British Airways Status May Be About To Become Much Harder To Earn (For Some)

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I was sitting in an airport lounge idly browsing through my Twitter feed when I noticed two tweets, one after the other, which made me sit up and pay attention…literally. They weren’t tweets from an official source but they were from someone who’s got a pretty decent track record of getting information before it has been released and, if I understand these tweets correctly, some BA flyers are about to find that earning status  is going to get a lot harder.

American Airlines Is Changing It’s Fare Codes

According to JonNYC (someone well known for having advance notice of what American Airlines is doing) American Airlines is changing the fare codes for its premium cabins….and a lot of BA flyers are not going to like this.

Why Is American Airlines Important For BA Status?

Because, for the most part, American Airlines has not had a domestic Business Class fare code (it has just had Economy and First Class), transatlantic Business Class bookings that involve a domestic American Airlines flight are recognised by BA’s systems in an unusual way.

• The segment across the Atlantic will be recognised by BA’s systems for what it is – a Business Class fare (often fare code I)
• The domestic American Airlines  segment will be recognised as a First Class fare (code A) and not a Business Class fare (which is what it really is).

As British Airways awards tier points based, at least in part, on the cabin that’s being booked, this makes a huge difference to the number of tier points awarded.

For example, if a traveler was to book a Business Class flight from London to Las Vegas (via New York) the flights could look like this:

1. London to New York – British Airways Business Class fare code I
2. New York to Las Vegas – American Airlines Domestic First Class fare code A

And here’s what tier points British Airways would award

London to New York is an I Class fare and would earn 140 Tier  Points

New York to Las Vegas is coded as “A” Class by American Airlines so British Airways awards 210 tier points.

If British Airways systems could recognise that the American Airlines flight was only a Business Class fare the airline would only award 140 Tier points for the same segment – 70 less!

This anomaly has long been used by BA flyers to boost their tier point earnings but, if JonNYC is correct (and I suspect he is), the gravy train is about to run out of steam.

Once American Airlines starts coding its domestic First Class cabin with a “J” code the BA systems will correctly recognise the bookings as being in Business Class (and not First Class) and award considerably fewer tier points.

Bottom Line

This could be very bad news if you’re a BAEC member that flys mainly to the US or if you’re the type of flyer who tends to do a US tier point run to keep or achieve status.

If the example I gave above was taken as a round trip then, once American introduces the J fare code, a traveler could earn 140 fewer tier points in just that one trip….and it would be worse for longer trips with more segments.

For the time being I guess we’ll have to sit back and wait to see exactly what American Airlines announces/does but I’d start preparing for bad news.