Originally Posted by
frandrake
Dears,
I used to fly a lot from Europe to Asia with my previous job, thus I earned OW Emerald with CX.
Now I relocated to London on a EMEA role, and as you very well know acquiring status flying in euro traveller it's very hard.
Nevertheless I started building my status with BA, now got to Bronze but I realise the road to Silver is sooo long that I started questioning whether BAEC is the right programme for me. Need your help!
Answers to questions:
(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
Fast track at security lines and lounge access
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
Hard to say now as my job is new and still have not understood what's expected. I would say 3/4 EU flights in economy a month and 2/3 intercontinental flights in business a year.
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
Economy short haul, Business long haul.
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
70% work, 30% pleasure. I can choose both airlines, class dictated by policy (biz from 5 hours flights up).
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
EU routes with BA
(6) What is your home airport?
LHR
(7) Do you have FFP status of any kind in OW or other airline? What is it? Do you have any miles banked in a FFP?
CX Diamond, almost dry of miles now having spent them all on personal trips lol
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
BA
As you have observed, building (higher level) status with travel mostly in economy on European short haul routes is difficult. Unfortunately, that is the case for all programs nowadays.
If your travel primarily short haul routes but do that fairly often, consider a program that offers segment qualification such as Finnair Plus, Airberlin topbonus or AAdvantage. AY Plus will let you qualify for Gold (OW Sapphire) after 46 segments, and they do not appear to have a own metal requirement. With 3-4 flights a month that should work out (too bad that most of your flights will be nonstop out of LHR, if you were flying on airlines requiring a connection your segment count would double). AB's topbonus requires 60 flights for Gold/Sapphire and also doesn't require any of those flights to be on AB metal. AAdvantage requires 50 segments annually and they have ditched the 'four flights on AA' minimum requirement starting from 2017.
Or stick with BA and upgrade the occasional flights to Club Europe which will grant you a lot more tier points for not that much more money (BAEC awards tier points and Avios for cabin class flown even on upgraded tickets, unlike most other airlines). Check out the BA forum threads about
AUP and
POUG.