The British Airways Club has made its Tier Point bonuses permanent

Last December, when it thought no one was paying attention, British Airways made a huge change to the way its rewards program works – going forward, elite status would be earned based on how much a British Airways Club member spent with British Airways and not based on the cabin booked and the distance flown.

I wasn’t really sure what BA was doing at when it announced these changes and the airline obviously had some doubts as well because no sooner had it told everyone that their elite status would be based solely on the amount of money they spend with the airline, it also announced that flyers would earn bonus points towards elite status on every flight with the size of the bonus varying depending on the cabin that was booked.

The bonuses were small, we were told that they were only a temporary measure (presumably to take a little bit of the sting out of the dramatic changes to BA’s rewards program) and British Airways Club members had to register to earn the bonuses (they weren’t going to be handed out automatically).

This is what the Tier Point bonuses looked like (per flight):

• Euro Traveller (short-haul Economy Class) bookings – 75 bonus Tier Points
• Club Europe (short-haul Business Class) bookings – 175 bonus Tier Points
• World Traveller (long-haul Economy Class) bookings – 150 bonus Tier Points
• World Traveller Plus (long-haul Premium Economy) bookings – 275 bonus Tier Points
• Club World (long-haul Business Class) bookings – 400 bonus Tier Points
• First Class bookings – 550 bonus Tier Points

Given that these are now the British Airways Club elite status requirements …

• Bronze (Oneworld Ruby): 3,500 Tier Points
• Silver (Oneworld Sapphire): 7,500 Tier Points
• Gold (Oneworld Emerald): 20,000 Tier Points
• Gold Guest List (Oneworld Emerald): 65,000 Tier Points*

*At least 52,000 of these Tier Points must come from bookings made through British Airways.

… the bonuses being offered won’t make a huge amount of difference, but some will argue that they’re better than nothing and it’s hard to argue against that.

Anyway, as I said, these bonuses were meant to be temporary … until they were not.

British Airways has now confirmed that these bonuses are here to stay, that they will be incorporated into the new British Airways Club rules, and that members of the British Airways Club no longer have to register to earn them.

That’s interesting.

Sure, the bonuses are still laughably small and you continue to have to spend a lot of money with BA to earn any kind of meaningful status, but considering the whole point of the big upheaval last December was to change how BA awards elite status to a purely money-based system, it’s funny to now see the airline keeping these cabin-based Tier Point bonuses in place.

It’s almost like BA doesn’t really know what to do for the best 🙂

Bottom line

The cabin-based Tier Point bonuses that British Airways introduced at the start of the year and told us were temporary are now here to stay. Customers crediting their flights to the British Airways Club will therefore continue to earn between 75 and 550 bonus Tier Points per flight (depending on what cabin they book) and as of 25 November, they no longer have to register in advance if they want these bonuses added to their accounts.