Originally Posted by
Jane's Addiction
Think I may be changing my strategy. Not sure I see much upside to continuing to bank excess miles with CX, especially with the F lounge closed. While I fly a lot in J and will do 300k miles this year, I don;t think I am going to end up as DM+ candidate.
Had a straw that broke the camel's back moment last night.
Have flown SGN-HKG-SGN 10 times in paid J (or I) since Nov 2011 (among lots of other flying, but been on this route a lot). Y always packed, so very often a ton of op-ups in J.
Booked a ticket last night in Y instead of J mostly to see if I would get an up-op. Y cabin ended up overbooked. Watched several op-ups get called up to podium pre-boarding. Not all were DMs either (the ISM kindly confirmed this for me). Not me.
I subscribe to the get what you pay for philosophy, so I am not mad nor do I feel that I didn't get something I deserved, however it crystallized the fact that I may as well put the bulk of the next 140k miles on Star and/or Skyteam, since putting excess on CX has little marginal benefit if I am flying in J anyway.
Wow! With the amount that you are flying AND paying, they passed you over??!!! I think you actually deserve it especially given the fact that there were non-DM getting the op-ups.
My partner splits between CX & UA, giving enough business (all in J,C,D or I) just to maintain DM, the rest goes to UA, especially when flying to the US. True the service and hard product is better on CX (with the exception of the coffin seats), but on UA the fare (75% extra for above Z) and status bonus (100%) is way better. Plus all those upgrades using GPUs (nothing equivalent on CX that we know of). Paying for the UA tickets using United Visa also gives triple miles - it all adds up very quickly. And we love using UA miles to get award on UA (a bit harder) and *A carriers - esp. TG.
Since DM+ is out of reach, there is absolutely no incentive to go beyond 120K, as a matter of fact, we decided to reset the qualification period and move it up early (reached DM at 10.5 months) so whatever is beyond 120K doesn't go to waste. We are based in HKG.