Originally Posted by EuropeanPete

I'll be reading this thread with interest. I'd quite like to maintain OneWorld Emerald going forward and I am willing to put a certain amount of investment and time to make that happen. I'll still be BA Gold through to April 2026, so I will also need to decide at what point to start allocating spend over vs. enjoying my expiring BA status.

I've excluded a few airlines:
IAG airlines: I assume they will converge on BA at some stage
AA: The value proposition is not intended to be there for people without US credit cards (though I am considering seeing whether I could somehow get a US credit card - which would change everything)
QR: Perhaps wrongly, I would think that they'll be one of the more likely to change if their offering ends up looking too generous compared to BA
Qantas: I rarely go to Australia, so this would be one of the few airlines where an "own sectors" limit would be a problem for me

The airlines that I am mainly looking at:
Finnair: Platinum Status (OWE) would appear to compare favourably to BA Gold and require only 1/2 initially and then 1/3 of the amount of flying to maintain. Being in Europe, I also use Finnair and their lounges from time to time. The downside is that I can't earn credit card points with them and I'm not sure if I can run up spend using a BA Holidays equivalent (of course I might not have to with "just" $7K of annual spend to get to). I also need to look into this ability to use some Avios to "buy" tier points which could be of use to me
Malaysian: My old favourite airline from 15 years ago. The status benefits seem pretty fair at the moment, but I think they might not have had changes for sometime. I also don't trust the airline very much in general
Jordanian: A quick read of the scheme suggests OWE is very attainable, but I'd need to look at the fineprint or rely on someone else here to do so. 20 legs on RJ metal would not be doable
Alaskan: Potentially the wildcard here. The earnings are quite different, but if some of their "other earning" methods could be viable for me (e.g. the odd hotel booking) this could be an interesting option - even though they're one of the only OW airlines I've never flown

There are some airlines I've skipped over incl. Royal Air Maroc, JAL and Sri Lankan which haven't attracted my attention just yet. But let's see what the brains of this forum come up with.

I would probably keep earning some Avios on credit cards, but would earn a fair few airmiles from my new status, so I also want to make sure I'm earning a decent amount of miles which are useful - so Finnair again appears attractive.