It's no secret that the 4th tier is on its way. We were told as much during the Dubai Do. And last week's EK/QF announcement validated what we already knew. The only way EK can align Skywards with QFF is to introduce either Gold Elite or Platinum (or whatever else they may want to call it)

My question is how should EK award status, given that everyone has a different qualification period? For example, if they say the program is going to be announced/launched Jan 01, 2013, and assume the threshold is 125,000 tier miles, who will actually qualify on Jan 01?

In my case, it's easy because my qualification year runs Jan-Dec. But what about everyone else?

Obviously, they'll award to anyone who has already flown 125,000 prior to whatever the launch date is (ie if your year runs Aug to Jul) and you have already exceeded the limit, then thats obvious.

What if you flew greater than 125K in your previous year. Should that count?

Before you all start waving your ams, I have no inside knowledge of when the program will be launched, or what the qualification limit will be. I really dont...

This should give us something to argue about for the next few days at least...