FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Best alternatives to BAC (equivalent status Sapphire / Emerald / GGL)
Old Jan 2, 2025 | 11:37 pm
  #279  
GrayAnderson
10 Countries Visited
20 Countries Visited
30 Countries Visited
10 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Programs: Amtrak Guest Rewards (SE), Virgin America Elevate, Hyatt Gold Passport (Platinum), VIA Preference
Posts: 3,642
So, I'm sniffing around. Am I right in reading that Iberia "only" requires 6,250 TPs (but no metal requirements) for OWE?

I'm also curious about what "counts" for an IB flight for the lower two tiers, since if I'm only going to limp back into Sapphire after 2025 and want to keep Flagship Lounge/Soho access, I'm looking for the most workable path there...and since IB uses Avios, it provides somewhere to move my non-trivial pile of BA Avios (which I've acquired more-or-less incidentally to requalifying). I was looking at killing the AA Executive card (I've gone both ways on this over the last year or so - OWE/OWS makes it redundant on its own, but backup 6-hour-delay Travel Insurance is a nice plus and the earning bonuses on AAdvantage Hotels/Cars are a plus).

My other practical option, in some respects, is to go back to cross-crediting Delta flights to Virgin Atlantic and sort-of ditch AA (to whom I have, in fact, never credited a single paid flight). I think I'm in a position to get both EXP and Diamond mostly on corporate CC spend (slightly buffered by some hotel stays/car rentals) alongside Hyatt as things are currently tracking. But that should get me CH access on "Canada international" flights out of JFK.

[Disclosure: I started editing this and forgot I was editing vs making a new post...go me...]

Last edited by GrayAnderson; Jan 2, 2025 at 11:47 pm
GrayAnderson is offline