[FaroFlyer]

Hi Travellator, I think this was loosely covered 2 or 3 years ago. I can recall posting that I earned 800 TPs for about £4,000. This was when only 800 TPs were needed for Gold ex EU. Taking this as a base, but don’t forget that fares have reduced in the last couple of years, you could say ~ £3,000 for Silver. If lounge access and priority boarding cost £60 per RT then it is probably a close thing, but you will also earn some Avios to spend, perhaps on G&T 🙂

By the way, I do not think that BoB is a brilliant idea, and I hate marketing guys who try to “spin bad news”.

I accept BoB for food, but a couple of G&Ts “on BA” was what made BA different

[FaroFlyer]

Tom, apologies for mis-spelling your name. Otley, that is, not Tom.

The first, correct attempt, had a red underline so I “corrected” it.

Moral: Never trust spill chuck or spall chick!

[1nfrequent]

Travellator – I’m BAEC silver and it costs me about £2500 – £2700 in flights each year (using ex-DUBs to the US and then 3 or 4 internal US flights). Other people here will be able to put together a cheaper way of doing it (the £1400 fares ex-DUB to HNL seem to be popular) but I am mainly a leisure traveller and don’t have the time/money to do mileage runs.

I should make BAEC gold this year and it’s costing me about £5500 all in over the course of my membership year – mix of ex-DUB US flights, internal US flights, a couple of Europe city breaks and an ex-OSL to Australia. Again, posters here will tell you there are cheaper ways of doing it.

I’m not thrilled about BOB but as a silver it doesn’t affect me so much as I usually eat in the lounge anyway. I think the key is what happens to the underlying fares. If they come down to reflect the fact that there’s no refreshment element then I’m less bothered but I suspect they’ll stay as they are in which case it does feel like a rip-off.

As I’ve said before, I fly BA because the product, routes and BAEC programme work for me. I am however using other OW airlines to get an idea for the different products available and that’s mainly thanks to information from posters here and on FT.

1F

[FDOS_UK]

[quote quote=763149]FDOS, I am sure that what you say is factually correct. I was addressing the >90% of the contributors to this forum who understood what I meant. For the avoidance of doubt and confusion, my simplistic definition of an FFP was one where anybody can join, without entry fee, and membership can continue if you maintain certain basic criteria.

[/quote]

Faro Flyer

easyJet’s Flight Club is no different to BAEC, in that one only gets entry (invited) to a meaningful level when hitting a qualification criteria, e.g. based on revenues rather than the abstraction of tier points – there is no need to apply for ‘Blue’ level – in effect, all easyjet pax have this.

Flight Club is invite only, so is BAEC Silver/Gold/GGL etc. There is no fee to join Flight Club and it is maintained by hitting the revenue criteria.

As a personal opinion, I’d say it is fairer to all than BAEC, as it recognises those people who cause more revenues to flow into the airline, whereas BAEC does not necessarily do this. I’ve contributed over 5x as muh as some people in the past and ended up as Silver, whilst they achieved Gold.

[TiredOldHack2]

@ Travellator

“To get Silver BA Exec requires 600 TPs. Whats the minimum cost of flights to achieve that?”

Damn good question. I reckon I can do it for well under £2k, if I pick my flights right.

An example – Qatar was offering biz class flights to Singapore for £1,002 in a recent sale. And yes, that was return. Slight drawback was you had to go from Pisa or Milan in Italy, routing (as ever) via Doha. A check on the flight calculator reveals that each leg (Malpensa to Doha, and then Doha to Singapore) is worth 140 TPs each way in biz. So that’s 560 TPs straight off, leaving a mere 40 to be clocked up, perhaps by flying BA out to Milan/Malpensa in the first place.

Which, er, is exactly what Dr TOH and myself are doing in March.

Add in the recent London-Shanghai flight on Finnair, routing through Helsinki, and that’s 1,000 TPs for yours truly on just two intercontinental trips and a cost of just over £3,000. That leaves me another 500 TPs to keep Gold status, and I’ll clock that up going to South America next year, probably trying BA’s direct service to Santiago do Chile, and then some running around the continent with LAN and/or TAM.

[MarcusGB]

So BA in Europe (under 5 hrs!!!), is now fully Low Cost.
What lies their CEO has spurted out in the last months.

Keep going KLM, LH, with your full service Airline model, a decent cold or bar drink, tea/ coffee, and great sandwiches, and hot snacks and ice creams on flights over 90 minutes by KLM.
(EG AMS-LIS).
Easyjet clearly is the UK’s up front and honest National Airlines now compared to BA with cramped time wasting LHR,, though many have switched from all the regions to KLM and Amsterdam.

Always so predictable. How degrading for the BA staff now to be selling drinks and food, what a career to aspire to with such an Airline!!!

[Travellator]

Good point re Crew, I was wondering how they felt about all this it gives To Fly To Serve a whole new meaning from their perspective.
And also clearing up the rubbish from the BrOB brigade ( bring on board !)

[EU_Flyer]

I’m sure this already been posted but…

To Fly. To Sell.

[Tom Otley]

[quote quote=763188]Tom, apologies for mis-spelling your name. Otley, that is, not Tom.

The first, correct attempt, had a red underline so I “corrected” it.

Moral: Never trust spill chuck or spall chick!

[/quote]

That’s OK – but to answer your question, I can’t think how we could do the poll in a way that’s robust. We could create it and ask people whether they are Bronze, Silver etc… but they might not be forum posters, and it would be impossible to check. Maybe we could add it to the profile section like they have on Flyertalk – but even then, people might exaggerate or whatever the opposite of exaggerate is….

[TominScotland]

It is a fascinating insight into our priorities here on this Forum that we are now on Page 12 of a passionate discussion about sandwiches of all things (btw, MarcusGB, I love your hyperbole about KLM’s “great sandwiches”, see my earlier post). At the same time, Cathay Pacific’s move to join the majority of airlines (but not BA as yet) in responding to customer demand by offering the clear benefits of 10 across in Economy on their 777s is ignored in the Forum – I guess it is now arguable that CX are stooping to Scoot levels and we should call them a long-haul LCC?

[FDOS_UK]

Tom

Possibly Cathay Pacific’s decision is about as relevant (to most people here) as the Saudi Arabian decision to pay their civil servants using the Gregorian, rather than the Hijiri calendar?

By the way, your sarcastic reference to CX as a LCC is risible, whilst I don’t like 10 across seating in Y, it is no more a sign of being an LCC than having 8 across in J or cramming 14/17 in F.

Withdrawing complimentary F&B and replacing it with a revenue generating model definitely is more in line with that.

[TominScotland]

Not sarcastic, FDOS_UK, tongue in cheek irony…….

[PhilipHart]

Quizzed a CC yesterday about BOB, and he said that service would be accomplished far more speedily than at present, because the percentage of PAX purchasing compared to the number “just taking free stuff because it is free” is very small indeed. So, getting through the cabin on even the shortest flights, e.g. JER, AMS would be a breeze.

I think he said he had gleaned this knowledge from working on BA CityFlyer where BOB is in operation, but my recollection could well be wrong, as I was too busy consuming the “free” wine 😉

Certainly, if my experience travelling on Iberia Express is used as a yardstick, he is bang on the money.

[rferguson]

CX’s ten abreast versus BA’s BOB aside I am amazed that BA hasn’t announced ten abreast in Y on their 777’s yet.

I think the forthcoming IAG Capital Markets day on 4NOV will be an interesting one. Last year they announced that a number of 777’s would be reconfigured from a four to three class configuration (without increasing Y from nine to ten abreast). That quickly went quiet and when asked on internal forums about the progress of this reconfiguration the official line is ‘it’s still being evaluated’. I reckon the next announcement will be four class to three class plus an increase of nine to ten abreast in Economy.

[FaroFlyer]

Look on the bright side. In next year’s Business Travel awards BA will be eligible to enter tas a Low Cost Carrier 🙂

[Author]

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