Qantas Frequent Flyer - AA Plat Challenge by WP

I have been lurking on a few boards and wonder if it makes sense to go for the AA platinum challnge with the idea that on a DONE4 I would earn enough miles to be/or be very close to AA ExP and earn 8 VIPOW upgrades on AA and still maintain Emerald status. The cost would be losing status from WP to SG on QF for 1 year as I would not be able to earn enough QF SCs.

This year I went from nothing to WP on a DONE4 thanks to the help of this board and its expert members suggestions.

"I have been lurking on a few boards and wonder if it makes sense to go for the AA platinum challnge with the idea that on a DONE4 I would earn enough miles to be/or be very close to AA ExP and earn 8 VIPOW upgrades on AA and still maintain Emerald status. "

It could be worth it. whether the VIP03s would be of much use to you being based in Australia is one question that springs to mind since they can only be used on AA flights. The price of award travel on AA can be cheaper than on QF; e.g. 1st Class Australia-Europe return on QF using AA miles is 160k miles whereas it is 270k miles using QF miles. J is 130k vs 220k. Also economy travel within and between Australia and NZ is only 20k in Y and 35k in J. 20k will only get you something like MEL-SYD in Y return using QF miles.

"The cost would be losing status from WP to SG on QF for 1 year as I would not be able to earn enough QF SCs."

You would still have OW Emerald which should help

Of course a drawback is that you would be back to only a 50% bonus mileage accrual when you drop to SG with the QF scheme.

Dave

Thanks for your quick response.

One other question: Is there any problem setting up a Plat challenge in Australia with AA/SYD?

I thought I could use the VIPOWs to upgrade from D to A on AA transpac or Atlantic and extend the validity by trading soon to expire/not used via the Coupon Connection

OzTraveller, you have certainly got one of the experts answering your query - Dave Noble has helped two of my friends achieve AA Plat through the Challenge, that's why my friends and I think he's a http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/starsmilie.gif.
We are also lucky he's here for 6 months in Australia.

There are going to be plusses and minuses on both sides of the equation (QF v AA membership status benefits) until you get to ExPlat, so you must compare the numbers carefully to ascertain which program might be better. Of course, why wouldn't a carefully constructed DONE4 put you into QF Plat again this year (unless it goes through your membership year date and therefore splits the SC's into two years?).

I didn't think that going through the Plat Challenge gave you a leg up to ExPlat, but if it's possible I can imagine that a carefully constructed DONE4 could get you there of it's own accord (I'm not an expert on AA and will never profess to be).

You must hope that somebody in SYD AA (probably a supervisor) knows enough about the AA Plat Challenge to answer your questions and set you up properly. If not, I have a contact in AA HKG (a supervisor that one of my friends used), so could flick you her email address.

But try AA SYD first. But if you don't get the answer you want, as the web site says, try the call centre merry-go-round until you find somebody who knows what you are talking about.

"One other question: Is there any problem setting up a Plat challenge in Australia with AA/SYD?"

You *should* be able to , but if they are as competant as AA in the UK are, then possibly not and you would be best just calling the US AAdvantage office.


"I thought I could use the VIPOWs to upgrade from D to A on AA transpac or Atlantic and extend the validity by trading soon to expire/not used via the Coupon Connection"

You can indeed upgrade from D to A using them. Just as long as you were not expecting to use them to upgrade on BA/QF/CX et al. You will need to travel 80k miles in Business class to attain Executive Platinum status. Thats a long DONE trip. If you are travelling 80k miles and do the platinum challenge ( takes only 8000 miles in J to complete ), you will get 180,000 miles to your account which will nicely give you a 1st class AU-UK round trip ticket. Ahh, the AA scheme; buy 1 business class ticket, get one free 1st class ticket http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Dave

I recently went through the same calcs (although not from WP but aiming for it from SG). There was no way I could get ExPlt on a DONE4 whereas with careful routing and thanks to info from FTers such as those on this thread my DONE4 gets me to WP and makes it easy to maintain again next year.

I live in the US and the WIP03s would have been more useful to me although I rarely/never use AA internationally, and using them for domestic sectors IMHO is a waste.

Yes award levels on AA are lower but I rarely fly AA internatinally.

And even at ExPlt, domestically in US doesn't give you access to ACs. So in my mind it was a no brainer to stick with QFF even though residing in US. YMMV. Given that you don't reside in US and would not regularly fly domestically or internationally on AA you would be sub-utilizing some of the benefits of ExPlt (see the AA board).

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Dave Noble:
The price of award travel on AA can be cheaper than on QF; e.g. 1st Class Australia-Europe return on QF using AA miles is 160k miles whereas it is 270k miles using QF miles. J is 130k vs 220k. </font>

In theory that is correct. However: AA's rules say that you must fly one of the 'Direct' flights between the two, since the award routing rules do not permit transit in Asia. Otherwise it's a 230k Oneworld award. See here (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum71/HTML/018495.html) for the gory details.

Regards,
Alex

I must have misunderstood the AA system to reach ExP. I thought with Plat challenge you could achieve Plat Stat after a long DONE based on starting SYDJFK D/Class (Plat status reached) then six USA sectors in A/class at miles + 50% +100% then the remaining sectors to total 20 at milesage + 25% D/Class+ 100%. If this is the right calculation then it shoud not be that difficult to achive 100,000 miles in one RTW.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by OzTraveller:
I must have misunderstood the AA system to reach ExP. I thought with Plat challenge you could achieve Plat Stat after a long DONE based on starting SYDJFK D/Class (Plat status reached) then six USA sectors in A/class at miles + 50% +100% then the remaining sectors to total 20 at milesage + 25% D/Class+ 100%. If this is the right calculation then it shoud not be that difficult to achive 100,000 miles in one RTW.</font>

You can reach Platinum (OW Sapphire) by doing the Platinum Challenge. That requires attaining 10000 q-points. 0.5 qpoints earned in discount economy, 1 in full economy, 1.25 qpoint is earned in business and 1.5 in 1st . Business Class SYD-LAX will almost complete that in itself and 1st will easily meet it.

To attain Executive Platinum, you need 100,000 q-points or q-miles. You earn 1 q-mile for every actual mile flown. To get EXP requires 66,667 miles in 1st , 80,000 miles in business or 100,000 miles in economy.

You cannot count bonus miles towards the tally required for status.

To requalify for Platinum you will need to get 50,000 q-miles or q-points, you cannot just retake the challenge

Dave

[This message has been edited by Dave Noble (edited 10-15-2003).]