I’m about fly YYZ-JNB on Ethiopian in business.
i was looking around for program this would get me closest to *A Gold
in the process I discovered that you *seem* to be able to buy Sheba EQM for $18/1000
so, after earning silver from the r/t flights I could buy the ~20k additional EQM needed for gold for under $400.
the only cap I can see referred to is to reach the next status tier.

now of course that would leave me with a bunch of RDM IN THE Sheba program and any time I use the *G status that way (eg on United domestic) I’d be putting more RDM into Sheba.

But it does seem like there is reasonable biz class *A availability to Asia (eg SEA-TPE @ 90k). Domestic Cisco awards seem a bit higher than US but not a lot.

I’m united silver via Marriott Titanium and travel *A a greatness a year. It looks like I’d earn about 20k UA miles from these flights.

Am I missing something - this seems like a no-brainer.