Originally Posted by ChrisLi

I believe it's their chart issue that they do not have a seperate tier for longer range. For the 140 TP I mean round trip 4 sector (note the "RT" in my original post, which is 35 TP per sector in discounted Y) , do not get confused. For J I would say yes it is definitely a fast track to BA Gold.

It really depends on your flying pattern. If you envision your flying to slow down after your school time, it definitely worth the investment. I think I did it 5 years ago and didn't regret it at all (but now with my current job I opt to aim at BA lifetime gold).


If you tend to pay high fare subclass / full fare / PY, then BAEC is no-brainer and the added bonus if you are ok to transit in DOH. DOH itself is a good airport and quite smooth with priority transit, plus cheap tickets (but often quite restrictive, I recall finding 18K RT to LON but ask for 5K change fee and no cancellation). I won't recommend you to do ex-PEN due to complexity but do ex-LON holiday during the year. Note that IB coded and operated flight also count so if you do IB on LON-MAD-XXX, it still counts towards the sector requirements which may be cheaper way to fulfill it. I did a weekend trip on LCY-EDI-LGW last year which is cheap weekend getaway as well.

For HKG ICN 3 times in Y, I would say forget about OZ unless you have many other Star Alliance flight during the year. OZ is especially bad in award redemption ratio as well (I am OZ Diamond - *Gold but i only step on OZ flight 3 or 4 times only). It's good if you consider you can have lifetime membership after 500K status miles but I would say you are too far from there.