Originally Posted by
eggsbenedict
If you're organically hitting 140,000 SQM each year, what is the purpose of choosing bonus SQC? Even if you chose the bonus SQC at every possible milestone (which it doesn't sound like you are given the mentions of gifting status) you'd accumulate 22,500 more SQC, giving access to the 150k and 160k milestones, which would give you some combo of points, some status passes, or a $250 gift card. No matter what you choose, you could have earned more by just choosing those items at previous milestone benefits.
Grabbing at least enough PRs for your kids to use on their TATL flights seems like a no brainer to me. The cash in pocket savings are going to be pretty huge. Sell/trade them your points (looks like you should be generating 1M+ per year from your flying alone) at a good rate if need be.
With some advance planning and/or flexibility you should be able to fly on AC metal for something like:
TATL J R/T = ~300,000AP.
TATL PY R/T = ~170,000AP.
2x TATL J is 300,000 + 2x PRs. ~$10,000 saved in cash
4x TATL PY is 340,000 + 4x PRs. ~$8,000 saved in cash.
Fair points for sure.
I have no idea how the new AP points regime will impact the dynamic pricing of AP redemptions going forward.
My WAG is that SEs will get a larger share of the total points pool than they did in the past but I don't know if the total pool will be larger or smaller than it was in the past which will drive redemption costs.
My intuition is that the total pool will be smaller and that redemption costs will drop in absolute terms going forward but I could be completely wrong.
Our two most typical J lowest trips are YYJ-YWG -YYJ which were roughly 1,500 SQD and 4,000 SQM and AP points in the old regime. In the new regime, they will be roughly 6,000 SQC and 9,000 AP points. The other one is YYJ-LHR-YYJ which was roughly 5,000 SQD and 15,000 SQM and AP points in the old regime and roughly 20,000 SQC and 30,000 AP points in the new regime.
There is definitely an optimisation strategy where my wife and I could use redemptions and PRs for some travel while accumulating enough SQCs to be able to gift E25K, E35K and E50K to the rest of our family sharing pool while still maximising the AP points that our family sharing pool accumulates with 2 SEs, 2 E25Ks, 2 E35Ks and 2 E50Ks.
The optimisation problem just became much harder because of choice. I am sure that AC/AP designed the program to make it more difficult for members to extract the maximum value from the program which is a sound commercial decision.
I am prepared to make sub optimal decisions in 2026 if I can learn to make optimal decisions in 2027 onwards.