I'm about 4500 miles away from renewing my Gold Status and still have until Dec 31 to complete. I have an upcoming LAX-MNL-LAX (15k miles) this weekend and I'm sure to have at least 2 more such trips between Nov and December.

Trying for Diamond (was Diamond between 2008-2010) is probably out of the question unless I request for an extension and try to do 4 more returns until Feb or March 2016.

I've been booking these trips with at least a V class bucket to get the full mileage credit. These usually cost about 1200usd to 1600usd per trip so they are not cheap at all.

Same flight on N class right now is 821 with about 3900 miles credited.

Should I just coast for the rest of the year and just buy the N class and save me at least 600 usd per trip, or 300 usd for 6000 miles? I still get the same benefits with the n-class but without the actual miles flown credit.

Its funny, even with the lower surcharges, Cathay still manages to extract the same price for these trips for the last 5 years or so.