Does British Airways Executive Club offer lifetime status?

Lifetime status is a feature of some frequent flyer programs that allow you to acquire a certain level of elite status for the rest of your life – even if you never fly another qualifying flight again. In this article we’ll look at what it takes to achieve lifetime status with British Airways Executive Club.

Does British Airways lifetime status exist?  How many British Airways tier points do you need.

British Airways has been offering lifetime status since 2013, when it matched various other airline programs which had also begun to offer the benefit.

It works in a similar way to how elite status already works with British Airways Executive Club: with tier points.

When you log in to your Executive Club account and check your balance, you will find two tier point levels shown. The first is your tier point balance accrued since your membership renewal date: these expire every year on your membership anniversary and count towards achieving Bronze, Silver or Gold status for next year.

The second is your lifetime tier point balance. This includes all the tier points you have ever accrued, since you began your membership or tier points were introduced (a long time ago!)

To achieve lifetime Gold status with British Airways, you must have 35,000 lifetime tier points or more.

You cannot get Bronze or Silver lifetime status. Since Gold tier requires 1,500 tier points per membership year, it would take just over 23 years of consistent Gold status to achieve Lifetime Gold (though you do not, ever, have to have held Gold to achieve Lifetime Gold). If you average 600 tier points per year (which is what Silver requires), it would take you almost 60 years …..

Conclusion

Whilst Lifetime Gold status sounds fun, in practice it is only open to those who expect to fly a huge amount consistently for several decades.

Unless you’re already maintaining Gold status you will most likely never attain lifetime Gold. Even then, you’ll most likely be thinking of retiring by the time you achieve Lifetime Gold, though I’m sure it would come in handy for those round-the-world retirement trips!

You should also remember that Lifetime Gold means “for the lifetime of BA” and not necessarily “for your lifetime”.  When British Airways bought British Midland, it cancelled all of British Midland’s lifetime Gold cards.  BA could decide to remove the benefit, either voluntarily or following a takeover, at any point.

(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.