Over the next couple of days I am going to review British Airways Executive Club and in particular, their status levels. As well as looking at Blue, Bronze, Silver and Gold, I will let you know about their Gold Guest List and Concorde Room tiers too.

So to start, at the beginning, a very good place to start, as the song says.

This is the entry level for BA Executive Club. You can join by following this link, free of charge. By signing up you create an online account which you can use to store your personal information, including payment data. You get emails, if you opt in, from BA.

This also starts your process of collecting Avios and Tier Points. Tier Points, as the name suggests, is what BA uses in order to move you between levels within Executive Club.

The date you join starts your membership year. This is important as to move Tier levels you accumulate Tier Points within your membership year. The year starts when you join and does not reset until 12 months later – i.e. no calendar resets on 1 January.

If you hope to move up the tiers, and reap their benefits, you should track the points you earn in a year carefully.

At this level you can create a family account with up to 6 members of your family, living at the same address. The advantage is that you can ‘pool’ for Avios for a redemption. If you redeem ticket from a family account, each persons balance has points deducted pro-rate to the number that they have hold.

BA says that the blue card gives you priority over non-members for rebooking and in the case of cancellations.

I’ll talk a little more about Tier Points tomorrow, but for today it’s enough to understand that the number you earn is based on fare class and distance flown, but not in a linear way. With Tier Points, flights over 2,000 miles (or close to that) earn a number higher level of Tier Points than flights under 2,000 miles. Tier Points are earned on partner airlines such as American Airlines, Cathay Pacific and other oneWorld airlines.

To get to Bronze you have to earn 300 Tier Points in your membership year.

At the same time as earning BA Bronze you become Ruby with oneWorld – hence the red ellipse at the bottom of the card.

Key benefits are:

• 25% more Avios than blue members
• Business Class check-in and priority boarding when you fly BA or oneWorld (except at London City)
• Choose your seats without payment seven days before your flight
• Priority at baggage (mis-)handling desks

That’s pretty much it. Tomorrow we’ll look at Silver, which secures your lounge access and so is level most people aspire to reach if they travel fairly often.