Originally Posted by
randomasian
Right now, I'm looking into places to get star alliance gold and SAS seems interesting. I currently maintain Star Alliance gold through Asiana and have United Silver through Marriott Titanium status.
In a typical year, I fly about 50,000 miles in cheap economy class fares split between ANA, EVA and United with another round trip US/Asia on Singapore Airlines or Asiana, spending around 4000 USD. I don't fly to Europe each year so Aegean doesn't really make sense. I have several questions about SAS:
1. The websites for the airline partners points earnings isn't clear. I assume the multipliers for fare classes will be multiplied by miles? What does "fr." mean? For example, on the table for UA, the row says points and then "fr. 600" and "fr. 300" under business and economy respectively.
2. How likely is it for SAS to suddenly make it significantly harder to qualify for status or leave star alliance/go bust?
I'm in my 20s so I'd like to pursue lifetime star alliance status. It looks like I can make SAS gold without too much mileage running but if the risks are too high, would it make more sense to spend an extra 4000ish USD a year over the next few years to mileage run UA lifetime gold instead?
The fr. 600 means minimum 600 basic points. For partners it is basically the distance in miles times the multiplier indicated, though there are minimum earnings. ANA is pretty good, as most if not all economy fares earns 100%, earnings on SQ are pretty abysmal in (wh)Y. If you use gcmap.com to show the distance between two airports, and round up to the nearest 100 and the apply the percentage for your booking class, you will rarely fail in getting to the exact amount of miles applied by SK.
for point 2, your guess is as good as mine.