GrayAnderson

What it says on the tin. For me, The Merger (the VX-AS merger) triggered a status run on DL last month (to gain status on VS). Due to a number of factors it looks like Gold won't be in my future this year [1], but The Merger has certainly weighed in against those calculations. I know at least one other member is in my boat.

So...who's still chasing status on VX, who's looking elsewhere and/or shooting for a lower-tier status, and if you're looking elsewhere where are you looking?



[1] I'm at about 15k "status credits" but I can't figure the math on them at the moment...I've got about 1k status credits that are present but that I cannot account for from either my trips in Jan/Feb or my CC spend. Even with a long trip in October (WAS-SEA/DEN-SFO-WAS) I cannot see rounding up the $5k in spending I'd need with how my travel plans are working for 2016.

Condition One

Unless given a compelling reason, I'm not bothering with maintaining Gold status for next year. Regardless, I may come awfully close to making the spend.

VX worked for me because of their revenue based system. There's no way I can log 75K EQM/year on AS. For now, I'm assuming the worst and will switch back to UA next year. Sigh...

cyborg

deleted

AAddicted

I'm going to continue to keep flying VX as long as it is VX. Once the experience changes I'll be abandoning their network and moving to a combination of B6, DL, and AA. It sure won't be AS.

Honestly I haven't been hyper focused on earning status in recent years as premium products are more aggressively priced these days. Better to just buy a F or J seat in cases when I want it rather than playing the silly free upgrade lottery. The challenge is finding a F worth paying for. Mint and DL have solid products up front and AA on certain aircraft and routes.

Losing VX is tragic, but I'm not going to change my flying habits until the product is ruined in the next 1.5 years or so.

Eastbay1K

I want to have at least some sort of VX status while it remains VX. I'm already (and will likely be through 2017) AS top tier. However, the odds of me retaining VX Gold are very slim, as my travel plans don't currently call for it, and I'm not in the mood to spend several extra thousand dollars. So, it will likely be Silver 2017 for me.

bevnetcraven

I'm Boston-based, so...

Going to keep VX Gold for 2017 with the bare minimum (whereas in 2016 I rolled over a ton of status points).

Status matched B6 Mosaic and going to focus on that I think. It's the largest BOS carrier and they'll have Mint to both destinations that VX currently services.

shza

Same here. I rolled over nearly 25k points from last year, so hitting Gold again is not really taking any effort -- I'll hit it next week.

But I've flown DL (DeltaOne class) a couple times this year to NY, where I would have flown VX last year.

StirredNotShaken

Wow, this is the question of the year for me. Once the merger was announced, I had already qualified for Silver next year. But now what?

Right now, I'm at 35K status points YTD but do I push to requalify for Gold since I'm already past 2/3 of the way there?

I'm really concerned what AS has in store for the Elevate Elite, which they haven't revealed yet (of course). Will this be worth pursuing because I'm really just leisure travelling for the rest of 2016. So any status points are really out-of-pocket.

Ultimately, I think all Elevate Elite members are already considering the following:
Decisions... decisions...

sfozrhfco

Already have silver based on segments but have stopped using the VX credit card and will not be pursuing gold or even the extra cc status points. There is really no point. Seems several people at VX HQ have already left with more set to leave with a severance package soon after the deal closes. Being based in SF, I would only take the new AS shorthaul and won't be taking 100s of short flights to get status with AS. jetBlue will be used for transcons and even going to LA, using LGB is not bad. A couple weeks ago, I made it to LGB 25 minutes before flight time and had no problem getting through the security line and to the gate in no time at all to board first. Taking UA for the first time in a LONG time this week to go to Canada.

shza

As a relevant data point, I status-matched to AS last year, before there was any talk of a VX sale. I was gold and had accumulated over 70k status points at the time, and was matched at MVP Gold. So my guess would be Silver = MVP; Gold=MVP Gold. Though if you have 75k status points for the year, I wouldn't be surprised if they matched to MVP Gold 75k.

Given that I have had zero flights to the Pacific Northwest since doing this status match last November, I have yet to take any advantage of it whatsoever.

GrayAnderson

I've got one trip that was previously "locked" to VX (the Denver one), but...it's striking me that if I flip to B6, matching to Mosaic is likely to be easy (taking Amtrak to NYP and then switching to JFK is not a big deal for me...I like the train after all, and the lack of a decent upgrade option for getting to JFK/BOS on B6 is a killer...no, "Even More Space" doesn't count).

Carfield

I was already qualified for Gold by the time they announced the merger. I got a bunch of rollover last year, as well as 10K VX visa bonus. I am at 52K now, so the question is that will I want to continue to spend everything on my VX visa to get the last 5K status credit, and will I pad my account for some rollover status credit for 2017? Since the merger is not officially "approved," I will take a wait and see position. I have three more paid tickets - one using some travel credits, one for the early June (double points on transcontinental flight plus I scored a $549 oneway first class fare from EWR to SFO), and one just because the schedule works well for me in October. I don't plan to going out of my way to fly VX unless I know more about the merger and AS's plan on VX.

Carfield