What status should I go for? Looking for input from Elites.
 

Hi folks,

Been lurking FT for a while but I finally have a worthwhile question so I figured I should make a post :D.

Believe it or not I'm already beginning to plan out my travel for 2018. This year I will unfortunately only reach P25K status with the remaining travel I have planned. I made the mistake of booking too many Tango fares early in the year without thinking, and that mistake has come back to haunt me. Thus I'm making sure I don't repeat these mistakes for next year.

I need to go from YVR - NYC (any airport) once a month for the whole year next year. I figured that if I fly on all Flex fares, then I should make E50K easily, as this route earns just under 5000 AQM round-trip. I did some digging though, and it looks like UA has P fares that are only about c$1,200 round trip. This is not that much more than an AC flex fare, which runs about c$900 - c$1,000 rt. By replacing a few AC flex flights with some of these "cheap" UA J flights, I could get up to E75K through the class of service bonus. But is it worth the extra 200 - 300 bucks per trip? As far as I can tell, the only real benefit on top of E50K is that you can make eUpgrade requests marginally earlier, you get a few more eUp credits, and you can make guaranteed reservations in economy (this doesn't matter to me though, because I never buy Y or B fares on AC or book at the last minute anyway. Maybe it would come in handy? You guys tell me...). Is E75 worth it? Do those extra couple of days make the difference when trying to upgrade (especially on YVR - YYZ or YVR - EWR)? Or should I even go on a couple MRs during the year to try and get SE? I am a US resident so I benefit from the 50% AQD requirement, but I would need to find time to fly and make up the ~25,000 AQM that I would be short.

Thanks for the input everyone :)! Sorry if I rambled on for a while there :p.

Why not just always buy the cheap P fares, and then you don't even need to worry about upgrades?

And then if you're going to be flying that much UA, why not earn UA status?

The P fares credit at 200% to UA and only 150% to AC, so you could get 1K status.

Personally I would just fly CX Premium Economy and get Marco Polo Gold/Diamond if I was solely flying YVR-JFK. The level of service and lounge access doesn't even come close, combined with the courtesy upgrades to J on their 77Ws.

Good point @canadiancow. The 2 things that attract me the most about AC are their trans-con business class product, which IMHO is much better than UA's. The other thing is that they have more choices when it comes to flying out of YVR, but at this time I really only plan to be doing YVR - NYC so perhaps that doesn't matter. I didn't consider that I could reach UA 1K by only flying once a month in J. Do you know anything about how good they are when it comes to upgrades? What about UA Club vs MLL?

Likewise @keitherson with regards to Cathay. Sounds like I should look in to CX and UA's programs and benefits instead of AC's. Thanks both for the help ^.

No problem. Cathay at Gold also gives you 4 upgrades which you can use for medium-haul routes, YVR-JFK included. I'm not sure the amount of e-credits required for YVR-JFK.