Thousands of BA Club members have been told they were wrongly gifted an extra year of elite status – and now face being downgraded.
In April 2025, British Airways changed the rules on how to obtain Silver, Gold and Gold Guest List status. These membership tiers confer many advantages: from access to lounges and free choice of seats to an enhanced baggage allowance and a far higher rate of earning Avios points.
BA rebranded the frequent-flyer scheme as The British Airways Club and changed the way passengers can acquire status. Previously qualification was based on the number of flights taken. The criteria switched broadly to the amount of money spent in a year: £7,500 for Silver status, £20,000 for Gold.
While the changes were widely criticised, the airline added the opportunity to include spending on BA Holidays.
British Airways chose 1 May 2026 as the day when members with elite status who failed to reach the spending targets in the previous year would be downgraded.
But with days to go before the membership “cull”, reports started to emerge on frequent-flyer forums that many passengers who had fallen way short of the tier targets were having their status extended by another year.
Rob Burgess, founder of the frequent-flyer website Head for Points, told The Independent’s daily travel podcast: “A lot of people received emails from British Airways saying, ‘Don’t worry about it, we’re going to give you another year of Gold status or another year of Silver status’.
“The people who were getting these messages were people who’d basically done virtually no flying with British Airways.
“I’ve not found anyone with a Gold extension with more than £5,000 of qualifying spend.”
The revelations enraged frequent flyers who had deliberately increased their spending with BA to reach the qualification levels – and yet were seeing Gold cards “being handed out like confetti”, in the words of Mr Burgess.
British Airways and other airlines have long offered some flexibility to loyal passengers who have temporarily reduced their flying – typically for reasons of illness or parental leave. But as more reports came in from delighted passengers, IAG Loyalty – which runs the scheme on behalf of BA – issued a fresh statement confirming status extensions had been made in error.
A spokesperson for IAG Loyalty said: “Earlier this week we renewed the status of a very small number of BA Club members according to our normal guidelines and criteria. This raised concerns with some of BA’s members, who believed we’d made a mistake.
“Our initial investigation didn’t identify any obvious issues, however, over the last 24 hours we’ve conducted some more detailed forensic work, and have discovered that due to a technical issue, some members (fewer than one per cent) were incorrectly told they had retained their status, when they hadn’t earned it or been entitled to it.”
The Independent understands the numbers affected were below one per cent of those with Silver status and above – which still runs to thousands of travellers.
They are now being told they will, after all, be downgraded from 1 May. The spokesperson said: “We’ll be contacting affected customers in the coming days to apologise and reinstate their correct tier.”
The standard downgrade for the year ahead is to the next tier down, so Silver to Bronze and Gold to Silver. The latter retains lounge access.
Separately BA’s German rival, Lufthansa, has written to members of its Miles & More frequent-flyer programme after a series of strikes caused chaos.
The airline said: “The past week has involved disruption, uncertainty and additional effort for many of you. We fully understand how challenging it can be when plans can’t be carried out as intended. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced.”
Passengers have been awarded additional points, including those leading to higher status.
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