It is one of the best if you use it (British Airways Executive Club in general)

Member Name: cteasdel

Product:	British Airways Executive Club in general
Date:	20/04/02 (2160 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lounge program, wait lists, seat allocation

Disadvantages: hard to get on the ladder

Why do very few people have good things to say about the BA Executive club ?

In my personal opinion I think it was on of the best FF program going. I have had Gold status with BA for 8 years and also have, Premiere Elite with United (part of Star Alliance) and Platinum with Continental.

I think BA?s Gold level is the best elite status to have.

The Oneworld partnership has an excellent lounge access program with 600+ lounges around the world and once you are silver with BA you can use 90% of these when traveling on any ticket type. Once you reach gold then you can use them all even when flying on another airline. Use of Star Alliance lounges is much more restricted. As a user of these lounges I am glad that the use of them is restricted to First, Club, Gold or Silver members as this does make them calmer and more relaxed, the very reason they where created.

BA seem to come in for a lot of criticism for not giving any Exec points (used to achieve status levels) and very limited (25%) miles for discounted fairs. They are not the only airline to do this and need to do so just to stay alive. If they gave every ticket type full points then this would dilute the levels of service offered to the top tier of customers.

I appreciate that not everybody is as fortunate as some to travel in First on long haule and Club in Europe thus not enableing them to get the maximum points and miles but surely it is juistified for an airline to award a full fair First customer 30,200 miles for a return to LA when the ticket price is around 7500GBP. Why should we expect the same perks for a 250GBP ticket?

When I first achieved Gold status 8 years ago I was doing a fair amount of long haul in economy as well as European sectors and missed out on a lot of points. Over the years I have moved through Business class onto First and now do not need to worry about achieving the points level to retain the tier.

When BA changed from Airm
iles to BA miles a lot of people where up in arms over it because the amount of miles required for the short hop to Paris went up 4 fold. BA even admitted this and compensated us if we booked a trip in Zone 1 by halving the miles for the first trip. Personly I have never used the miles for a short trip but instead save them up for a long haul holiday once a year. I am using 300,000 miles for two First tickets to Miami this summer. Yes this is a lot to save up but the 13.000 miles required for Paris would save me about 50GBP on a purchased ticket with say Easy Jet. The 300,000 miles is worth over 14000GBP alone if I where to buy two tickets.

For those of you who don?t do so many actual flown miles but still want to get the free tickets then you can take on a BA Amex card. If you take the premiere card then you get 1.5 miles per pound you spend a 3 per pound on BA. Once you have spend 15k you get a buy one get one BA mile ticket free. So if you spend 15k in a year then you have 220000 miles about half way to the US for one and you also get another ticket for Free.

You can also take out the BA travel insurance and boost your miles that way. And even shop at Tesco. If you put your mind to it then the miles can role in and in no time you have a free holiday.

To sum up, yes this program is wholly designed for those passengers who spend the most money with BA but why shouldn?t it be. If you where in business you would want to look after your best customers especially when margins are so tight and competition is so strong.

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