BA forced to downgrade thousands more loyalty scheme members after ‘error’

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British Airways has been forced to downgrade thousands more members of its loyalty scheme, after its parent company’s rewards team incorrectly told some passengers they would keep their coveted Gold or Silver tier status. 

The embarrassing error, which IAG Loyalty blamed on a “technical issue”, comes at a time when a shake-up of the scheme is proving contentious for the hundreds of thousands of BA passengers affected by the changes. 

The changes to the loyalty programme, implemented this week, are designed to free up its lounges and prevent some travellers from gaming the system. The overhaul — aimed at rewarding passengers for money spent rather than distance travelled — has led to many travellers losing their Gold or Silver status with the airline. 

This week IAG Loyalty, the unit of BA parent IAG that manages the rewards programme, contacted several thousand members of the programme telling them they would retain their previous status, despite not accruing the right number of points. 

While airlines do sometimes make exceptions — for example, when a longtime frequent traveller was ill or on maternity leave — the loyalty unit had incorrectly told many customers they could retain their status, it admitted on Friday. 

The mistake affected less than 1 per cent of BA’s membership scheme, but still impacts several thousand people. The British Airways Executive Club has more than 13mn members worldwide.

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.”

It added: “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 . . . were incorrectly told they had retained their status, when they hadn’t earned it, or been entitled to it. 

“Because of this, we’ll be contacting affected customers in the coming days to apologise and reinstate their correct tier.”