My current travel patterns involve 6-8 transatlantic flights a year (I split time between London and Seattle, with occasional business all over the US and Europe), and a few intra-European and domestic US flights peppered in. I be sure to hit 100,000 miles a year, but usually it's just 100,000 miles. The most EQMs I've ever netted in a year is 111,000, and some of those were from DEQM bonuses I had signed up for (I sign up for pretty much every promo AA offers, whether I need or even intend to use it or not). My TATL trips are split between deep discount economy and WT+, and all intra-European and US domestic flights are as cheap as I can get them. What that means is that I'll typically have no trouble qualifying for EXP on AA, but that same flying would net me somewhere around 1000 BAEC tier points--well short of Gold. Even if I flew six TATL returns in WT+ on BA, that's still just over 1000 TPs--with short-haul segments in deep discount economy earning only 10 TPs each, I simply cannot make up the difference. The breaking point for me would be if I flew the most TATLs possible with my travel profile (eight) and flew them all in paid WT+, which would put me right there, but that just isn't in the cards for me at the moment. Even if it were, and this is diverging from your stated question, I'd still be losing the 8 SWUs per year and unlimited US domestic upgrades, so I don't know that I'd do it even then.