Vincent Rodriguez

Hi - I will be hitting the 300 XP soon but do not see the real advantage vs Gold. I travel often (ECO or PR.ECO) with few continental. My Gold status is almost always guaranteed. But if I move to Plat I will have 300 XP to get next year and if I miss I will start as Gold and 0 XP if my understanding is correct.If I keep Gold I will restart with the Surplus, making it easier to keep it one more year.

So my question is better to stop flying AF/Skyteam and refocus on LH/StarAlliance ? or the Plat status is worth trying

Thanks

ofj

no - if you've already renewed Gold, and miss Platinum, you simply retain the extra XP for the next year.

As for whether Platinum is worth trying, that all depends on your needs and wants - if you can't reliably hit Platinum year after year, you won't be able to keep any significant status on Star Alliance AND keep Flying Blue Gold. For that, you'd have to fly way more than what your current travel patterns seem like.

fifty_two

As you pointed out , the difference between gold and platinum is not huge besides free seating options in economy and platinum dedicated phone line

When flying AFKL , i will let others speak as more experienced members of this forum can tell more but outside of AFKL it will not make a difference at all

Now you are close to 300 , so your surplus of XP will be 119 at best if you want to stay gold , which mean minimum 61 xp to gather again to keep your status

If you hold a status already in star alliance then yeah, go back to it for a while . If not let your wallet (or other criterias) decide

westi2002

If you make it to plat, no matter how many XP you will gather the year after you will at least end up gold (soft landing)
If you don't push for plat and you will end this year with let's say 299 XP, you will be gold with a 119 XP surplus, meaning you have to gather another 61 XP to remain gold the year after.

So it's always better to go for plat if you will reach it with normal travel pattern.

San Gottardo

Depends on your travel patterns. If you travel quite a bit on LH/Star Alliance, it's worth having SEN Status there on top of AF Gold. SEN is so much better than LH Silver: access to the SEN lounges, access to all Star Alliance lounges even when traveling US domestic, more options to use miles (50% discount for second person flying with you), extra luggage, free seat next to you, booking guarantee.

If you travel on both airlines/alliances, it's better to have LH SEN and AF Gold than to have LH Silver and AF Plat. There is more difference between LH SEN and LH Silver than there is between AF Plat and AF Gold.

If you fly mainly AFKL, then go for Platinum.

NLpio

I was had the same quandary this year too and the one thing I hadn’t realized before is how the soft drop works. If you get to platinum this year and fail to get 300 xp next year, indeed you will drop to gold. If you’ve gained less than (or exactly)180 xp, you’ll start at 0. However, if you say get 299 next year, you’ll start the year after with 119xp. Therefore, in my opinion if you’re regularly getting to gold, a year at platinum is no hardship. Sorry if I’m explaining some obvious to you but that was my personal revelation 😉 and it helped set my mind at ease. I don’t travel enough normally for plat, so ymmv.

hhdl

If your usual pattern is that you get 180+ XP per year, a burst to Platinum isn't that bad a thing.

But if you're typically flying, say, upper Silver levels (150-179 XP p.a.) and had a non-reproducible burst in a Gold year, losing that rollover might mean an earlier period of Silver (the horror!).

brunos

I think your reasoning is right.
In any case you will be Gold the following year, either using extra XPs (if was Gold) or softlanding (if was Plat).
The following year, the Gold route is probably better as you might have accumulated extra XPs, while the softlanding reset them to zero.
Given the marginal benefit of Plat and your flying pattern, I would probably suggest the first option.

Getting SEN is tough, but certainly worth it.

atflyer

I think we had this discussion in an earlier thread - it is essentially important to understand the travel patterns of OP for the next years and the level of XP to gain realistically, and from there you can decide if a gold-gold-gold or a plat-soft landing gold - ???? scenario will work best.

Mind you, I had the same reasoning 5 years ago wanting to stay Gold and carefully ended up on 299 XP. KLM donated me 1 XP without asking and I was all of a sudden plat! Managed to requalify next year, then 3 years of COVID support that froze all status levels and XP - and last year still half a year extra XP per flight - and all of a sudden I am over half way to plat for life, something I am likely to manage. So with hindsight very happy KLM made the choice for me.......and of course lucky with the freezing of status during COVID years.

What I really want to say that if you want to stay Gold, better leave a clearer distance with 300 XP as just one point.

etiene

Right, this seems to be what causes the most confusion around whether a push is worthwhile. I think there's two ways to think about it: you can either say that it's only really a soft landing if you don't get to 180XP, or you can see it as you will "pay" 180XP for the soft landing Gold whatever happens but you can't go into XP "debt" if you don't have that many.

Either way you wish to think about it, I think the answer to the larger question hinges on expected XP earn over the course of the next 2-3 years. There are scenarios where it is advantageous to push to Plat and others where it's best to hold off at Gold - examples of both were constructed in the previous thread.

thibderoc

I'll add 2 differences between Plat and Gold that nobody mentioned, so you can have a better vision.
Plat members can
- book an award for La Premiere
- bring their kids with them in the lounges : every one of them. Gold members can only bring one guest.


To make a decision, you really have to estimate the number of XP you are able to fly every year.
If you start with LH, you'll indeed be able to maintain your gold status with AF next year thanks to the XP surplus this year. But the year after that, you won't have the xp surplus as you'll probably manage to just get to the 180 XP level because you also want to chase the LH Senator Status.
Assuming you have 80 XP of surplus this year, you'll only need 100XP next year to keep Gold. Easy. But the year after, you'll be back to the 180XP gold target and so on...
And, in parallel, you'll need to fly with LH to get/keep senator Status.

Are you sure you'll be able to keep this travel pattern with 2 FF over the years?
- if yes, go for it. FB Gold + LH Sen is better than FB Plat.
- if not, you might regret not staying with AF (even if it means, from time to time, being platinum that might not be worthwhile for you).

Fabo.sk

One thing I will note is that LH SEN is a very difficult status to gain for a *G, it has advantages when flying LH Group but IMHO not enough to push for SEN instead of some other, typically a lot easier to gain *G status. Look into SK, TP, TK, AG.

olivedel

If you plan to achieve Lifetime Platinum, I would go for it.

Xandrios

If going for *A I would recommend A3. Requires some segments with A3 in Europe but that will drastically reduce the requirements to earn and keep status. And once you have the status...it will be very easy to maintain. Though if you fly with LH group often do know that the cheaper fares (including P-class business) do not earn outside of Miles&More.

San Gottardo

And it depends what it is that you'd value in *G. What you get with any *G program when flying LH: lounge access, priority check-in/security fast track, additional piece of luggage
What you only get when LH SEN: blocked seat next to you, 50% discount on award mileage for 2nd person flying with you, booking guarantee

If it's only lounge and luggage and fast track you care about, do not bother with SEN. Go for A3 or any of the other programs.