duncgor

Hi All,

So over the weekend after my weather rearranged return from LHR last Wednesday I now have my sought after Gold Card, yeehah!

It's taken 55 OW flights (I have had quite a few non-OW flights as well) and largely has been achieved through Y Travel with a mix of work and leisure.

Now I know I'm not nearly as entertaining as for example @bisonrav with his ongoing and entertaining quest for GGL this year, and I'm not as knowledgeable as the renowned C-W-S, Karfa and many others but for any of you who are interested I have attached my routing and time from TP reset to me achieving Gold so you can get a flavour of how much travel a Y flyer needs to do to get it.

I also previously had a comparison with getting OW Emerald with QR as a comparison with BA so have left that in there, mainly because for Y Flyers the perks of Status probably mean a little more than for those who generally travel in J or above anyway since they get the perks included with their tickets. For Ruby and Sapphire there isn't much in it, but Emerald would have taken for me a month and 9 flights less to get the status on QR rather than BA so for those economy flyers who like the status but may struggle, QR may be worth a look (not going into the difficult redemption bookings with QR and poor customer service on the ground with QR of course, this was purely a status point)

What I also have done is double check where a corporate policy for travelling J on flights over 6 hours would have left me, and I'll be honest it made my eyes water. Based on that analysis I would have achieved Gold in only 78 days from TP reset after 16 flights and would currently have a balance of 3835 TP's and with some smarter bookings on a couple of earlier personal trips (TGL, FCO) might have been pushing for the GGL Card rather than struggling to get over the Gold line. I also didn't really travel in December and had a major bereavement in January so I ended up having a 91 day flight gap in this TP year.

All in all it's been a (tiring) blast. I've had an Op-Up with QR DOH-LHR and availed myself of the QSuite (nice!), I've been Op-Upped on both trips to LOS in both directions to WT+ and generally have had very few travel shenanigans (last week aside), some excellent service from BA when required, the odd hunt for missing TP's (DOH-CGK every time argh!!!!).

Overall it's been good, and I am looking forward to breaking my normal no drink while flying rule by having a celebratory glass of something fizzy in GF next time I'm in LHR.

Thanks to all the FTers who have offered me advice as I've gone from being a "regular" leisure traveler to a "seasoned" corporate one. You've given some great advice and I've learned a lot form this site. And for all you regular corporate J Flyers out there, you are lucky.

Next Stop my 2-4-1 redemption in F to East Coast US if I can find availability :-).

newyorklondon

Huge congrats!

Just a quick note here to say that perhaps you or a mod might redact the barcode, as it contains quite a lot of information

duncgor

Hilde

Congratulations on reaching Gold! Hard work and perserverance pays off

newyorklondon

Sorry to be a security bore, but it's probably also a good move for you or a mod to remove any personal data from the Excel sheet.

duncgor

You're more on the ball than me today, done :-)

windowontheAside

Ouch! I also made Gold the first time from flying only Y and I think it's even harder now.

You are some kind of masochist for doing the 'What if-J travel' calculation though. I don't think I could have handled that!

cosmo74

Wow, that really doesn't sound like fun - makes me feel rather guilty as a Maui Gold who got the 2 year extension with the 2017 IT meltdown fiasco.

TPRun

Congrats @duncgor, that's very cool! Whilst I travel often for work, its usually just to Germany and in Y (sometimes its as low as 5 TPs!). Silver is probably as far as i'd get 'the hard way', so I'm going for one TP Run. I'm looking forward to hitting Gold for the first time in August during the OTP/PHX TP run.

Maybe you've already thought about it so I'm going to ask....what's the plan to maintain gold in the next 15 months?

Jordan D

Congratulations - have a lot of time for those who've done it the hard way: I made gold this year, solely on the basis of Y class in Europe, so 10 or 20 TPs (with a few 5 TP) trips in there. It was very hard work.

duncgor

duncgor

deboyzoned

duncgor

deboyzoned