Originally Posted by
irishguy28
IFB has never previously tempted me to behave like that on Skyteam
It does now though - as I showed in an earlier post an occasional long-haul J on KL (which often has very reasonable fares for even very far, 36XP, destinations) will *severely* reduce your grind under this new system.
For gold, having already attained silver, a 36XP round-trip J will now require only 22 EU flights (for a total of 24 that year) rather than 30. Even less if you make that long-haul J include a connecting flight. (The difference is more stark if you account for the newly increased requirement of 36 EU flights.)
Before that occasional long-haul J did exactly squat: that one flight would earn a tonne of miles, but if the rest of your flights are all 20%-earning EU flights those miles were effectively wasted as you still wouldn't reach the mileage threshold. Case in point: myself. This year between jan and sept I have earned about 1300 miles from 7 EU and 1 French domestic flights (would be 37 XP) and just over 15000 miles from one long-haul multi-city J trip (would be 87XP next year). That gets me nowhere with either miles (just over 16K) or segments (11) but qualifies me for silver with roll-over using XP (124).