British Airways to Increase Partner Award Pricing

Ever since Alex Cruz joined British Airways as its chief executive, the company has been on a cost-cutting binge. Now, Executive Club, the airline’s loyalty program, is in the crosshairs.

The airline last week announced that the price of booking-partner award seats through the Executive Club is going up. Passengers using British Airways Avios to book travel on the airline’s Oneworld partners, which include American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and Qantas, can thus expect to spend more for their bookings soon.

Curiously British didn’t mention how its prices were changing in its announcement last week — only that movement was afoot — but a few clever frequent flyers have pieced together the changes by calling booking centers and manually compiling the route data. In a nutshell, partner prices for most short-haul routes are going up — but only by a few percent.

Still, British missed an opportunity to be more transparent with its plans for the Executive Club. The new changes go into effect on May 30.

— Grant Martin, Business of Loyalty Editor

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Grant Martin [[email protected]] curates the Skift Business of Loyalty newsletter. He is director of product marketing at TripActions. Skift emails the newsletter every Monday.