Adding my recent experience as a “beware”.

1 June: I flew LH going LHR-MUC. This flight gave me enough SP to upgrade from silver to gold.
2 June: I flew LH MUC-LHR. I would have assumed the SP from this flight counted towards my gold retention.
3 June: SP from my 1 June were posted (and I unofficially became gold, as in my NZ app, the SP counter showed I now need 810 SP to retain gold (3 June 2024 - 3 June 2025)
4 June: SP from my 2 June flight were posted, but did not count towards my gold retention, despite not counting towards achieving gold
11 June: My gold status went live (*G digital card, welcome email, 2x RU deposited etc)

I queried with a CSR why the SP from the 2 June flight didn’t go towards retaining gold (remember, they didn’t count towards achieving gold). He said because of the time lag in the system, although the SP were posted on 4 June (so within my retention earning period), as the flight itself was 2 June, the points essentially got lost in the time lag and don’t count towards my retention, since my retention date starts on 3 June, and they count as “2 June”.

I am aware that technically they are not lost completely as they will still count towards Elite, but unlikely I’ll get there give a good chunk of my flying is *A, but just find it frustrating they didn’t count towards either achieving or retaining my status.

Not the end of the world as it was only 25 SP or so for a quick hop but thought I’d share as I’d be miffed if I’d planned this around my upcoming long haul *A PE/J travel.