What are the British Airways Executive Club tiers?

What are the British Airways Executive Club tiers?

In this article I want to explain what the different tiers are in British Airways Executive Club and what the main benefits are.

Executive Club is British Airways’ frequent flyer membership program, allowing you to collect and save Avios, the British Airways equivalent of air miles. Once you have enough Avios, you can choose to spend them by booking reward flights or part-paying cash bookings with Avios to reduce the fare.

In addition to collecting Avios you also receive tier points every time you travel on eligible flights, primarily cash flights on British Airways or a oneworld alliance partner airline.  Tier points cannot be spent and reset to zero on the anniversary of your membership.  They determine your elite level which confer additional benefits.

British Airways Executive Club has four tiers

There are four main tiers or levels as part of British Airways Executive Club, and each comes with its own set of perks.

Blue membership is the lowest and least-rewarded of all the tiers. This is the base membership upon joining Executive Club. Unlike all the other tiers requires no annual flights to maintain. For this reason it also has very few benefits apart from allowing you to set your preferences for future flight bookings and the ability to actually collect Avios and tier points.

Bronze status is the first of the ‘elite’ statuses.  It requires 300 tier points.  You can read about what it takes to get British Airways Bronze status here. As a Bronze card holder you will earn a higher rate of Avios per flight as well as have access to some priority services including priority boarding and business class check in desks. Our BA Executive Club Bronze guide has a full list of all the benefits you receive.

Silver is the next level up from Bronze and comes with several key additional benefits, including access to business class departure lounges and free additional checked luggage. The upgrade is dependent on your tier points balance and number of eligible flights flown – you can find the exact requirements of Executive Club Silver status here and the full list of British Airways Silver status benefits is here.

Gold status is British Airways’ highest attainable tier. There are several components to Gold status which make it a little more complex than the previous tiers. In addition to normal Gold status, there is also Gold Guest List, which is an even more elite tier within Gold. There are also mini-bonuses in Gold and Gold Guest List for incremental increases of your tier point balance.

British Airways Gold status has a significant list of benefits which you can read about here, whilst Gold Guest List has a several higher-value additions including the ability to give status to friends and to force open Avios reward seats.  You can learn about the full benefits of British Airways Gold Guest List status in this article.

(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. )

(Head for Points is the UK’s biggest frequent flyer website with 2.4 million monthly page views.  Want to learn more about earning and spending Avios?  Click here to read our latest news stories and click here to join the mailing list for our weekly or daily email newsletters.)

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2024)

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

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

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

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

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.

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.

There are also good bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These are available to sole traders as well as limited companies.

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