Guy Betsy

I have Lifetime AA Platinum, and that's OW Sapphire. I don't (need to) fly AA again.. and this status allows lifetime lounge access as long as I fly on a OW flight. I'm happy with this. But last year with some great fares available, I decided to go for BA Gold after having experienced it before and got it. Will I maintain it? It depends if I get those great TP churning runs again but if I lose it, I don't mind.

PS - I have Bronze labels on my bags. They're much nicer!

jlsw7

I think, insofar as there is a scam at all, it is facilitated by the airlines, but sometimes perpetrated by the frequent flyers. FFPs are, in significant part, directed at people who can pass on the cost of flights to employers or customers. Flyers are incentivised to book flights, which give them personal benefits, even when not the cheapest. Many people flying in premium cabins are only doing so because it is SEM. I wouldn't describe that as a scam myself, but it certainly makes the operation of traditional market forces more nuanced. It often is not a simple 2 party transaction.

WardourWill

My low cost, non-stop annual CW trip to the Maldives c/o GGL Joker and HH Diamond (Conrad) makes perfect status sense to me

LTN Phobia

An effective loyalty scheme looks to, and successfully, leads people by the nose, into doing things that they might not otherwise do.

I am to an extent influenced by that, in that I am about to end up with Star Gold in 3 different schemes, just because a certain fare bucket credits at a better rate with one scheme than another

Having said that, I haven't made a choice of carrier or whether to fly or not on the basis of a status or frequent flyer points or even benefits.

It is much less relevant when you are flying in the highest available cabin on a cash booking (cash booking = no availability issues, unless it's full! In fact bizarre situations can occur. I was thinking of booking F with cash but it was full (not even F availability) so I used Avios to book CW).

As mentioned in my earlier somewhat pathetic post from a FF point of view, the most solid benefit for a cash, highest cabin only flyer is extra baggage.

Land-of-Miles

Until you unpack the circa £1000 in fees per person on that flight and opportunity cost of avios earning (against say 1p per pound cash accrual on other cards and the money saving by not taking unnecessary flights to keep GGL - which used to cost me several £k per year and totally boas my leisure travel to the US only).

I think that avios accrual for such redemptions is a scam given the large additional cash cost which makes the whole thing not much cheaper than a well organised ME3 sale fare purchase. For instance I visited the St Regis in the Maldives in April and had superb flights with QR and UL (admittedly ex FRA but I live in the Northwest so flying MAN-FRA and connecting there is actually easier than flying MAN-LHR then getting to LGW and vice versa on the return) for £1250. Given that isn't much more than the "taxes" and other charges levied by BA you really have to question the value of BAEC.

HIDDY

Well I think this forum takes it all a bit too seriously if you ask me. If someone else is paying for your tickets then I don't see having it being a problem. Those who get it through paying for their own tickets must have good reason to want it. Either through the benefits it brings or some sort of status symbol.

Land-of-Miles

As someone who has generally paid my own way with odd peaks of business travel funded by clients thrown in, I think it is easy to massively mentally overestimate the benefits.

Sure lounges are good but for those of us who mainly or wholly fly J or F there is little real additional value beyond seat reservations that other airlines give you free anyway.

I have had some value out of my years of Gold and GGL but not enough to keep sustaining it as the FF Programme offers less and less value. The lack of psychological cliff edge which comes from having GFL really lets you see al this in perspective which I never really appreciated before.

An additional factor in my case is my relocation from London to the NorthWest which makes BA frequently last choice for non redemption flights and even redemptions up against stiff competition from just paying.

Phil the Flyer

HIDDY's thoughts on the pursuit of frequent flyer status are well known to all.

Tobias-UK

£1000? I've just paid £580 and 85,000 Avios per person (using 2 x 2for1s) for 4 First class tickets from MAN to LAS and back - absolute bargain.

My modus operandi is not to chase status, it must come organically. If the status has to be chased then it has a 'cost' so then it is not necessarily worth it for me. I have lifetime status so TPs are not that important - but those TPs still keep piling up and provide quite a few GUFs and Jokers.

Land-of-Miles

To be fair I haven't priced up MLE but I offer as comparison the recent circa £1k each I am spending in TFC on a F redemption MAN-JNB, however having just checked it looks like MLE is closer to £600 than £1000 but still that is only £600 less than paying for a ticket. It would take precisely one US bound TP run to break the economics of GGL based on an annual return in J to MLE.

KARFA

MAN-JNB rtn in F is ~£625 TFC per person (have checked reward and revenue flights). I would go and re-check your ticket if you have been charged ~£1k, it sounds like that is a mistake.

Land-of-Miles

I have JNB-MRU on top which pushes up fees but I looked last night on a cash fare and MAN-JNB in F has TFC well over £700. The full TFC I paid s £902.49 per person with the JNB-MRU-JNB return pricing up at a little under £200 in TFC plus some avios versus the £685 to just pay for a return J ticket.

KARFA

So you add more flights and the TFC goes up, how surprising

The same TFC would be payable if a revenue ticket for teh same cabins of course.

No idea what you were looking at for MAN-JNB in F where you were seeing £700+ TFC:

Land-of-Miles

This is what you see on an avios redemption search:-


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Tobias-UK

I saw a similar price when pricing up my itinerary, however when I clicked on 'continue' the £777 became £578.