Originally Posted by
token01
lets see is there anyway travelling to OZ u can get HON miles or does it have to be LH metal - if so then does any LH metal make its way to the land down under?
Unfortunately, the Land of Oz is rough country for HONs. You only earn HON Miles on the following airlines:
- Lufthansa
- SWISS
- Austrian
- LOT Polish Airlines
- Adria Airways (Slovenia)
- Air Dolomiti (Italy)
- Air One (Italy)
- Croatia Airlines
- Luxair (Luxembourg)
None of these airlines fly to Australia, a number of them don't even have any flights to points outside of Europe. The closest you can get to Australia on HON-earning metal is SIN (served by LH and LX).
Originally Posted by
token01
also alex i wouldnt see the practicality in qualifiying for Sen this year isnt the whole idea for me to qualify as quick as possible at the beginning of the year hence put the august trip down to MnM, and the second trip arriving bak into aus around 16th December - then since im leaving auz again around the 30th - shouldnt i put only the return journey which is the 22 Jan on and not the departing which would mean i was qualified december 2007 instead of Jan 2008 , Jan 2008 enabling me to have 2008, 2009,2010 and till feb 2011???
In your situation, I would not worry about this too much. It appears you're flying more than enough to make SEN every year anyway. But I'm having a little trouble understanding what you've written. Let me see if I've got this straight:
You're flying BNE-DUB in August. Then you're flying DUB-BNE at some point between August and December.
Then, sometime before December, you're flying BNE-DUB again, returning DUB-BNE on December 16th.
You then want to fly BNE-DUB in late December, and return DUB-BNE on January 22nd.
So that's three roundtrips. In this case, if you credit your August roundtrip, you December roundtrip and your flight to DUB in late December to LH, you'll earn SEN without a problem.
The trick of re-qualifying in the grace period of an expiring status is really only necessary if your finances or your regular travel pattern make it difficult for you to maintain SEN reliably. Otherwise, it's just unnecessary stress.
Originally Posted by
token01
with the BD program its qualification years so like u fly 57 000 first and then ur gold, u do 38 000 miles afterward for retention in a maximum time of a year to be gold for the next year. HOWEVER speaking to the BD department - they said every 38 000 miles is in effect one year so if i earn 76 000 miles in 12 months ive qualified for 2 more years - so for people who travel very very frequent - if they put their miles in BD for the next year or 2 , they could come away with Star Gold for life? i Stress extreme caution with this as this was just me talking with two marketing people in BD and one of the senior represenatives. - i strongly suggest someone else to chek this all out as well s reassure us
I'm sorry, but what they told you is bollocks. When you sign up for BD, you're given a membership year - 12 months from the day you sign up. You then have to earn 3K miles to from paper Blue to Blue Plus. Your status miles are reset to zero, and your membership year is readjusted to give you 12 months from the year you qualify. Then you have to qualify for Silver - 16K miles. When you make it, your status miles and your membership year get reset. Then you need 38K miles for Gold. When you make it, your status miles and membership year are reset.
After your initial qualification, you are given 12 months to earn another 38K miles to keep your status. Any status miles above 55K (I think, something like that) will be converted to redeemable miles, giving you even more miles for your flights. At the end of the 12 months, your status mile counter is reset and you have to requalify yourself with another 38K.
Status is always only valid one year (and I mean 12 months only) at a time. You cannot pre-qualify for coming years by flying more this year. Even if you had 900K status miles on bmi this year, it would mean absolutely nothing for next year. If you don't make the requisite 38K miles, they will have no qualms whatsoever about taking away your Gold card.
Whether or not there is a lifetime Gold after 10 straight years of Gold status, I don't know. But if there is, it will mean you have to qualify once and then re-qualify 9 times, in 9 consecutive years.
The advantage I was alluding to on the SQTalk thread you mentioned is that with Lufthansa, you can time it so that you have to requalify your status only once every three years by requalifying in the grace period before expiry. This means you need only 100K status miles once every three years, rather than 3 x 38K = 114K status miles to keep the BD status alive for three years. But again, this is really a trick for those who don't have the money or the business travel to keep themselves SEN on a regular basis.