For Sale: BA Silver for 200 quid!

No this is not a misprint... This is what BA's new deal for low cost fares being eligible for entry into the BA FF high clouds of Silver. The new arrangement allows the user to collect either 600 points or 50 flights on BA.

So being the person that I am, I went and looked at what that could mean. With a little help from Professor Mike (who alerted me to this deal) we went and found the current cheapest fare on BA. It is 8 pounds for a roundtrip ticket LGW-MAN-LGW. The taxes and fees however raise the price to 77 pounds. This if you take the cheapest option and the most effective version you can fly 25 times from LGW to Manchester roundtrip and walk away having snagged a Silver card from BA. Total cost 1925 pounds

HOWEVER imagine if you are a higher premium traveller who flies occasionally on BA but pays full wack for his tickets. He will have paid for a roundtrip LON-NYC - 2017 pounds and would have snagged merely a few miles and a measly 50 tier points.

Thus the new program definitely favors cheap short haul day trips on lower yields that the chap who has actually provided the bread and butter of the long haul premium cabins.

For those of us who are filling BA's coffers with cash - we find that this is an unfair situation.

I raise this for another reason - the ugly side of airline ancillary revenue comes forward. I wont comment on exactly how the split of those fees are actually real taxes or fake charges that can work out for BA - but suffice to say BA is doing nicely thank you and that its net on such a ticket is way north of the headline 8 pounds.

So here is a little view of the relevant page on BA.

Cheers and have a good time with this

Professor.