Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Wednesday the 5th of February and I am at Gate 4 of Hobart Airport in Tasmania.

A smallish airport, very busy, very lively and I'm on my way to Adelaide on Virgin Australia.

So looking forward to that. It's been a marvellous experience to be

back in Tasmania. But the big news this morning has been that British Airways has adjusted

its plans for the new revenue-based loyalty scheme. Now, you might be thinking, what on earth has this got to do with

me? I never fly on BA, and it's just stuff and nonsense. Well, that may well be the case, and in fact,

I'm very low status, and I fly very regularly on airlines which are not British Airways,

but there are many people who are loyal to it, many people who travel on business on British Airways, but there are many people who are loyal to it,

many people who travel on business on British Airways a lot, and many people who also have

a really solid relationship with the airline in terms of being in the upper tiers of that

excellent executive club, soon to be called just the BA club, and wanting not to be

downgraded. What the original plan was basically to say, okay, we are now all about spend,

and I can absolutely understand that. If you're an airline, then you want to reward the people

who are most valuable to you. Now, there is an argument which says, actually, you don't. When I've talked to Michael O'Leary, the boss of Ryan there, and said, look, I fly with you loads. So you're going to give me any loyalty rewards? And he said, no, you're getting a deal anyway because you're getting cheap fares. And it might be that lots of people are flying on British airways because their employer says you've got to fly on British Airways.

And so therefore they'd be going on BA whether or not they got points and other bonuses.

But there's a lot of people, small, medium-sized businesses and leisure travellers who like to be rewarded for flying British airways, who feel that they have been left out.

Now, BA says, actually, no, we're doing really good things here, because, for example,

you will be able to use your spend on British Airways holidays.

And actually, if you're the sort of person who likes to spend 10 or 20,000 pounds on a Caribbean or Indian Ocean holiday, then you will get really quite well rewarded, really quite swift.

But there was huge outrage from frequent flyers.

The Head for Points website said this was British Airways effectively washing its hands of the leisure market and say

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