Like many of you I expect, I'm having a hard time making sense of all the changes announced to EC (the 300 plus posting thread doesn't help!). For North American members the EC was already pretty bad, now it just seems terrible. It seems that the mileage redemption rates for almost all routes, particularly in business and first have been increased, in some cases dramatically. Since I have top tier status on 3 other airlines (UA, LH, AA) I certainly won't be flying BA any more, or at least not crediting miles to my EC account. The challenge then is how to burn 140k miles as efficiently as possible?

At the very least grab tickets at old award levels, since these will be valid for a year on a routing likely to be taken at some poitn and if necessary pay change fee to switch dates within the year window. Right?

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LH SEN, UA 1K/UGS, HH GOLD, BA SILVER, AA PLAT