British Airways Executive Club, which moved to Avios roughly about a decade ago, has now moved to a new system to reward travel made on British Airways by the customers, where it will transition to how much you spend (revenue based) over how far you fly (distance based) rewards.

British Airways Executive Club is switching to revenue-based Avios earning.

In a move that should not surprise, British Airways has announced that they will transition from a distance-based rewards system for their customers in the BA Executive Club programme to a revenue-based accrual in October 2023. It is not surprising, given that sister airline Iberia moved to revenue-based accruals in November 2022, and other European carriers have generally moved in this direction, including Flying Blue from Air France/KLM.

Any flights booked on or after October 18, 2023, for flying on British Airways and codeshare tickets will earn rewards, when credited to British Airways Executive Club, based on spending rather than distance. Tickets booked before October 18 will continue to earn Avios per distance as they currently do. The new system will reward Avios as follows:

• Blue Tier Members will earn 6 Avios/ 1 GBP spent
• Bronze Tier Members will earn 7 Avios/ 1 GBP spent
• Silver Tier Members will earn 8 Avios/ 1 GBP spent
• Gold Tier Members will earn 9 Avios/ 1 GBP spent

For other currencies, the total eligible spend will be converted into GBP to calculate the number of Avios eligible to be earned. BA Executive Club will award Avios for fare and carrier surcharges; however, government taxes will not count towards Avios’ earnings. Unfortunately, there is no good way to predict how many Avios are since there is no good transparency on the break up until after booking the ticket.  However, on the upside, BA will now allow you to earn Avios for money spent on seat selection fees, upgrades and additional baggage fees, amongst other ancillaries.

Generally, on the back of this, travellers with fixed dates who might purchase last minute, such as business travellers, would have nothing to worry about with this change.

For elites used to the old system, they will see their bonuses cut down. For instance, earlier, a BA Gold could earn a 100% bonus for the distance flown on a ticket, but now they will make a 50% bonus in the new system.

This is a massive devaluation, and I usually don’t like the term anymore. But customers earning in the Executive Club programme will massively see reductions in the Avios made for them. It will be interesting to see how BA flight credits on other programmes move in light of this move.

Bottomline

British Airways is moving to a revenue-based accrual for how they reward flying on the airline to their Executive Club customers. This will go into effect for those booking tickets effective October 18, 2023. The move will be good for British Airways but not so good for customers of the loyalty programme as explained above.

What do you think of BA’s move for revenue-based customer rewards?

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