Originally Posted by
xenole
As I said earlier, I suspect people will pay cash more than use Avios.
If they really want to maintain their status, spending say £2.5k on a CW fare to JFK would work better than 80k Avios + £1k in fees / taxes / surcharges etc.
Running that through on a card that could earn TPs, and some might see this as a fairly good thing.
That only works if there are enough people who are thinking they'll get in the region of their desired status. I can't see myself hitting Gold in any way in my current employment so figure I can either make an effort to hit Silver on BA or make an equal effort to make a better status (e.g. Emerald with Jordanian or possibly AS) with someone else - or perhaps to maintain Star Alliance Gold and a OneWorld Sapphire.