Tier Point Run April 2024! Where & When & How Much Will It Cost?

Tier Point Run April 2024! Where & When & How Much Will It Cost?

My plans to re-qualify for British Airways gold status in 2024 went up in smoke when British Airways made a surprise announcement on the 5th of February their changes to the Executive Club membership year end dates left my plans for a July tierpoint run in Ruins

And uh it left me with a decision to make now I am happy to tell you that I have made that decision so I’m going to tell you when I’m running for gold requalification I’ll show you all the flights that I’m going to take and all the options that I found

And then the spreadsheet of Glory returns and I will reveal exactly where I’m going and most importantly I’ll tell you how much it’s going to cost hi I’m Phil and I’m on a gr Gap year I usually do some kind of recap at the start of

These videos but today I’m only going to do a very quick recap on the changes that ba have made if you need a bit more detail uh to understand those changes then go to this video here and if you’ve stumbled across this video without really knowing anything about the

British Airways Executive Club then you’re going to be watching me picking flights based on cost versus tier points and it’s all going to start sounding a little bit silly so if you want to know what tier points are uh and why you would want them then I’ll explain all of

That in my status with ba video and why you should care about status with ba is actually one of the first things I talk about it should be here but if you’re familiar with the ba Executive Club and you’d actually like just a really short recap just to remind you about tiero

Sectors mileage brackets how all of this works then watch the recap from my first step-by-step video which is going to be here and then come back for some new flight ideas once you once you’re happy with that recap and of course if you’re an old hand then just use the chapters

Below find the bits that you’re interested in on the 5th of February British Airways made a surprise announcement that they were going to make a change to the way membership years would be managed in their frequent fly scheme called The Executive Club now we’re about to move into the transition

Period for those changes but at the moment right now this is the way it works you everyone gets assigned a membership month and your teero collection year will end on the e8th of that month with a new tierpoint collection year beginning on the 9th of

That month so my month is July and on the 8th of July my tear points reset to zero any status that I’ve earned in that particular membership year carries on into the next year the announced change is that everyone is going to be moved to

The same date which will be the 1st of April to the 31st of March with the grace period being shortened to the 30-day of April and this is going to commence on the 1st of April 2025 but ba also announced a transition period which will commence on the 1st of April 2024

Until the 31st of March 2025 so this transition period I thought that the points you collected in this year would be assessed on the 1st of April uh 2025 so next year so you’d earn a load of points uh and they wouldn’t really mean anything until the 1 of April uh but I

Misunderstood this uh so this period That’s starting uh next month month on the 1st of April this year is actually a live collection year now according to the customer service agent that I spoke to if you have no status with ba Executive Club so if you’re blue and

Then you earn enough teer points and have the required eligible flights then you get them from the 1 of April this year to hit a specific status level you will be awarded that status level as soon as you meet the requirements then you will retain those benefits until the 30th of April

2026 and that’s because you’ll have earned St St us for this membership transition year which will also carry on into the next new starting next year membership year uh as it always has and then you’re going to get this new grace period so it’s sort of a two bites of

The Cherry situation you can carry on with your existing membership year and then you’ll get that really odd short collection period uh after that or you can just sort of lean in uh to the new system and just start planning around the new dates from the 1 of April this

Year so I’m in a bit of an odd situation where if I collect no further tear points I’ll drop to Silver on the 31st of August but if I collect from the 1st of April uh they’ll stay in my account after my old year end date and this

Gives me some flexibility for collecting this year so I’ve decided to look at this whole tierpoint running thing this year with a complete blank sheet of paper uh starting with costs for status runs in April and May this year uh I’ve got some ideas and I’ve grouped them

Into four simple areas number one BA holidays number two go east number three go Europe and number four UK runs in case you’re not familiar with this ba have a double tier points offer on their ba holidays now as the name suggest you’ll earn double the usual tier points

If you book five days of car higher five days hotel or some Car hire and hotel with your flight as a holiday it all has to be booked together adding things on later doesn’t count it must start and end in the UK it must be booked by a UK

Resident and there are a few other terms and conditions that need to be met too so do check them before you book but generally speaking if you’re booking a five-day holiday with ba you should be good if you’re trying to gain the system chances are ba have spotted your clever

Ploy by now and it just won’t count when I was looking at this earlier in the year to run for status in July and August there were slim pickings on the holiday front there was nothing really until September or October time that made sense uh but there are some options

For April and May it’s mainly to Sophia in Bulgaria and there are a few dates and a few destinations that pop out let’s do a super quick recap here I’m looking for destinations that are clust as short Hall plus by ba they earn 80 tier Points each way in business rather

Than the usual 40 tier points for regular European short Hall there is a list of destinations that count as short Hall plus and there’s no point trying to work out why one short Hall destination is short Hall and the other one is short Hall plus there’s a list and it just is

What it is so tier points is one part of the equation the other part is cost and value now my self-imposed target for earning tier points is2 per tier point or £3,000 for the tier points I need to achieve ba gold status so if it’s flight only to say Bucharest I’m looking for

Flights that are under £320 return in business if I can add in an inexpensive hotel or car High to the holiday then this is going to increase the teer points to 320 and if my bud is 22 per tear point it increases the budget to £640 but this can be optimized further

If I can get a flight that starts in one of Ba’s Regional airports which is Manchester Glasgow Edinburgh inv vaness and Belfast then because the flight in this case to Bucharest will go via London you’ll earn 40 tear points in business from the airport into London and then 80 tear points onwards to

Bucharest so 240 points for that round trip and if you get a cheap hotel or car higher then you get 480 tier points for the round trip so three of those and you’re almost at ba gold status so what did I find well I had a few options and

Dates for Sophia and if I’m flying uh in and out of London then it’s very simple but if I’m flying in and out of Manchester then I’ve got an overnighted stop in London on the way back now I could try to sleep in the airport but I

Am a bit long in the tooth for that uh I found Premier inss around the airport for under 50 so that cost is going to be my final costing now because there are multiple dates I could just stay in Sophia twice but I could also mix it up

And maybe book a car for one of the trips and then drive to Sunny Beach which is a few hours away but it’s all part of the adventure now I also found a workable trip to agader in Morocco but this is from Gatwick so there’s no option to fly into London from a

Provincial airport for the extra points I think it’s only glasgo that has flights into Gatwick I also found a date in May to Istanbul from Manchester so you can conceivably perhaps with a little bit more work on the date uh take four of these holidays and get the tier

Points and the eligible flights uh in April and May uh to go gold just for a little bit over £3,000 but you might still think that’s well worth it because you’re going to get four holidays and you’ll get gold status thrown in now there’s nothing wrong with this approach

But I think I’m going to try and mix things up a bit and add some Adventure into my trips and one way you can add Adventure is to go East going east generally revolves around the abwab to Jakarta run with Sri Lankan Airways which is particularly good for those of

Us who are chasing status as it generates 560 tier points in a round trip and this is because the flight goes via the Sri Lankan Hub in Columbo which breaks the flights up into two legs and each leg is just over 2,000 mil long so it hits that long haul mileage bracket

So Sri Lankan with them being part of the One World Alliance each leg earns 140 tiar points so four legs at 140 Points each in business gives a very nice 560 tier points round trip now the downside to this run is the positioning cost or the cost of getting yourself to

Abu Dhabi ba recomen flights uh to Abu Dhabi at the end of April and a direct economy flight will cost £434 but you could use avios now I didn’t find the avios points option particularly cost effective but that just depends on how you get uh your

Points and the value you assign to them I don’t want to get less than one P value out of my avios so I’m adding the cash Fair into my calculations okay back to the flights and if you took three Abu Dhabi to Jakarta round trips you’d be gold and at

836 per round trip in business you’d have spent less than £3,000 including those positioning costs uh you’d have to pay for some hotels so you’d have to put that in your budget if that’s how you choose to calculate your costs so you’d go over your £3,000 budget but more than

That I think you’d actually be bored to tear is on that final return trip and this is supposed to be fun but you can spice this up a bit by adding on an additional flight from Jakarta with cath Pacific Airways they’re part of the One World Alliance as well and I found taipe

Via Hong Kong for 724 and that earned you1 180 tier Points each way so we’re 44 over the tier Point Target price of £720 for this flight but it’s an easy add-on to a destination I haven’t visited before so that sounds like fun and it also adds to the

Adventure there was an issue with cath Pacific pclass fairs not earning tier points uh but head for points have written that this has now been solved uh incidentally if you are confronted with a chart like this and you’re traveling say an economy and you want to know how

Many tear points you’ll receive then you can look under the flight details on the booking form this is where you’ll find the fair class and it’ll help you know the number of teer points you’re going to get especially useful with economy flights and to wrap this section I’ve

Got a comment from a viewer James who made a great suggestion of flying internally with another one world Alliance member uh in Malaysia Malaysian Airlines they have internal business flights that earn 40 tier Points each way uh for about 175 or less per teer point now with my trip I’d have to

Position myself into koala lumper probably flying from Jakarta and that just pushes up the cost a little bit but if you want to be in koala Lumpa anyway then taking some of these flights are going to help you around the country you’re going to get to see some of the

Country and you’re going to get some cheap tear points so thank you for that suggestion James there are very few Long Haul flights earning 140 tier points within Europe but two of them are Helsinki to Lisbon and Helsinki to Malaga with fin air now one issue with

These Helsinki runs is the cost of positioning yourself into Helsinki I can’t find a cost effective way to Helsinki unless you have avas points and you count them as costing you nothing so I can’t get uh to Helsinki in a cost effective way but I can get to Malaga

Inexpensively so I mean you could just even position yourself with a Budget Airline and then just not pay for any of their silly extras uh but I found flights with Iberia to Malaga via Madrid uh in business they’re more than two pounds per Point uh but he gets us some

Nice points and a nice business flight rather than zero points flying with ryion a but you could go either way now I had to set a few more filters than usual with Google flights to sort of find them to get them to sort pop out but on different dates it’s

£334 return and it earns you 120 tier points round trip and that’s because internal flights with Iberia only earn 20 points in business but then you’re in Malaga and you can start flying these Helsinki th air uh flights for 140 te Points each way 200 Point 280 points round trip

534 overall so it’s less than that2 uh per tear Point cost uh unless you’re going to count in hotels then it’s probably going to push it just a little bit over now the North African part of this section is from another viewer Russ so thank you for this tip uh and uh

That’s to travel with air marok internally within Morocco and their hubs in Casablanca the initial spreadsheet I put together with runs came out a little high after ID added in positioning costs into Casablanca from the UK and I tried adding in that ba holiday in agadia and

That made it work but I didn’t like the idea of leaving my hotel in agadia empty so so I then looked at reducing the positioning cost by positioning from Malaga which is why I wrapped this all in a single thing uh now although this uh still didn’t put me under the 2 per

Chero Target uh and that is obviously without hotel costs it does appeal to my sense of adventure so this run is still kind of in the mix somewhere and then finally for quick and simple topup runs it’s always good to have a few UK internal flights on your planning

Spreadsheet uh so that you can slip those in if you just find that your plan is going to leave you 40 point point or so short now on my spreadsheet I’ve got Manchester to Glasgow via Heath row and that brings in 160 tier points round trip and that’s for under2 per tier

Point I did find some other flights that were close to the Target budget but were over uh and I also found this cheeky back toback from Manchester to London now the flights are tight probably too tight for me but you might be uh highrisk individual you know where the

Risk is the reason it makes it fun and before my final reveal here are the screenshots from the spreadsheet of Glory if you need a bit more time looking at them please just pause the video on YouTube uh and you can also use the chapters to skip ahead if this is just taking too long and so with great Fanfare I will announce which runs I’m planning but

Please forgive me if I don’t put the dates of travel on here I don’t wish to announce the criminals of Stafford the exact dates they should break into my my house part of me really likes this run to the east that actually earns exactly 1,500 tier points uh although it doesn’t

Have the four eligible flights that I would need so I would have to make two additional ba flights to get gold status but they could be in any class so my plan is Sophia with Car Hire driving over to Sunny Beach and having a few days on a lounger there then I’m going

To go to agader in Morocco now I might change my mind and I might fly up to cassle blet but I’m almost certainly going to just enjoy the town and have myself another little holiday and then a European and North African Adventure I am just going to have to double check on

The visa requirements for Morocco if I’m going twice uh you know I’m coming and going uh but I think I’m going to be okay so that’s my plan if this video has been helpful please do give me a like and please ask any questions you might

Have in the comments I’m happy to answer them and they may also feature in a future video like this one just me answering your questions uh and do let me know if you spot a mistake I’m not an expert I am just sharing what I’ve learned along the way

And finally please do share your tips tricks and hacks in the comments it helps everybody in the community and I really appreciate it so thank you for watching and joining me on my GRE Gap year

Join me as I share all the details on where and when I plan to run and how much it will cost to achieve BA Gold status. Don’t miss this insider’s guide to earning tier points and reaching top-tier status with British Airways!

BA Changed the Executive Club Status goal posts and so I’ve changed my Gold Tier Point Run to April 2024.

The announcement in February came as a shock to most people with some already locked into their runs for 2024. I was fortunate, having not committed to any booked flights yet, so I was able to look at my status run in 2024 with a blank sheet of paper.

Join me as I fill the blank sheet of paper with ideas and share with you my spreadsheet of glory!

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Introduction
1:45 BA Shock Announcement
4:35 BA Holiday Recap
7:08 Best BA Holidays
8:25 Go East
11:35 Go Europe
13:46 UK Runs
14:25 The Spreadsheet of Glory
14:47 My Run

All the best with your status run, and thank you for joining me on my Grey Gap Year,

Phil