Originally Posted by
narayansmate
Hi. I'm relatively new to this so here goes. I'm a gold member and want to retain my gold membership in the cheapest possible way. I need 310 Status Credits to retain at this stage. I have family pooling set up with my partner and son who is 14. I was thinking about going either to Darwin or Honolulu with them in April. However, it seems that unless I pay almost $5000, I am unlikely to earn enough status credits. So my question is to the gurus: How can I, for the cheapest amount possible, go on a great holiday with my partner and son, and earn 310 status credits and 4 sectors? I noted that if we go to Hawaii on Hawaiian Airlines, is it true that I will only earn SC's for discount economy even though Hawaiian Air only has either economy or business from Sydney to Honolulu? Many thanks in advance.
Refer to the status credit earning tables to help to calculate the total number of status credits earned for routes of your choice:
https://www.velocityfrequentflyer.co...StatusCredits/
To suggest actual routes we'd need to know where are you based.
(The cheapest solution is to get "pilot gold" through the Virgin Accelerate program once you slip down to Silver status - but for that one of you'd need to be a business owner and apply for a corporate account).
Why do you value Gold status? I ask because some benefits can be attained without flying to maintain your Gold - for example, lounges access comes with some American Express cards...paying the card annual fee could be significantly cheaper and you'd get a heap of bonus points for a successful card application.
In the meantime you can gather up a small number of status credits by shopping at Coles and linking your FlyBuys account to your Virgin Velocity account...