lms01810

I currently have gold on CX and will move to London soon. Should I stick with CX or switch to BA? Is there a minimum CX segment requirement to maintain status or can i get it by doing only BA/ other OW flights. Thanks.

ernestnywang

Minimum 4 sectors on CX, but I'm not sure if it's enforced.

GE90-115B

If you fly a BA flight booked under a CX co-share, I think that counts towards the four CX-sector requirement too.

Rivarix

Is it really 4 sectors? From reading the language on cx.com it seems that you need 4 sectors to renew green and only 1 sector on CX to renew silver, gold or diamond.

"The chart below indicates the Club miles and Club sectors (including a minimum of one eligible sector on Cathay Pacific or Dragonair) required to renew or upgrade tiers within a membership year."

kaka

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_0_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11A501 Safari/9537.53)

Is that new?!

But the 4 sectors to renew green is largely not enforced (never heard ppl got stripped of green)

EuropeToAsia

Aside from minimum CX sectors, for people flying long haul J class it seems quite a bit easier to obtain and renew OW Emerald or Sapphire with BA EC than with Marco Polo club (pending the rumoured 2016 changes to Marco Polo). BA EC tend to give you more avios on BA as Sapphire or Emerald (bonus avios) than Marco Polo gives Asia Miles on CX. If you also travel between Europe and North America, this may be particularly significant as obviously CX doesn't fly these routes.

My experience may not apply if you easily make Gold or Diamond on CX and mostly travel to Asia frequently. I'm Europe based, and changed from CX MP to BAEC since my frequency of travel to Asia has been much reduced while that to North America has increased.

CrazyJ82

I've made this move, and switched from CX GO to BAEC, where I'm now silver (sapphire). What I found:

- If you're mostly flying BA, I think there's some value having status with the carrier you fly the most.

- If you fly in discount economy on BA, you can't earn anything in MPO. BA recently reduced earning for the deepest discount economy fares but you still get something, including a few tier points.

- Non-flying earn opportunities for AsiaMiles are thin on the ground in the UK. Nothing like all the CC options available in HK. BAEC isn't as good as the credit cards in HK either, but at least you can get a BA Amex with a decent earn rate and 2-for-1 redemption voucher.

- Status is significantly easier to earn, especially if you fly premium economy or above longhaul. On shorthaul, frequent discounted paid upgrade offers make it easy to top up tier points as needed. The proliferation of ex-EU discounts for business class make it even easier. It may be harder to earn status in BAEC flying discount economy (I haven't crunched the numbers) but if that's your flying pattern on BA you'll be earning 0 in MPO anyway.

- Shorthaul redemptions on BA are a great value due to low mileage required and discount on YQ. Long-haul not so much, although upgrades can be decent value -- more miles required, but you can upgrade discount premium economy to business.

BAEC isn't perfect. I wish they allowed waitlisting for awards and had more generous CC earn options, and the devaluation earlier this year hurt. And in the air the customer service is bad compares to CX. But I still found it worth switching.

1010101

I would swap to BAEC. It's a much better miles programme, even if the airline is pretty rubbish. You will gain status easier and the programme is far more flexible/better run than the MPC.

You can still fly CX back to HK and earn roughly the same points as you would on BA.

Mwenenzi

lms01810 Welcome to FT

Is living in London temporary or for ever ?
What do want from a ffp?
For many being a ff member with the airline you fly most with is better.
Questions about the BA ffp are best asked in the BA forum

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...help-here.html

jasjasper

I've been living in London for quite a while now, and have managed to maintain my CX GO for the last 5 years, but 3 months ago, I decided it was time for me to move over to BAEC, when my GO was renewed/rest

Since June, I've already managed to climb from BA Blue-Bronze-Silver (Sapp), all I did was 2 EU return flights (4 sector BA metal requirements ticked off) and a LHR-DOH-HKG return on a heavily discounted I fare on QR.

One great thing about BAEC is that, unlike CX, when you reach the next tier, they won't automatically reset all tier points to zero. Instead, your anniversary date is fixed, and mine is June, meaning, I could still progress to BA GO (OW EM) within this year!

Tier points aside, Avois (equivalent to AsiaMiles) earning is great (with 50% tier bonus for Silver and Gold) and on the ground earning is also good.
Using miles seems also to be easier than Asiamiles- you could part-pay for flights on BA with miles!

As said above, both hard and softwares on BA aren't great, but if you want to keep your OW perks, BAEC definitely isn't too bad

Alternatively, AAdvantage also isn't too hard to qualify for OW SAP - all you need is 2 AA metal flights and 50K miles

It's definitely worth the switch!

CrazyJ82

I don't think this will be quite the case if OP has status, since BAEC offers status bonuses (50% for silver) only for flights on BA, IB and AA metal.

The one case where I wouldn't rush to join BAEC is if planning to fly CX in discount economy frequently to Asia. But TBH I find BA's fares more competitive ex-LHR -- the correlation between this and the poor quality is not lost on me, but if you gotta go and don't want to spend a fortune... -- so as much better as CX is I haven't yet been able to justify paying that premium even in Y.

1010101

It depends the fare and your status obviously, but roughly speaking BA rewards flying in premium cabins and its frequent flyers far more than CX does.

As you say, only when flying discount economy and only on CX does the MPC make it easier to achieve status than BA.

brunos

CX program is currently geared towards Y frequent flyers, BA program is geared towards Premium cabin flyers. If you fly in J, BA will easily give you status.
As outlined above, a great advantage of BAEC IF you live in UK is the many ways you can earn avios on purchases and credit cards.
If you are based in UK, you will do a lot of BA flying and earn many more miles on BAEC than on CX AM. And you can still use your avios to get awards on CX.

AA_EXP09

or get AA status if you do a lot of deep discount Y flying (just remember to take a TATL flight with a connection in order to meet the AA metal requirement.)

AA_EXP09

and there are always ex EU opportunities on BA that cannot be done on CX.
i.e. AMSSIN on BA can be routed AMS-LON-(HKG)-SIN-LON-AMS (for <500 EUR), while this must be done AMS-HKG-SIN v.v on CX.
(and it is possible to get off at LON on the inbound, especially with an airport change in London, or, alternatively, use one of the two free stopovers allowed in this fare to reposition for the next ex EU flight!)