Hi all,

Having being a BMI UK flyer who moved over to BA/oneworld with the airline's sad demise (whilst getting my Aegean status match) I've since neglected star alliance flights for the most part, but now I need to think whether to renew my A3*G. I'd presumed I was going to let my star status expire, however having just taken a return European star flight in economy I found the *G helpful for the lounges and got an op-up, as such I might be tempted to keep it. I'm trying to work out whether A3's new programme is going to offer me much more than a lounge pass - and for the moment it seems not. I don't currently fly much for business, but the nature of my job means that sometimes I can end up doing 50 returns in a year somewhere in Europe, so having lounge access is beneficial without having to first qualify.

I currently need the following to renew:
11,775 tier miles (including 4 Aegean or Olympic flights) or 23,775 tier miles (any airlines)
My deadline is till the end of November 2015. I have earned 10k miles over the past year or two from a few star flights.

I need to visit China (PEK) once (maybe twice) before November in business. The cheapest flight I can find on oneworld is with Finnair for £1400 (from AMS), this would guarantee my BA gold renewal. However I can find a few star alliance options for a similar price to this:

• Swiss, P class, £1200 = 100% earning = ~11k tier miles
• SAS, Z class, £1250 = 200% earning = ~26k tier miles
• Air China, Z class, £1250 = 200% earning = ~26k tier miles

As such it looks like by choosing SAS or Air China I can get my A3 tier points by redirecting one of my return flights, giving me another year of A3*G, even if the service/seat are going to be of a lower quality. This will likely result in a small BA mileage run if the second trip doesn't happen (I have 3 BA F long-haul redemptions which are reducing my number of paid miles significantly this year)

However:

• Am I missing some other nice A3 4 route that could give me the 11k miles as an alternative, potentially involving a mileage run? (I had a browse of the 4 routes thread, without seeing anything European based)
• Am I right that, having done this mileage run, my airmiles would only give me enough for a single one-way ticket in business from LON-ATH (i.e. pretty worthless, seems like I need 150k miles for the F class flights I prefer)?
• I'm going to have to do this all again in a short time since I'll need another 24k miles within the next 12 months

Any thoughts, or more efficient ways that I've missed whilst I balance this up for myself. Is there another star airline to investigate for alternative status?

(Thanks in advance, and apologies if I missed other relevant posts from the forum, I don't read it normally and the ones I found seemed to imply the above points)