It has not been a good past week with the IAG Loyalty and British Airways The Club, after the airline rolled out tier renewals for 2026.

Many members were initially surprised that they had been renewed with very little or no flying activity credited to their The Club accounts, but were happy about these extensions due to the disastrous launch of the “enhanced” program. BA also sent out an email.

BA Extension-Gate Coverage:

British Airways Renewing The Club Members Without Meeting Official Criteria

British Airways “Extension-Gate” Chaos & Outrage Continues: Members With No Flights Renewed While Those With Significant Activity Not

British Airways Preparing To Downgrade Up To 130,000 Members After Informing Renewal – “Forensic” Analysis

British Airways and IAG Loyalty then released statements to the Financial Times late Friday, stating that they were initially unaware of any issues and had thought these extensions were part of the plan (remember that there are always members whose tiers are extended).

Then it gets crazier. They stated that after doing some “forensic” work, they had realized that fewer than 1% of the Club members (13M members total) had been incorrectly extended and that they would soon be addressed.

It appears that British Airways took its loyalty system down last night to process these up to 130,000 account downgrades.

Members who BA informed that their tiers had been renewed, and this was posted on their online accounts, have now all been downgraded, with no communication from BA.

BA’s Extension Email:

Do you still recall all the disasters with The Club, from the announcement between Christmas and the New Year (for minimizing the coverage) to the “enhanced” program going live three months later:

British Airways Moves To Revenue Based Tier Points From April 1, 2025 (Read It & Weep)

British Airways Makes Significant Changes How Lifetime Gold & Gold Guest List Is Earned

BA’s Obnoxious “Announcing The British Airways Club” Email

British Airways Plummets to the Bottom of Which? Long-Haul Flights Survey

British Airways The New “Cub” Tiermageddon FAQs April 1, 2025

British Airways Flight Posting Experience After the Switch from Executive Club to “The Club” with Lifetime Tier Points Conversion

Bizarre British Airways Tier Points Postings Since April 1st?

British Airways Removes Partner Airline Avios & Tier Points With No Notice?

British Airways Posts, Removes & Corrects Finnair Flight Credit?

British Airways Posts, Removes, Correctly Posts & Then Posts Incorrectly Finnair Flight?

British Airways New Tier Points Bonuses From April 1, 2026

Conclusion

BA’s Executive Club had plenty of gameability of earning the required TPs for status, not easy, but doable if you were flying medium/long-haul in business.

The new Club was supposedly going to be only revenue-based, but they have already backtracked on many of the features, e.g., launching new tier-point bonuses.

But has anyone EVER come across a disorganized mess as this BA and IAG Loyalty are?

They cannot even have a working website or app, both of which have continuous issues. The customer support, even at the Gold level (Emerald), is awful and ended up costing them $1K in my case due to UK261 mandated compensation due to refusal to rebook:

I understand that BA didn’t intend to renew basically all members that were due to downgrade, but isn’t there any level of quality control over the code they run, and shouldn’t they have looked at the file before executing it to ensure it was actually correct?

It is almost like some in Waterside vibe-coded something based on the ChatGPT conversation, and here we are.

BA first extended membership tiers, then sent out an email about renewals, and has now suddenly downgraded everyone with no communication.

Wouldn’t it be the right time for the BA and IAG to get a competent team to run their program?

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