. Yes, Delta and United must be the best listeners because we also wanted the miles to be worth nothing.
Gilbert Ott’s run of very questionable content at God Save The Points has culminated in an explosively biased and dishonest article that appeared moments after BA’s press release.
Apparently the only people that lose in this new system are the pedantic spreadsheet-wielding losers on FlyerTalk?
Any mention that he was paid by BA recently? Of course not.
I'm curious, what's dishonest or wrong in it? Sounds like you have some personal beef with this person.
It’s dishonest to not disclose sponsors and paid-for-bias.
Ben - what is the source that it doesn’t cover reward flights now. There’s a question in their FAQs which says
Yes, any qualifying add-ons purchased on a reward booking from 18 October 2023 will collect Avios based on the total eligible spend.
Is there somewhere that carrier imposed charges are excluded on reward bookings? It’s not v clear to me.
Generally this is a positive move for higher tier members. I have compared a few future bookings and it’s net plus.
“qualifying *add-ons* purchased on a reward booking”
You’ve quoted the answer to your own question ;)
But nowhere does it say that reward bookings are excluded. It specifically says that you are rewarded for carrier imposed charges, and doesn’t limit that section to non reward bookings. Specifically under the section on reward flights if says “yes, add ons are included”. But nothing about carrier charges.
If I had answered my own question, I wouldn’t have asked it.
Put another way, carrier imposed charges are qualifying. And they’re an add on to reward bookings. So what’s the source that says reward bookings don’t count.
As is frequently mentioned in Ben’s blog, these can be £1000 on a first class redemption so it’s a material issue.
Reward flights don’t warn Avios. Nothing’s changing there - carrier surcharge isn’t a qualifying add-on.
I roughly calculated how many avios I would have earned for my last flights. They were mostly in the fare clases I or R (i.e. the two lower Business Class fare classes). I am Gold, so factor 9 will apply in the future. I would have earned more avios on any of these trips, using the new system. Obviously, for Blue members (no status), things looks rather differently ...
Under old system gold members earned a 100% bonus, under the new system only 50% (factor 9 vs factor 6 for blue). So relatively speaking this change is worse (or less good depending on your perspective) for golds, and to a lesser extent lower tiers, than blue members
Basic blues could win out here unless I did my maths wrong. Let's say you spend £500rt in basic economy to NYC (~7,000 miles rt) then current system gives you 25% of miles earned thus only 1,750 avois. New system would give 6 x 500 = 3,000 avois. Even at £300 spend your get 1,800 so marginally more than now. Of course where it gets messy is the government taxes not being included which can...
Basic blues could win out here unless I did my maths wrong. Let's say you spend £500rt in basic economy to NYC (~7,000 miles rt) then current system gives you 25% of miles earned thus only 1,750 avois. New system would give 6 x 500 = 3,000 avois. Even at £300 spend your get 1,800 so marginally more than now. Of course where it gets messy is the government taxes not being included which can make up a chunk of fare, though again APD is significantly higher on premium tickets Vs economy
"where discontinued tickets only earn Avios equal to 25% of the distance flown"
Should read "discounted"
"This was inevitable, since most of British Airways’ competitors in Europe already had this system"
Did they? I can only think of AF/KL and some small airlines such as Norwegian or Air Baltic. Most of the large programmes (Miles and More, Eurobonus, Finnair Plus...) aren't revenue based.
Miles & More has been revenue-based for years.
yes and there are easy ways to avoid revenue bases miles and get them credited via booking classes. united ticket stock ist only one example.
Miles & More IS Rev Based and has been. Also all of IAG members are now on Rev Based, including Iberia, which is bigger than Finnair...
Hmm, 9 Avios/GBP for Gold seems low given that AA EXPs earn ~14.4 AAdvantage miles per GBP at current exchange rates.
You are looking at it too simplistically. You also have to consider the redemption side. Now, with BA's sliding scale for a redemption, one can reduce the cash component to only taxes (and no fuel charges). Given this, you have an apple-to-apples comparison. Depending on the route, it takes fewer BA points than AA points. JFK to LHR on BA in I/J will be 90k Avios plus tax and no fuel charge . . ....
You are looking at it too simplistically. You also have to consider the redemption side. Now, with BA's sliding scale for a redemption, one can reduce the cash component to only taxes (and no fuel charges). Given this, you have an apple-to-apples comparison. Depending on the route, it takes fewer BA points than AA points. JFK to LHR on BA in I/J will be 90k Avios plus tax and no fuel charge . . . . on AA would be over 100k. And, then, there's the quality factor. Which would you rather fly, BA or AA? You can do the same comparison on a partner redemption.
Gold members have been utterly screwed by this change - previously they'd earn 5x the points of a Blue (non-status) member on economy short-haul flights. Now that becomes just 1.5x.
Ok, redemption rates are lower than AA but it's still extremely stingy.