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British Airways Executive Club has changed its partner award chart – it went live on 30 May, 2019.
In general the miles-and-points blogosphere has been kind, treating the increases as modest – at least in percentage terms. Although this is true, I am rather more negative, especially considering the fact that changes were announced, but we weren’t told WHAT those changes would be. Transparency is important!
As a reminder, here is the new partner award chart when using your Avios through BA Executive Club.
Note that there is different pricing for flights of less than 651 miles which start or end in the USA. The rates there are as follows:
- Economy: 7,500
- Business: 15,000
- First: 30,000
What’s Going On Here?
When our Joe wrote about these changes yesterday, he added this query…
What was the thinking behind changing just the partner rates anyway? It creates another layer of complexity for BA Executive Club members, without any (obvious) significant benefit to BA.
Like Joe, I find it incredibly strange that BA would have:
- a general partner award chart
- a slightly different one for the US
- an award chart for Iberia flights booked via BAEC (identical to the Iberia Plus chart), with peak / off-peak pricing
- then of course a different award chart entirely for British Airways flights, again with peak / off-peak pricing
If one goes through the history of Avios, one might recall that BAEC has always kept the complexity to a minimum. Originally there was one award chart for all. Then off-peak / peak pricing was brought in, but partners stuck to the peak pricing. Everything was based on distance, rather than a matrix of regions.
Then it dawned on me with my morning coffee…
What if BAEC knows it will shortly need just the one award, unpublished (as far as I know) chart… because dynamic pricing is coming soon?
For me at least, that concept helps explain why BA Executive Club would add the complexity of another award chart and not tell anybody what the changes would be… as part of the process of moving to a fixed award chart for partners and dynamic pricing for BA (and potentially the rest of IAG).
What do you think? Should I just grab another coffee? Or does my idea make sense? Feel free to add your own speculations in the comments section…
Think you might be onto something Craig.
Changes are not made without lots of planning especially at a giant like BA, there is whiff in the air of something…
These schemes will constantly be evolving, or more appropriately, devaluting. What was originally set up to reward loyal frequent flyers with free flights on planes with spare seats, soon became an extra revenue stream for airlines by selling points to credit card companies and retailers.
Now with so many participants in the schemes, they can afford to raise their “prices” and we’ve already seen bidding systems introduced for upgrades on many airlines so it wouldn’t be to far fetched to see them raise the prices on popular days and even times. Why should you pay the same for a 6am departure as one that leaves at 11am or 3pm say. As algorithms become smarter, people will be squeezed out of the system either by overpaying for a flight they want and using up their miles or simply giving up and losing all their points as they expire – while the airline pockets the revenue!