British Airways changing award flight pricing on partner airlines as of May 30

An email is being sent out to British Airways Executive Club members alerting them to upcoming changes to the program. The news isn't good as it appears award flight pricing on their partner airlines, which is extremely valuable to us Canadians, will be going up in price on May 30.

The airlines affected by these changes are:

Alaska Airlines, Air Italy, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Japan Airlines, LATAM, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, S7, Sri Lankan and Royal Jordanian Airlines.

Alaska, American, Cathay and JAL are the biggies for us and unfortunately at this time we don't know exactly what the changes are. The page on British Airways' site does not state what the changes are but apparently a PR email sent out to Gilbert at GSTP does specifically state higher pricing:

As many of you know there are lots of great partner airline award sweet spots with the British Airways Executive Club program, even with the great 4,500 Avios short haul award being nixed in North America (but available everywhere else worldwide) I would think that many of these may be increased especially in Asia where that 4,500 Avios can be really utilized. I would also think that business and first class on Cathay, JAL and others will be upped at that time. The only good news out of this announcement is there are no changes to redemption amounts on British Airways (good for those 4,500 Avios flights in Europe), Aer Lingus (great for the cheap off-season award flights from Canada to Dublin), Iberia and Vueling.

Related reading:

• Utilizing British Airways' Executive Club for flights in North America (I had this one scheduled for an update early in May but now will wait until these changes are confirmed)
• How you can easily get a free flight between Toronto and Dublin, Ireland (pre taxes/fees) or 4 flights for $240+fees  

One more change comes with this announcement as well and that is the Avios required to upgrade on American Airlines. Guesses are those will get more expensive as well.

Sorry to bring this bad news to you about this devaluation! What are everyone's thoughts even though we don't have too much info yet?

You can find out about all the changes on the British Airways website