The ultimate guide to British Airways tier points

What are they, how do you earn them, and how can you buy them?

2025 saw significant changes to the way British Airways tier points are collected. You no longer earn them based on the length of a flight, but instead on the amount you paid for it. Whilst the perks remained the same, the number of points you need to move between tiers also increased.

What’s the difference between Avios and tier Points?

Avios points are the frequent flyer currency of British Airways (along with Qatar, Finnair, Iberia and Aer Lingus).

There are many, many ways to earn these points, including:

• By flying with an airline and paying for a ticket with cash
• Through online shopping via the Avios Shopping portal.
• Via a credit card
• Through other financial institutions, like a bank or insurance company
• By transferring points from another frequent flyer currency into Avios.

In theory, it’s easy to accumulate a large volume of Avios points, as there are numerous ways to earn them. No matter where you’re at in your life, there is always some way for you to leverage what you’re doing to amass a valuable amount of points.

That’s why it’s not uncommon to find people who have a million Avios points or more. You can even earn points from BA when they screw up and they want to “make it right”. I’ve had tens of thousands of points when I’ve had problems before, during, or after a flight.

How are tier points different?

Tier points are entirely unconnected to Avios points.

I explain more about how you collect tier points below, but it’s the tier points that determine your level of status with BA. Status means perks, such as free seat selection, first-class check-in and lounge access.

It’s worth talking about the perks first, and here’s my summary. These are the perks I feel are the most valuable, rather than listing all of them. FYI, the perks cascade, so if you’re a Silver, you get all of the perks from the lower tiers.

BA The Club Status Perks

The tier you’re on also impacts the number of Avios points you get when you pay for a flight.

• Blue: 6 Avios per £1/€1 when you buy a ticket with BA, AA, or 5 Avios per £1/€1 with Iberia
• Bronze: 7 Avios per £1/€1 when you buy a ticket with BA, AA, or 6 Avios per £1/€1 with Iberia
• Silver: 8 Avios per £1/€1 when you buy a ticket with BA, AA, or 7 Avios per £1/€1 with Iberia
• Gold: 9 Avios per £1/€1 when you buy a ticket with BA, AA, or 8 Avios per £1/€1 with Iberia

You might be thinking that the difference between the earn rates isn’t much, and I don’t think you’d be alone. A gold earning just 50% more than a Blue feels unfair.

Higher tiers also get increased baggage allowances on flights. For both Silver and Gold status, you and anyone on your booking can check in two bags instead of the standard one (except on the cheapest, “Hand-baggage only” economy fare). You also get an increased weight allowance of 32kg for any bag you or anyone on your booking checks in.

Which lounges can you access based on your BA status?

Firstly, regardless of your status, your ability to access a lounge is determined by the cabin you book into. If you’re a Blue member and flying First Class, you can access any lounge, including the Concorde Lounge and the Concorde Dining Room at Heathrow.

• Blue and Bronze status do not allow you access to any lounges.
• Silver allows you to access Business Class lounges. These are usually called the “Galleries Club lounges”.
• Gold allows you to access the First Class lounges. These might be dedicated First Class lounges, like at Heathrow T5. They may be rooms specifically for First Class passengers within a lounge, like in Singapore.

How many tier points are required to achieve BA status?

Going beyond Gold

You’ll see two additional statuses above: Gold Guest List and Lifetime Gold. They are both effectively Gold. Lifetime Gold means that no matter how many tier points you collect each year, you’ll retain Gold status. Gold Guest List is for flyers who earn far more tier points than required for Gold, and it does bring additional perks, although it is still classed as a Gold status.

What BA don’t make very clear is that there are perks given to Gold members who go beyond 20,000 tier points in a year.

Once you hit 35,000 tier points, you’ll get a “Gold Upgrade Voucher For Two”. This allows you, and a guest, to upgrade to the next cabin on a BA flight.

You get a “Gold Upgrade voucher For One” when you reach 50,000 tier points. This again allows you, without a guest, to upgrade to the next cabin.

Both of those vouchers will last twelve months from the date of issue.

What do you get with Gold Guest List?

Gold Guest List gives you entry to the Concorde Room, even if you’re not flying in First. You can take a guest, but they have to be flying with BA. You do not have to, and you do not need to be on the same flight.

This same perk applies to the BA Concorde Room at JFK. That lounge no longer exists, so I will assume you can access the Chelsea Lounge at JFK instead.

You can also share your Gold (not Gold Guest List) benefits with one other person, and gift Silver status with two other people.

How do you earn tier points with BA?

The number of ways you can earn tier points on BA is far more limited, although that has widened recently.

Upto the end of 2024, there was only one way to earn tier points, and that was by paying for flights or holidays with BA. The tier points you earned were based on the length of the flight you took and the cabin you were seated in. If you booked a holiday with BA then you would earn double the tier points.

I should note that Amex did run, at least once, a promotion that allowed you to earn tier points by spending more on their cards. These were one-off promotions.

For example, if you flew to Abu Dhabi from London in Economy, you would earn between 20 and 70 tier points depending on the type of ticket (Cheapest economy vs Flexible economy). Flying in First Class would get you 210 tier points. These tier points were fixed for each destination and cabin, so you could look up the tier points you’d earn for any future flights.

All of that changed when BA announced that The Club would replace the BA Executive Club, a surprise press release that landed right at the end of 2024.

The new approach is based on the amount you spend on the flight or holiday. It’s purely revenue-based, which means it’s more aligned to the money that BA earn from you. That means if you pick up a cheap business class flight, you’ll earn less than someone booking a last-minute, expensive Club World seat.

You earn 1 Tier point for every £1 you spend with BA. That includes any carrier-imposed surcharges. It also includes any money you spend on extras, such as seat reservations.

BA will also boost your tier points earning if you book a flight by the end of 2025 and travel by the end of 2026.

I think there’s every chance that BA will have bonuses beyond that, either on specific routes or at certain times of year. This could be around the peak booking periods, like over Christmas and into January.

Here’s the tier points bonus that’s currently available.

You can earn tier points via a credit card.

British Airways and American Express have confirmed that you can now earn tier points via your BA credit cards. You can earn up to 2,500 points from your card each year, which is available through the Premium Plus card (the more expensive card).

This was expected to be permanent, and it may well be, but it is an opt-in offer that runs until the 1st February 2026.

To celebrate the start of this promotion, all Premium Plus credit cardholders will receive 500 bonus tier points. I can confirm that this did happen on my card and my wife’s.

Here’s the tier points you’ll get from different spend levels. You can read more about how to get tier points from your Amex card.

You can also buy tier points

BA allows you to contribute to their Sustainable Aviation Fuel initiative. This is essentially a way to purchase tier points using cash, or you can also buy them using Avios. It is no more complex than following a process, paying money online and then getting the tier points. They land in your account almost immediately.

You can still earn British Airways tier points from partner airlines.

You can still earn Tier points when you fly with BA’s partner airlines, and almost all of them calculate the tier points based on the distance you fly rather than the cost.

The following partners give tier points based on the amount you spend (the new BA way):

• American Airlines
• Iberia

These airlines will give you tier points based on the distance you fly (the old BA way):

• Aer Lingus
• Alaska Airlines
• Cathay Pacific
• Fiji Airways
• Finnair
• Japan Airlines
• Malaysia Airlines
• Oman Air
• Qantas
• Qatar
• Royal Air Maroc
• Royal Jordian
• Sri Lankan Airlines

What you earn varies based on the cabin you fly in and the ticket type. The most generous airlines are Finnair, Japan Airlines and Qatar.

Let’s take a Qatar flight from London to Tokyo that’s approximately 8,300 miles. If I booked a discounted business class seat and paid in cash, not miles, then I would earn 25% of those miles as tier points. That’s 2,075 tier points each way, or 4,150 in for a return flight. That is enough to achieve Bronze in a single flight.

Flying in the cheapest First Class seat would give me 40% of the miles, so 6,640 tier points for a return flight. That is theoretical. Qatar, surprisingly, have very few planes with First Class, although their regional businss class flights are refered to as being First.

If you can book cash flights with partner airlines, and then enter your BA Club number on the booking, it can deliver a significant number of tier points.

BA have a calculator you can use to calculate the tier points, but it doesn’t handle connecting flights well (e.g. flying LHR to Tokyo with a connection in Doha).

If you want Bronze status, how much will it cost?

Firstly, if you want Bronze or something similar, then I suggest you take a look at this article on how to purchase BA Bronze status. It’s not quite Bronze, but it gets you most of the valuable perks.

A growing number of passengers will fly BA in Business or First Class and never pay the airline a penny (other than the taxes and surcharges). The Avios collection has grown significantly, making it impossible to collect tier points (which require a regular cash booking).

If you want to buy BA bronze, now is the year to do it. That’s assuming you have a British Airways Premium card. With that, you’ll already have 500 points due to the bonus given when they launched this scheme.

You need a total of 3,500 points to get to Bronze, so that means you need to find 3,000 from somewhere. Spending over £20,000 on your BA Premium Plus card will earn you an additional 2,500, leaving you 500 short.

Buying 500 points from the Sustainable Aviation Fuel initiative. That will cost you £500, but you also get 5,000 Avios. Or you could pay for these tier points using Avios (62,500). Either way, it doesn’t feel like a good deal.

What you could do is obtain an American Express Platinum card for an annual fee of £650, which gives you Hilton Silver status, and then pay around £40 to complete a status match to achieve Ruby status with Royal Jordanian. I did that last September, and although it took a little bit of time, it wasn’t overly difficult.

The reality is that both methods do require time and money. I would suggest instead that you book a holiday using BA Holidays, earning 1 tier point per £1 spent. A city break could get you 500 points if you pay for it using cash.

Is Lifetime Gold the highest status you can achieve?

Officially, yes. Unofficially, there’s one status above Gold that fewer than five hundred people have, and the perks that come with it are a significant step up.

British Airways Premier is reserved for individuals who control significant travel budgets. That means CEO’s and CFOs or well-known and successful companies. You can’t earn it through tier points. In fact you have to be invited to that status. I wrote about BA Premier recently, and it’s so secretive that BA don’t even mention it on their website. For mere mortals, Lifetime Gold is the best we can get.