dougzz

UKTony

Hilton, like IAG, has many brands offering very different levels of service and little consistency across the product even within a brand/destination. For instance, BA Gold is worth nothing with Vueling just as HH Diamond is with Doubletree or Hampton Inns.

GlasgowCyclops

IN my work I fly once a month from GLA to LON. If I fly in ET it is about £150 but £220 in CE So I use 5,000 avios to bring the price down. Since the CE gets me 2000 extra compared to ET I'm out of pocket by 24k AVIOS/year. However, some fares are similar so I'm really only out of pocket by 16K Avios.

Now that means I get a free cup of tea some food my company doesn't need to expense (in lounge, on plane) and a GnT on the return I don't need to pay for. So good value for me and my company.

On LH we fly WT+ and this means I get access to bulkhead seats. This is a massive benefit to me. As a Gold I get upgraded to J a few times on CX. I also don't need to queue at some of the busy Asia airports. Last week at the CX 1st counter when changing a flight for free, I heard the GA say on the phone to supervisor (yes he is Emerald) and it was clearly the reason I was upgraded to Business and not downgraded to Y. I suspect.

I get access to the 1st lounges HKG NRT HND etc so it means I have some lovely food in the lounge and more sleep on the flight in bulkhead row in WT+.

Also having the extra miles over the year (probably about 90k gets me three legs in CW upgrades. Getting my GUF2 and 2xGUF1 gets me another three months upgrades. Then the rest of m miles gets me another three upgrades. So next year I'll be able to get about 1/2 my travel in CW.

My next thing is to get adventurous with ExEU etc. So for me it is a massive benefit being Gold. Especially as a GLA to Asia traveller.

HIDDY

As cats are banned I hope one of our Molly will do. Unfortunately, I am also in the picture.....the one on the right.

alex67500

Simple back of the envelope calculations:
CW return to SFO, with stopover in JFK each way, yields 560 TPs for approx 1,600GBP.
5000 TPs is 9 return trips, for 14,400 GBP.

A lot of money, but achievable, and a lot less than your estimate. And it all depends if you need to have CCR access, all your GUFs etc. and how much you expect to enjoy the benefits. If you only travel 10-20 times a year, that's overkill IMHO.

Gold is achievable at 4,800GBP. (Even less if you're able to bag every weekend in the sale period to HEL, at 1.5TP/GBP). I'm going for it this year with 2 TATL, a bit of work travel where I'll look at POUGs and a couple of weekends in HEL where I can also work on my HH Diamond status challenge for under 100GBP a night.

alex67500

You have whet my curiosity there, is there a thread about this anywhere?

danam

Probably just personal experience. I had plenty of upgrades flying OW as BA gold. Mostly on CX, but others too.

Jagboi

The previous poster said 36 trips,that was my basis.

However, it's clear that trip ex UK are much cheaper than from North America, especially Canada. For example, on a simple YYC-LHR return, the cheapest fare I can see in CW from now until the end of October is $8229, the most expensive $11,500 for a 4 day stay. That's about £4900 to £6800. Bumping it to a week simply increases the highest fare and the lowest stays the same.

In the last 2 years I don't think I have seen a CW fare to LHR fare under $6,000. In the past I have flown on the cheapest economy fare I could find and it was still $2500 and I got 40 TP from that. So obtaining gold ex Canada is a very expensive proposition.

alex67500

There's another solution there, but there's a big catch: if you travel to the UK regularly. Book a one-way redemption to LHR, take the Avios hit once, and then book return trips ex-LON for your next visit(s). It does mean you have to know when you're coming back next, but I have a freelance colleague from Chicago who spends a week here every month, he's found he saves about 10-15k a year doing that.

Up In The Air

firstlight

don't know about a thread, it might be entirely random but DXB , CW to F has always worked for 2 of us together (even better when wt+ tickets plus UUA). Also returning from Canada in wt+ to cw seems fairly regular.