If you live closer to LCY, the *A status match is good for doing a fair amount of European travel.

I used to live rather close to LCY - I could do 30 mins wheels down to key in front door, via public transport, with a checked bag - so I would often take LH to FRA/MUC or LX to ZRH/GVA and then connect, especially so for destinations in Southern and Eastern Europe.

The fact that I had a short trip to the airport and the speed of getting through LCY negated the advantage of a direct flight out of LHR (needing to leave 2.5-3h ahead of departure time, queueing, hassle and likelihood of delays).

LX particularly tended to time connections at ZRH "just right" to minimise hanging around, and both LH and LX had decent on-time performance that misconnecting wasn't a worry. Connecting through FRA was often a last resort. MUC and ZRH were always the winners in my book. The door-to-door time was either equivalent or shorter for most trips.

Of course, I'd be mental to do that for LCY-AMS, so I used to fly VLM (who were taken over by KLM/CityJet) on that route until BA's Embraers started to arrive, at which point I switched to BA for AMS, until I changed jobs (which changed my travel pattern) and moved home, which took me away from LCY.