How cheaply can you earn British Airways The Club Gold status?

In my previous article, we looked at all the ways you can earn Tier Points in the British Airways Club. We also looked at the simplest and cheapest ways to earn tier points to get silver, which is very realistic for people who used to hold Gold.

In this article, we will look at strategies and the cheapest ways to earn Gold. A lot obviously depends on the price of air fares, and with the Iran war still not settled, advance air fares are pretty high currently, and there are not many good deals due to the uncertainty over future fuel prices. So, once things hopefully settle down again, it may be that you will be able to earn status more cheaply than in this article.

Please note the earning rates are based on the changes from 1 April 2026 which we wrote about here. It also assumed that if you have a BA Premium Plus card, the tier point promotion remains the same for this year, that you would have held the card anyway, so the fee for the card is not included, and finally that you would have made the required spend anyway. 

BA Gold benefits

Here are the key benefits of Gold

• Free seat selection from the time of booking for your whole party on British Airways flights – even friends and family on other bookings, as long as they’re in the same travel class and on the same flight* plus exclusive access to 1A and 1K when travelling in First for the Gold member only
• An additional free checked bag in any travel class for everyone on your booking, except on hand-baggage-only (Basic) fares*
• A weight allowance of 32kg (71lb) per checked bag in any travel class for everyone on your booking*
• No booking or service fees for Priority Reward bookings
• A direct line to a dedicated team of customer support staff 
• Gold reward tickets, which unlock an Avios seat for double the Avios, up to 30 days in advance
• Use of the First Wing at Heathrow
• First class check-in
• First class lounge access (except Concorde lounges/bars)

Tier Point earning strategies for flights

When the changes first came in, it looked pretty bleak as status was based purely on spend and not much else. BA has relented slightly now and made cabin bonuses permanent with some increased rates for more flexible fares as well.

Maximising the cabin bonuses with multiple flights

This means that we are back with the strategy of maximising the number of flights included in your business class fare. For example, flying from Dublin to the US is nearly always cheaper than starting from London. Up until the recent changes, you may as well have just flown direct to the US. Now it is worth considering flying back to Heathrow to add an extra leg before flying to the US for the extra tier points. It does mean you miss out on US pre-clearance, which at the moment is very useful. The other drawback is that you can’t do this for a BA Holiday as it precludes any flights not from your country of residence as the starting point, and you can’t include multiple flights from the same starting point in your country of origin.

BA Holidays

The next strategy is also one we have all used in the past – turning your trip into a BA Holiday. Now, there are often good reasons why you may not want to book all your accommodation through BA. However, the old conditions for getting bonus tier points have gone, so you only need to book one night’s hotel to get the full spend amount at 1 TP per £1, plus the cabin bonuses. If you just book a flight, you can lose a huge amount of tier points to the taxes and charges, which are not included in the spend amount.

It should be noted that British Airways Holidays tier points awards do not apply to any British Airways flight bookings where the hotel or car is added to a booking in a ‘Shopping Basket’ with individually priced flight and hotel and/or car components, or when added in Manage my Booking after the flight has been booked.

Another issue is another of their T&C which says “All passengers using the hotel and/or car hire must be named on the booking prior to travel, any subsequent additions to passenger mix made locally could result in the booking being deemed ineligible for tier points.” I think this is wholly unfair, as often one person can actually be paying the full cost of the holiday, yet they can only earn the TP for their share.

Examples of the cost to get Gold

Option 1

We will assume that you will get 2500 TP from a BA Premium Plus credit card by spending £25,000. We will also assume that you buy £1000 worth of SAF, which gets you 2000 TP (at a cost of £1200 due to VAT). So your starting balance is 4500, with £1200 spent so far.

I have also avoided any routes to or through the Middle East for obvious reasons. When the conflict is over, Qatar could be a similar option to the Finnair examples below as you earn TP in the same way.

Let’s have a look at a BA Holiday to start off with. It assumes you are travelling with someone else and starting from a regional airport to get the additional TPs on the domestic flights.

BA one-week trip to New York (most of US is only slighlty more expensive) in business class from Manchester with 7 nights at the Voco hotel Times Sq:

• Total cost of holiday £2741pp = 2741 TPs
• Bonus tier points 175+175+500+500 = 1350 TPs
• Seat selection at £200 return: 400TP

At this point, you have earned 8991 TPs, including the SAF/Amex Points, and spent £4191. 

Let’s then have a look at another extra domestic departure example: 

Manchester to Paris in Club Europe for £505. You would get 700 TP return in bonus points alone. Plus around 380 for the fare element. Or you could do a semi-flex Club just from Heathrow for 550 return in bonus points plus the fare TP of around 250TP = 800. This works out better value in terms of time vs cost if you don’t need to do the extra domestic leg.

So let’s assume you then have three weekend breaks on semi-flexible tickets from Heathrow, which cost £365 each. This nets you 250 for the base fare + 550 for the bonus Avios = 800 per trip. That nets you a total of 2400 for £1095.

Total so far = 11391TP for £5286

A Finnair trip from Stockholm to Delhi can cost only £1537 for a business classic, fare which should get you 3474TP for the return trip if it is D class, as that gets you 50% of the miles flown in TP. That is according to the BA Tier point calculator for partners which is here.

We are now just over 5000 TP short. If it is just about the miles, you could do another cheap Finnair trip to India to get another 3474, as this is probably the best deal at the moment for £1 per TP. 

So that would give us 17739TP for £8360.

You could top up with a semi-flex World Traveller Plus to the US (perhaps for work if you are lucky) for around £1220, which would get you 1722TP return. The final 550TPs could be earned with more seat selection and baggage for £275 spend.

This gives us a total of 20,011TPs for £9855.

This is just a suggestion, if good fares come up in the higher fare categories on airlines such as Qatar and Finnair, or you do a long distance flight to Australia/New Zealand and manage to somehow get a decent fare, this will definitely help get a good way there. 

Another option would be something like a Hawaii flight from Dublin which used to be occasionally avalable for around £3500 although I can’t see any in the next 6 months. With AA getting the bonus points too per segment, this could be a good way to rack up the points by adding in a transcontinental flight, plus Hawaii is an amazing place for a holiday. You can also do a BA Holiday to Hawaii to add extra points.

Option 2

Now, if you don’t mind flying to India and back 5 times, and can find the same fare that I can see in September 2026, then you could get almost all the points for gold around £7500 if you include the BA Amex TP. This leaves you 130TP short which hopefully you’d make up with £65 spend on seats or luggage.

Total spend £7565 for 20,000 TP

Obviously, there are multiple examples of how you can achieve Gold depending on your travel patterns and the best fares available. Hopefully, the article has given a few ideas for anyone considering trying to achieve or maintain BA status at any level.

If you have found some efficient ways to earn TP, let us know in the comments below.