But the flip-side is that you can now purchase most of the benefits of status. In fact this might actually save you money, as the underlying plane ticket can be booked on a time and price basis.

Want priority boarding - any LCC will sell it to you. Or get EasyJet plus. Virgin does "economy Delight" which gives priority too. And get lounge access off your credit card.

I have has Silver status for several years and have no desire (or the cash resources) to chase Gold. I am happy with the benefits of Silver, particularly seat selection in Y on short haul where I usually manage to get exit row seats, so no need to pay for CE. Will be doing a 600pts TPR in late Oct/early Nov to retain that status.

(On the other hand) As a leisure traveller, just hit Silver for the first time after many years! Not planning to go any further though, another 900 TP to gold sounds too far away!

Dropping from Gold to Silver
 

I count myself pretty lucky to have maintained Gold for this long. I first achieved this dizzy height in Q2 2016 so knew it would be there until Aug 17. Being caught up in the May 2017 fiasco I had my Gold statu extedned out until July 2019 (Card epxired Aug 19) and considering in that time I would have only achieved Silver in each year the fact this year I drop (if that's the right term to use) to Silver I've got no complaints. I've been thoroughly spoiled with First Check-in at T5 and spending hours watching landings and departures from the First lounge. I'll miss the fat check-in, the additional award seats available but at least as a Silver I can still use the lounge and I assume still get free seat assignment. But I will miss the First lounge that's for sure.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. My future life as a Silver will be relatively short as future travel pland mean I will attain Gold again April 2020.

Put into persepive, things could be a Sh*t load worse in life.
ML

This is so true. I am glad that airlines de-bundled their offering so one can choose the bits they actually need. Airports also started offering fast track immigration and security for purchase which I always use. I am not tied to BA on shorthaul so cannot use the status, but almost all airlines I use offer everything that one would normally get either with the class of service or via status for purchase. The only thing that they don't offer is priority check-in unfortunately. I just bought a trip to London for 2 with UIA paying for an extra comfort seat, bags, hot meals, seats at the front of the cabin (so basically a business class experience), which ended costing good 40% less than what I used to pay for economy a few years ago, and three times cheaper than buying business class now. It's nice to have status but the world does not end when we loose it. Lounges at non-home airports are horribly sad so I'd rather sit at a bar. I lost a Premium status with PS last year, and honestly did not really notice a difference apart from losing the business class check-in benefit.

Dropped from silver to blue and couldn't care less. Flying different airlines and it does the job

You are posting in the wrong forum, my dear! ;)

So my normal T5 routine as a silver card holder if connection time is less than 2 hours is to buy a chicken and bacon caesar baguette and a coffee at Pret near gate 2/3 and sit at a gate that has just finished boarding. Really relaxing non crowded time for just £7. Lounge is not worth the hassle at busy times.

If connection is longer I will go to lounge for sure.

Surely status is only worth it if you fly a lot? Otherwise just buy the benefits and it's cheaper. Yeah it's nice being a GCH but only because it makes flying LH (which I do most weeks) more pleasant. If I'm not flying long haul most weeks then I care not a jot.

A quandry for me. Estimated 1,330tp this year. Do I go the extra mile(s) for the sake of it.

We are just about to both hit silver for the first time due to a QR flight last year in J and some CE travel on BA more recently. Once Other Half got a taste of Lounge Life and early boarding at the front of the plane I'm not sure he will ever go back. Neither of us travel right now for work, however in reality Silver probably isn't that hard to maintain - one really good QR flight ex-EU (and we usually have reasons to be in Stockholm for family) and some CE BA returns and you are pretty much there.

However, while we have done a BA redemption in CW/First this year and just did the CE in the big 777 to Madrid (and the IB version on return), when it came down to book revenue flights home to the US later this summer we went with SAS in their Plus long haul cabin for better value. For the same price as BA WT+ out of London, we get: better seats to ORD, an overnight at the Radisson Blu Arlanda, five days car hire in Sweden, and our LHR-ARN flights (on BA, in econ). We liked the SAS Plus product and amenities included (ARN/ORD lounge for what its worth, extra luggage, priority boarding,seat selection), ORD is a 'short' run for us, we have to stop and see family anyway, and while I would like to try the SK biz offering, it just isn't worth the premium on this flight. Besides, the SK miles slot into my VS account and other half has his Eurobonus account, so its not like they are going to waste.

I like to think of the BA status as a tool to 'smooth the way' rather than being the only way. The perks on the BA flights (mostly luggage allowance) were the decider over taking the similarly timed SAS flights to ARN. Bronze status helped earlier in the year when our AA flights got changed and helped us get luggage checked, and if we had silver then I imagine would have helped with some of the layovers. I can believe that if you are a very frequent biz traveler and more likely to get stuck in delays or cancellation then status is helpful, but for a leisure traveler like us it comes down to price/value/destination/aircraft type/layovers and mixing and matching to find the best value possible.