I noticed that OZ has quite drastically changed the way it awards elite levels and especially how you can maintain status.
Basically, it has become quite a lot easier to obtain status and MUCH easier to maintain it. OZ has included earnings from affiliate credit cards into status qualification, meaning that you don't really need to fly all that much anymore.
Here are the upgrade requirements from the website:
OZ Membership Qualification Standard from Oct 2018
And here are the status maintenance requirements:
OZ Membership Maintenance Standard from Oct 2018
So Diamond plus is now 75k miles flown to earn, 50k miles to maintain with the rest able to come from credit card spending, and Diamond is 30k/20k respectively. Gold is even less.
Since I have an Asiana affiliate credit card with a very generous ratio of 1.5 miles per 1,000 KRW for domestic spending and 3.0 miles per 1,000 KRW for foreign spending, this means my Diamond requalification will be a breeze and Diamond Plus is now in sight for me. That's all nice and all, but at the same time I'm worried the lounges will soon be more crowded than ever and the number of people crowding the upgrade list will make getting an op up essentially like buying a lottery ticket.
I also wonder about why OZ is introducing this change. Do they just want to encourage more people to get affiliate cards in general? Is it a symptom of their chronical lack of cash? Have they been slipping against KE a lot lately and need an extra incentive to get more pax?