Originally Posted by
Always Flyin
(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
Emerald status benefits; upgrades; award redemption; access to exit row seating on domestic flights without charge.
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
~125,000; maybe 30 segments. Most flying is long-haul.
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
80% in paid international business, the remainder on U.S. domestic flights in economy.
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Yes and both.
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
U.S. Transcon on AA; London on AA or BA; S.E. Asia on AA, CX, or JL.
(6) What is your home airport?
LAS, BKK, LHR
(7) Do you have FFP status of any kind in OW or other airline? What is it? Do you have any miles banked in a FFP?
AA Platinum Pro. Most miles in my AA account
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
CX, SQ, JL
Would like to make Emerald without the onerous spend and segment requirements coming on AA.
Based on your flying patterns, I don't think that you would have any trouble maintaining Emerald status with AA. Remember that under the new earning scheme, an AA Plat Pro gets an 80% Loyalty Points bonus on qualifying flights, and you also get a cabin bonus.
If you were willing to fly Finnair for just one JFK-BKK Business Class roundtrip, for example, I think that you would end up with more than 50,000 LPs.
If you'd rather obtain elite status in another oneworld program (which would give you Admirals Club access when flying AA domestically in Coach), I would look into BAEC (if you can satisfy BA's annual minimum BA-flight-segment requirement), or Iberia Plus which, unlike BA, does not require any flights on its own airline to attain status. Here's a recent Inside Flyer blog post about this:
https://insideflyer.com/2021/09/27/w...h-iberia-plus/