BA's Missed Opportunity
Changes to the London-based carrier’s loyalty programme will not benefit lounge users
British Airways have changed their tier point qualification thresholds by moving to a revenue-based programme for earning status. There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Don’t worry, I am not writing a long article about whether or not spend-based status is a good idea (it isn’t). And I am not going to write about whether or not the new tier thresholds are sensible (they might be, at least in the medium term).
Instead I have analysed the impact on passenger experience in the BA lounges in their home, Heathrow Terminal 5. My model shows that whatever impact the new programme has on BA’s business, it will not reduce lounge crowding by much, or give a good chance of improving the per-person catering budget.
This article was written using data from OAG Schedules Analyser. Visit oag.com. Thanks OAG!
BA’s lounges today
Shiny Gold and Silver cards give access to Galleries First and Galleries Club lounges while passengers are waiting for their flight. A few hardy flyers have access to the Concorde Room (pictured, a long time ago…), which is mainly for passengers holding first class tickets.
These are hardly swanky. When your favourite airline revenue economist last visited the Galleries Club North in November, the fish fingers were prison grade and did not even come with chips… The Concorde Room is somewhat better.
They all have decent drinks, including bottomless champagne. And they are certainly a better place to hang out and sleep, work or relax than either the public seating in the terminal or a boring-old office.
When flights are disrupted they are a godsend. Passengers value access.
A common gambit is to buy Euro Traveller (economy) tickets on short trips and enjoy the Galleries Club lounge by virtue of a Silver card earned through a few longhaul flights in Club World (fully-flat wide-body business class). Or more than 50 flights a year.
Regular flyers holding a Gold card have a rather decent security “wing” that normally flows fast and avoids the schlep past the shops before entering the Galleries First lounge.
Modelling passenger flow in & out of BA’s lounges
I took a “typical day” of schedule data from OAG, including all flights arriving and departing on Thu-15-May-2025. This is mid-week and not a public holiday in either the UK or BA’s primary USA longhaul market. I eliminated Terminal 3 flights using the current list on FlyerTalk.com.
I made the following assumptions. Please remember, it’s only a model and I would rather be roughly right than precisely wrong:
1. Aircraft capacity as defined by aerolopa.com
2. For flexible Club Europe with it’s movable curtain I assumed six rows for A319, eight for A320 and 10 for A321
3. Every flight is on-time…
4. Terminal 5 opens at 4.30am and the last flights leave to Jeddah and Dubai at 10.30pm
5. People leaving from London arrive in the lounge evenly between five hours and one hour prior to departure
6. People transiting from other flights arrive in the lounge evenly in a 15 minute window between 30 and 45 minutes after their first flight arrives
7. People leave the lounges evenly over a 20 minute period one hour to 40 minutes prior to departure
8. People arriving on flights in First, Club Europe or Club World and connecting, leave on flights that are also in one of those cabins
9. People connecting from flights in World Traveller Plus, World Traveller or Euro Traveller and connecting, leave on flights that are also in one of those cabins – this means that they only have lounge access by virtue of status
10. 85% seat factor
11. 35% of passengers are transiting and 65% originate in London
12. People do not change their loyalty programme before the changes take effect…
Modelling the number of passengers who currently hold status
The number of people with status who use Heathrow Terminal 5 on any given day is kept confidential by British Airways.
This post on Head for Points, a leading consumer travel blog in the UK, quoted the following numbers for one day in 2015:
55 Premiers (invitation-only level that requires control of a travel budget, not necessarily significant flying)
2,982 Golds (access to Galleries First)
2,416 Silvers (access to Galleries Club)
2,081 Bronzes (no lounge access).
I have ignored Premiers. Before changes take effect on 1-Apr-2025, the BA Executive Club has not changed much since 2015 so if (big if) these numbers were representative then, they should still be representative today.
I do not think that this includes equivalent status holders from other oneworld alliance airlines. First because it will be harder for BA to get details from another airline’s loyalty programme to their own, and second because if it did it would probably say so.
These Emerald and Sapphire members enjoy the same lounge access as BA’s own Golds and Silvers respectively, but I assume that they will not be impacted by the changes.
A rather nifty thing to do on BA flights is to look without touching at the passenger list or meal order form posted in the galley. It shows you which passengers do and do not have status.
I used my experience looking at this list on hundreds of flight to make the following additional assumptions. Remember, it’s only a model:
1. 40% of First passengers hold BA Gold, Silver or Bronze
2. 25% of Club World & Club Europe passengers hold BA status too
3. There are roughly the same number of oneworld status holders as there are BA status holders.
I used these assumptions and the numbers from Head for Points to estimate how many status holders are travelling in First or Club, and so have lounge access anyway.
I then took them away from the totals and calculated the number of status holders travelling in Traveller or Traveller Plus. I divided them equally among the three cabins.
The results are summarised in the table below:
This model estimates that 8.6% of Traveller and Traveller Plus passengers have BA Gold or Silver status and a further 8.6% have equivalent lounge-yielding oneworld status. It also estimates that 64.9% of Golds and Silvers are not travelling in First or Club. Many in this group may lose lounge access after BA status becomes spend-driven.
Model results – current lounge analysis
The two charts below show the number of BA passengers currently entering BA operated lounges at Heathrow Terminal 5 through the day, based on the cabin of travel. All will be status holders. The first one with blue lines shows longhaul First and Club World (dark blue) and Club Europe (light blue).
In this model there are many more Club Europe travellers leaving Terminal 5 in the day (6,104) than longhaul First and Club World travellers (4,146).
Despite this, the longhaul arrivals rate at the lounge gate exceeds the shorthaul arrivals rate at six times in the day. These are mainly in the morning because many BA flights leave at or before lunch time, hence brunch-gate (see article).
Longhaul flights also tend to arrive at Heathrow and disgorge their arriving transit passengers early too.
The second chart (green lines) shows the same calculations for Traveller and Traveller Plus. Arrivals rates are lower for passengers travelling in these cabins.
64.9% of Gold and Silver card holders are not travelling in First or Club. But there are only 3,506 of them across the day plus another 3,506 oneworld equivalents. Meanwhile there are 10,250 First and Club passengers.
The next chart shows how many people are in the lounges at a given point in time, given the entry stats above and my exit assumption that people leave lounges over a 20 minute period between one hour and 40 minutes ahead of departure.
The model predicts a daily peak of 1,528 at 1.10pm. Remember that these passengers are spread across five lounges:
1. Concorde Room
2. Galleries First
3. Galleries Club North
4. Galleries Club South
5. Galleries Club Terminal 5B satellite
The model also shows that the lounges are always quite busy, with more than 800 passengers inside consistently between 8.15am and 6.35pm.
The worst time for passengers to arrive is probably between 11.35am and 11.50am, as this is when occupancy jumps from 1,006 to 1,433 in a short time. It is also during a peak when longhaul passengers arrive in the terminal and there are not so many people leaving to catch flights.
Model results – post-status cull lounge analysis
So what will happen when BA changes it’s status model? With the changes stated there will most likely be a big drop in status holders travelling in Traveller or Traveller Plus.
All the First and Club passengers will continue to enjoy lounge access.
I ran the model taking out 50%, 75% and 90% of Traveller or Traveller Plus passengers. The chart below shows that at the top peak time, lounge occupancy in the model will only fall by about 245 passengers (16.3%). Culling status holders will not reduce the “peakiness” of occupancy.
Throughout the day, occupancy will fall by between 8% and 20% depending on exactly how many status-holders no longer access the lounge:
1. 50% status cull in economy: 8% to 11% reduction in lounge occupancy
2. 75% status cull in economy: 12% to 16%
3. 90% status cull in economy: 14% to 20%
These are shown in the chart below:
I am disappointed by these results. I had hoped that we would see a clear 20% reduction in lounge occupancy. Because BA has five lounges, if this had been the case it would have enabled BA to close the lounges easily and refurbish them one-by-one.
In reality, some of BA’s passengers will shift allegiance to other airlines. When they fly BA in Traveller or Traveller Plus they will return to the lounges with oneworld Emerald or Sapphire membership. So the final impact may be slightly less.
BA have managed to harm their programme without actually enabling the key benefit of fewer status holders leading to less overcrowding and the same catering budget providing better food.
What could BA have done better?
BA is constrained by it’s oneworld obligations to offer first class lounge access to Emeralds and business class lounge access to Sapphires. Here is what I would have tried to do if it were up to me, subject to space, technical feasibility and so on:
1. Refurbished Concorde Room in it’s current location for First ticket holders, Premiers and Gold Guest List passengers
2. Redesignate the current First Wing check-in and security area as the Concorde Wing exclusively for First and Club World ticket holders, with access straight into what is currently Galleries First - relocate “first class” check-in for oneworld Emeralds by North security, co-locate “business class” check-in for oneworld Sapphires and Club Europe at the South end of Terminal 5
3. Refurbish the Galleries First and turn it into a much better lounge exclusively for Club World ticket holders – together with improved security, this could elevate the Club World ground experience to be on a par with groovy-funky Upper Class on Virgin Atlantic, which in my view is much better (see article)
4. Turn a refurbished Galleries Club North into the “first class lounge” for BA Golds and oneworld Emeralds
5. Retain a refurbished Galleries Club South as the “business class lounge” for Club Europe ticket holders, BA Silvers and oneworld Sapphires
6. Refurbish Galleries Club Terminal 5 B as a lounge for any passenger with status or holding a Club/First ticket arriving at the satellite in time to use it.
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