British Airways offer Silver Exec Level for £495

British Airways has decided to offer silver level of it's Frequent Flyer scheme for a fee, to members who will find their status expiring shortly. It comes as BA tries desperately to hold onto it's higher level executive club members who aren't flying as much in the economic downturn.

Other measures to hang onto higher level members is to give Gold members another year at Gold if they would have almost made it to Gold, otherwise they will automatically be given Silver Status for a year, in line with the current BA policy of a "soft" landing for Golds.

The most interesting development is to offer members who are already Silver another year as Silver for £495. However this only applies to current silver members who have accumulated at least half the number of tier points needed to retain silver: these members receive an Email about a fortnight before their year is due to expire.

BA Silver Welcome Pack

The plan, which came out of talks with a major media corporation in London, is to try and ensure that passengers still have enough loyalty to BA to ensure they continue to fly with the airline over the next year though the downturn (by offering them the carrot of lounge access), rather than try out other airlines. Then, in a year, if business improves, they are more likely to continue to fly with BA.

There are also increased tier points to Executive Club members flying to some European and North African destinations, which had previously fallen under the "European" status credit limit, even though the flights could last four of five hours.

The new rates apply to destinations within Europe Zone 3, resulting in Club Europe tickets seeing an increase of 20 points from 40 to 60 points, while discount economy tickets earn twice ten points instead of five, while tier points for fully flexible economy tickets will also double from 20 to 40.

It applies to the main holiday routes of Athens & Larnaca, as well as Istanbul, Izmir, Kiev, Moscow, Paphos, St Petersburg, Thessaloniki, Tripoli, Tirana, and Tunis.