British Airways quietly devalues Gold Guest List partner cards

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• Shayele says:

  19 Jan19 January 13:19

  Just trying to get my head round the soft landing thing. Say I made it to silver right at the end of my tier year will I go down to bronze two weeks later (the start of the new tier counting year) or stay silver for one year?

  • Rob says:

    19 Jan19 January 13:30

    Normally you would stay Silver for the rest of your current year, all of the following year and also get a full year as Bronze after that.

    A GGL referred person would get the first two parts but not the last bit.

    • Shayele says:

      19 Jan19 January 13:39

      Thanks!

• Win $1000 and Status, Save Money on Your Family's International Airfare, and the Things You Didn't Know About In 'n Out.. - View from the Wing - View from the Wing says:

  19 Jan19 January 14:06

  […] British Airways has always given ‘soft landings’ when you don’t requalify for status. For instance, a Gold member who doesn’t fly at all would still get Silver the next year. But those who are gifted the status by a ‘Gold Guest List’ member will no longer receive…. […]

• Rob says:

  19 Jan19 January 14:59

  I have altered the article slightly to reflect the exact dates which have now been sent to me.

  BA made this decision a year ago and December 13th 2013 was chosen as the cut-off date. If your referral was processed after that date then you will not get a soft landing. The reason that BA is now sharing this information more widely is that the first batch of ‘hard landings’ have just kicked in on January 8th.

• travelbear says:

  20 Jan20 January 09:43

  Do most people give their gold and silver cards away or just forget about them. I’m curious

• Chris H says:

  20 Jan20 January 14:10

  I had a hard landing from Gold to Blue on New Year’s Day after 12 months of Gold. Was a bit disappointing – and especially so, now I learn that if I had been referred a week earlier I’d still have some status for all of this year too!

• Frequent Flyer says:

  23 Jan23 January 20:33

  Devalues?!
  Thats rather harsh…

  From my understanding of the program the removal of the ‘soft landing’ really doesn’t change much for the two silver status holders assuming they didn’t fly enough to retain that status.

  The person that loses out if the person awarded the free gold status, soft landing would’ve allowed an extra year of free lounge access during the dropped-to silver year .
  It stands to logical reason if one doesn’t fly enough to qualify for a particular level it shouldn’t be granted in my opinion

  • Rob says:

    23 Jan23 January 21:00

    It devalues it to the extent that people who gave out, and who received, the partner cards expected to receive a soft landing and now will not.

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