Originally Posted by
oliver2002
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Nick Art ... also in his 20s aiming for LT EB Gold
I think chances of SAS going bust or leaving the *A are rather low, the pandemic downturn will push that out by another 5-10 years.
Using EB points outside of Scandinavia and SAS metal is possible, but tricky.
And I'm still right on track as well! Only seven more years to go
Originally Posted by
oliver2002
Lifetime status is a rather new concept in Europe so merger/acquisition expererience is almost non existent. The only recent datapoint I can think of was BD dc being absorbed by BA EC. AFAIR they didn't honor the LT Golds. When LH M&M absorbed the Swiss, Austrian, Sabena and LOT FFPs they did not get any of the customer history except for some rudimentary data.
Originally Posted by
GUWonder
The pandemic bought SAS a new lease on life in a way. But the chances of SAS being eaten by LH within 5-10 years are not entirely negligible -- much as I hope to never see that happen. SAS being swallowed by LH likely won't be good for SK elites going for lifetime *G status; it may even turn out to be bad even for those who are already SK*G for life.
I think if LH absorbs SAS, especially with LHs introduction of LT Senator status, there would be a good chance that SK LTG would be honored. For me personally being based in ZRH a LH takeover *after* I reach LTG and if it's being honored by LH would be pretty beneficial to me personally actually
Anyway, regarding SK LTG I think it really depends how much and what exactly you fly. I would try making a listing of all your flights in excel and then calculate how many miles you'll earn for status in different frequent flyer programs. Here I find SK to be pretty beneficial as Mileage runs in Europe are a possibility, although not exactly cheap. Furthermore you can even buy up to 10k miles with either cash or by using points you can spend in a 10:1 ratio to exchange in to status points. This is especially helpful if you are missing a few hundred points for the status. I'm not spending any of my miles currently anyway so for me that's a win win situation.
My plan personally right now is to achieve SK*G every year with one Lufthansa First Class partner special (approx 2500.- CHF, 40-70k SK miles) + one European Business Flight in D or higher with 3 legs each way (approx 1000.- CHF, 10k SK miles). Compared to your 4000$ to status run for UA you'd actually come cheaper status running on SK, without even counting your Economy flights.
Obviously this year and last year are a bit gifted to me as SK extended status even though all my flights were cancelled. :P
I think that might cover the basics, everything else has been answered already before me. Do you have any more questions?
PS: Already starting with silver on UA, I and some other users on here are allowed to give away EB Silver as EB Golds, we usually make a post on here somewhere announcing it, first come, first serve.
So just based on that I wouldn't chose UA.