Can I change my British Airways Executive Club membership year end?

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Can you change your British Airways Executive Club membership year end?

British Airways Executive Club is a frequent flyer program that aims to reward your loyalty to British Airways. In this article we’ll look at whether you can change your British Airways Executive Club membership year.

Membership years with British Airways Executive Club are somewhat counterintuitive, in that they do NOT cycle on the anniversary of your joining date.

Instead, British Airways assigns you a membership renewal date depending on when you signed up originally. These cycles occur on the 8th of each month. So, for example, if you sign up on the 12th December 2020, your membership will automatically renew (and your tier points reset) on the 8th January.

Can I change my British Airways membership year date?

This means that every new member is guaranteed a first year membership of between 12 and 13 months. Every following membership year is a more regular 12 months: in the example above this would be from the 9th January to the 8th January the following year. If you joined 2nd July, your membership year would begin 8th July and end 9th July every subsequent year.

Because the British Airways Executive Club system groups new sign ups into 12 monthly lots, each with a starting date of the 8th of the month, it is impossible to alter your membership year end. The system simply does not cater for such changes.

This is a very frustrating thing for many people. My wife and my children have British Airways Executive Club accounts and we all have different membership year end dates. It is perfectly possible for us all to take exactly the same flights but, because of the timing of the years, for some of us to earn status whilst the others miss out. I don’t think this makes sense for anyone.

However, British Airways Executive Club does show some flexibility for those who narrowly miss the tier point thresholds at the end of a membership year. If you are flying up to two weeks after your membership year ends, but would like your tier points to credit to that year rather than the new one you are in, then British Airways can effectively credit those retroactively at your request.

This does not, however, change your membership year end; the only change is that these tier points are booked for the previous membership year.

(This article is part of our ‘BA Q&A’ series which explains how British Airways Executive Club works. You can see all of our ‘BA Q&A’ articles here. )

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