How we're achieving British Airways Executive Club Gold — Roaming Cactus - Travel

New year, new program. This year we have decided go for British Airways Executive Club Gold. When we were looking at the year ahead, we came to the realization that we would mostly be flying on OneWorld carriers in Europe and domestically in the United States. For us, the 2 most important aspects of domestic travel is lounge access and cheap award flights. Earning Executive Club Gold (OneWorld Sapphire) will give us domestic access to the American Airlines Admiral Clubs. Likewise, the number of Avios we earn on our flights will make it easy to pay for many of our domestic flights with Avios alone. Importantly, before we make it all the way to Gold status, we will earn Executive Club Silver, which we can use immediately.

British Airways flight — British Airways

Now, how will we attain the status? British Airways Executive Club uses Tier Points to determine each flier’s status level. For each flight, you earn Tier Points based on the distance of the flight, and the cabin flown. For example, when taking a flight from JFK to LHR, you can earn anywhere between 20 to 210 tier points for the flight. Economy fares earn between 20 and 70 Tier Points. Premium Economy earns 90 Tier Points. Business Class earns 140 Tier Points. And, First class earns 210 Tier Points. You can find earning for individual flights on the Flights Avios Calculator.

Executive Club Gold status requires earning 1500 tier points during the earning year. The earning year is based on when you started with the program, not the calendar year. We both started earning in December 2022. So, our earning year will go through December 2023. We will be able to achieve 1500 tier points through 2 separate, business class, round-trip flights from Europe to the US.

We have two, separate round-trip flights booked. BCN-PSP-TFS and TFS-PSP-BCN. Both of the flights could be done with comfortable, 2-stop itineraries. For example we could have booked BCN-LHR-PHX-PSP. This itinerary would earn 220 tier points in each direction, for a total of 440 tier points.

JFK TWA departures board — JFK TWA Hotel

However, if we add 1 more stop through JFK, each way, on the itinerary, we now earn 720 tier points. This is because tier points are awarded based on distance zones. Therefore, a flight from LHR-PHX earns the same 140 tier points as JFK-PHX. Booking LHR-JFK-PHX earns 280 tier points (140 tier points for each segment). By booking an extra stop at JFK, in both directions, we now earn 720 tier points instead of the original 440 tier points. Because of the way stop-overs and connections are often priced on this route, the itinerary with the extra stop at JFK cost almost the same as the previously discussed 2-stop itinerary. No real extra cost for significantly more tier points.

Importantly, through a single, business-class, round-trip itinerary we will be past the Executive Club Silver threshold of 600 tier points, and almost half-way to the Executive Club Gold threshold of 1500 tier points. Next, we need to earn 780 more tier points. We’ll cover that in an upcoming post!