rwij

Hi,

First time time posting here.. I'm based in Jakarta and I travel around 120-150k miles per year, I'm a small business owner, so I usually travel in Y/PE for work and Biz with my family. I used to not care so much about airlines status, so most of my travels are with points. However, there are a lot of Travel Fairs in Jakarta which offer incredible fares and I don't see the need to buy with points anymore, since the fares are often cheaper than buying with points.

So starting in November 2018, based on the reviews here, I joined Asiana Club and have accumulated 83k (17k more miles to Diamond Plus) but only 1 flight with Asiana when I was a gold. Most of the flights were with SQ or EVA. I don't see that SQ treats their KFEG well, so I don't really want to join them, but I do have tons of KF miles from my credit cards. So I emailed EVA Air out of curiosity, was offered a Gold match if I credit 12,500 miles to my new IML within 3 months. I'm flying CGK-SIN-LAX in SQ PE in a few days which would qualify (the agent told me to email him right away after the points are credited to IML) and confused whether I should switch to IML or just stay with OZ.

Here's the pro and con:

EVA
- Will be able to achieve Diamond in a year
- Not sure if I can always maintain the Diamond status, but Gold is fairly easy to maintain
- I don't see the real benefits of IML Gold (compared to OZ D+)
- No lifetime status
- Potential unnecessary travels just to maintain the status - which I don't really want
- No recognition when I don't travel as often
- Travel with EVA 3-4x a year (I do speak fluent Mandarin)

Asiana
- Super easy to achieve Diamond and Diamond Plus.
- Don't travel to Korea often (don't speak the language at all), and I prefer SQ or EVA when I travel to LA
- Before joining Asiana Club, I probably only fly with them once in 2-3 years.
- Super long transit time in Korea for flights from CGK to USA (Unlike SQ, BR, CI, NH or JL, Korean carriers are not so much focused on the travel needs from South East Asia to America)
- Will actually travel with them much more often if the transit time is less than 3 hours
- Lifetime status with Star Gold
- Future of the company is not clear - don't want to lose my points if they collapse

I own Amex Platinum, so lounge access is covered whenever I travel, so I'm starting to wonder the importance of having *G.

I can see myself traveling extensively in the next 20 years, but I want Airlines to also recognize me as one of their loyal customers when I'm older and don't travel as often, that's why I like OZ's lifetime status, but the thing is I just don't fly with them often.

Thanks!