British Airways Executive Club ‘unavailable’ for 3 days in November

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You may already have received the email that BA Executive Club will be unavailable due to scheduled maintenance and improvements to the underlying tech.

All British Airways customers are being emailed today to warn of a scheduled outage of ALL Executive Club functions for a 3.5 day period, between 3pm on the 13th and midnight on the 16th of November, so that you can plan ahead.

British Airways Executive Club status cards

What will happen?

ALL Executive Club functionality will be unavailable during the scheduled improvements. That means you WON’T be able to:

Check your Avios balance or transactions
Redeem your Avios for flights or any other redemptions
Combine your Avios
Transfer Avios to another member
Claim missing Avios
Change or update your Executive Club personal information including email address, address, password etc
Manage your Household Account, Family & Friends or travel companions list

The engineering work does NOT affect flights and you will still be able to add your BA Executive Club number to any flights you take. You can still check in and use Manage My Booking as normal.

It only affects British Airways Executive Club – Iberia Plus, AerClub and Avios.com accounts will remain unaffected.

Will Avios transactions still post?

Yes. Any Avios transactions during the downtime (which could include Avios being deposited in your account from flights taken, or from Amex, or other partners) will credit once the scheduled work has completed.

They may take a little longer to appear whilst BA works through all Avios earned globally during the period.

Why is the outage happening?

Whilst not confirmed, this is likely to be related to the ‘Global Loyalty Platform’ project which has been ongoing at IAG for several years.

The platform would form a global hub for all Avios programs rather than having them managed separately by British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus etc, in a similar structure to how milesandmore.com is the single hub for all Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, LOT and Brussels Airlines mileage activity.

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Andrew says:

29 Oct29 October 18:25

Spans 5 days not 3.
- Rhys says:
  
  29 Oct29 October 18:28
  
  Thanks – bit of a brain fart there!
  - Andrew says:
    
    29 Oct29 October 18:29
    
    3 clear days though, so half right.
    - Rhys says:
      
      29 Oct29 October 21:32
      
      After all that confusion BA have just told us it IS 3 days – or just over – from 3pm on the 13th until 23:59 on the 16th!…
      - Genghis says:
        
        30 Oct30 October 06:06
        
        So not “midnight on the 16th of November”, 24hrs earlier?
      - Publius says:
        
        30 Oct30 October 07:43
        
        Email I got said “From the afternoon of 13 November 2021 until the morning of 17 November 2021 (GMT)”
      - Rob says:
        
        30 Oct30 October 08:45
        
        We get our news updates direct though 🙂
      - Andrew says:
        
        30 Oct30 October 08:56
        
        Whereas our emails from BA are indirect?
      - Rob says:
        
        30 Oct30 October 11:21
        
        Less direct than ours!
      - Alex Sm says:
        
        30 Oct30 October 09:55
        
        @Andrew no one stops you from reading BA direct emails instead of HfP interpretation
Andrew says:

29 Oct29 October 18:27

And you can’t shop and collect Avios through the e store at this time either (as you need to log-in to do so).
E14 says:

29 Oct29 October 18:33

Yeah, I know now when all my bookings will reappear
- BJ says:
  
  29 Oct29 October 19:03
  
  Mine are all back so perhaps worth a look.
ChrisW says:

29 Oct29 October 18:38

Now you would think BA would increase call centre staff during this period to deal with the increased call volumes from members calling to do things they can’t do online.

You would think …
- BJ says:
  
  29 Oct29 October 19:05
  
  They probably wouldn’t have access either.
- Rhys says:
  
  29 Oct29 October 19:35
  
  Nobody has access. The entire system is changing. You won’t be able to redeem Avios online or via phone.
  - Nick says:
    
    29 Oct29 October 22:55
    
    And ChrisW where exactly do you think they’d get the staff from anyway? It takes months to train BA call centre staff. Is it worth that for just 3-4 days?
    - mradey says:
      
      30 Oct30 October 08:01
      
      Overtime? Additional shifts for employees?
FatherOfFour says:

29 Oct29 October 18:38

I am also going to guess that I can’t book a flight using an FTV that contains Avios and a companion voucher! In theory, no Avios should need to leave my account as they are all wrapped up in the FTV – however, I’m guessing it would still need to be accessed / linked from my account in some way.
Andrew says:

29 Oct29 October 18:46

I wonder if this will affect lounge access for status economy passengers if Exec Club is down and they can’t verify your status – screen grab your card now just in case!
- BJ says:
  
  29 Oct29 October 19:08
  
  I think you should all be way more worried about the improvements!
  - Andrew says:
    
    29 Oct29 October 19:21
    
    Oooh exciting new improvements! I wonder what they will be.
  - Peter K says:
    
    29 Oct29 October 20:02
    
    When has a BA IT project ever gone wrong? 😉
    - BJ says:
      
      29 Oct29 October 20:22
      
      And that’s probably the best we can hope for, another IT fiasco.
Lady London says:

29 Oct29 October 20:55

Oh dear.
Are they combining the programs with a view to:-
(1) better mine and/or sell the dats
(2) value and separate the program from the businesses eventually.

I wonder which professional IT or consultancy companies are involved in this IT work, and which country it’s being executed in.
- BJ says:
  
  29 Oct29 October 21:19
  
  The cheapest one I guess
- Rhys says:
  
  29 Oct29 October 21:36
  
  We don’t know what they’re doing but I’m not sure they’re combining the programs.
  
  The problem for a long time has been that eg. combine my Avios is very flakey. Integrating what is in effect 3+ different systems must be really annoying. It may be that they are just migrating to a single technical solution that will still be plugged into Iberia, BA, Aer Lingus separately, so you might not see a difference but it will be much easier for IAG to manage.
  
  But the short answer is that we simply don’t know!
SteveJ says:

29 Oct29 October 20:57

This is unacceptable. We must raise a class action against BA for this. I’ll be raising an MCOL for the distress caused. The Ministry of Transport and MI5 are aware of this issue.
- Andrew says:
  
  29 Oct29 October 21:03
  
  It’s a shame BA isn’t a public body or you could put in a FOI request!
  - Matarredondaaa says:
    
    30 Oct30 October 11:12
    
    And have it rejected as this Government only accepting, based on latest information I saw 42% of requests compared to the average of 60%!
- Jeff Greene says:
  
  30 Oct30 October 04:21
  
  I’m surprised someone hasn’t complained about it impacting their mental health