In March 2011, I moved from Europe to Boston and I'm now reconsidering my quest for lifetime FB Plat...
2010:
Flying Blue:
80k BIS miles, 33k status miles, 54k award miles, 61 segments, all Y
4 TATL R/T
~20 CDG<->ZRH segments
~20 CDG/ORY<->NCE segments
+a few random shorthauls
2011 until February:
Flying Blue:
12.5k BIS miles, 7.3k status miles, 14k award miles, 20 segments, all Y
~16 CDG/ORY<->NCE segments
+a few random shorthauls
2011 from March:
Flying Blue:
45k BIS miles, 16k status miles, 32k award miles, 41 segments, all Y
3 TATL R/T
~30 US Domestic segments
Star Alliance:
107k BIS miles, 105k status miles, 205k award miles, 67 segments, all Y
4 TATL R/T
~55 US Domestic segments
In the long run, I will always be US based with the following pattern over the next 8 years:
- ~100k miles US domestic, slowly decreasing
- 0, progressively increasing to ~80k miles random intercontinental by 2020
- ~8 TATL R/T year to CDG, slowly decreasing
- 0, progressively increasing to ~4 TPAC R/T year to PEK by 2020
You can look at my
OpenFlights for details.
All this travel will be mostly in Y, maybe with some Y+ and J added in in the future, but as all this is pure leisure travel, it won't be a significant part.
I made FB Plat in 2010 and will be keeping it in 2011. I also made UA 1K in 2011 and will definitely be keeping it in the future.
I'm having a hard time justifying keeping FB Plat.
Qualifying by miles is next to impossible for a cheap Y flyer. Qualifying by segments is doable but causes many side effects.
Because I'm qualifying by segments, I can't justify flying SkyTeam TATL when I can get 4x status and award miles on Star Alliance (with Star Alliance being usually cheaper in the first place). I really miss flying AF TATL (the food on US airlines really sucks).
The only way to maintain both UA 1K and FB Plat would be to segment hop on DL domestic and fly all the rest on Star Alliance. It's not particularly funny, especially as the first class upgrades as ST E+ on DL are relatively rare (certainly compared to UA 1K!).
Should I jump to SkyMiles Platinum ?