My question is what happens to any excess miles above 120,000 I earn in my membership year. Will they go towards my 2011 status or be 'lost' for status purposes?

Specifically, I have 115,000 MPC points in my current membership year which ends Oct. 30. If I requalify in this month September, I understand that my new membership year will end Sept. 30, 2011. So far so good, I hope.

For example, if I earn 7000 MPC points on 9/20 (only 5000 of which I need to requalify in 2010) and 10,000 more on 9/25, what if any of these are credited towards my 2011 status renewal?

Which one of these scenarios, if any, is accurate??
Zero? (neither flight because they are still in my 2010 renewal)
10,000? (only the 9/25 flight)
12,000? (the 2000 excess on the 9/20 flight + 10,000 on the 9/25 flight)

What I'm really trying to get at is do I need to delay some of my travel to October to get the most requalifying points for 2011. I can move the 9/25 flight to 10/1 if those 10,000 points would otherwise be lost.

Have I completely misunderstood and I won't start earning 2011 requal points until November??

I'll edit the combined responses to send to Guy Betsy to add to the FAQ.

Thanks!

In my experience, they will zero out the account at the month end of your statement and anything that you've earned over the requalification goes with it. But who really knows what they do, you might be able to ask them to reset after your flight past the 120,000 and have the flight on 9/25 credited towards 2011 but then the question becomes whether they'll bump your membership year cycle up a month to end in September next time around.

Another way that's been mentioned is to credit your flight after the reset but I don't have experience in doing this. It might be as simple as removing your MPC from the reservation but then I would argue that it would hurt your chances for OP up or better service etc.

Maybe shoot and email to MPC Membership services and see what they have to say about it.

First, know that CX does not roll over status miles. Once you "hit" the threshold, their philosophy seems to be that any additional status miles you have are irrelevant.

However, the final result depends on a few factors. First, are you DM or GO right now?

If DM:
1.) Your status miles are "lost," as you say. This is a very common complaint about CX's system I think we describe it a bit in the faq. Your year will NOT be reset early (although some people here say you can write to CX and request that, but given your example with such a tight timeline between the flights - Sept 20 and Sept 25 - I doubt this would work). Instead, you will keep earning status miles in excess of 120k and you will simply re-up your Diamond status in early October, while those status miles over 120k go to waste (as a token gesture, they generally give you a few weeks extra if you qualify early. Aka, if you're already DM, technically you're not supposed to re-qualify until Oct 30, but I notice myself resetting somewhere between the 3rd and 9th of my qualifying month).

If GO:
1.) Your miles might not be lost (however, read the exception below). When you hit the 120k mark (by hitting 122k with your 7k flight) on September 20, you will very quickly become Gold (generally within a week or so). When this happens, your miles will be reset AND so will your membership year (probably). Those extra 2k miles over 120k are definitely going to be lost (they don't roll towards the future), but if all goes according to as it should, now that you're DM your future flights can start counting towards your next year's DM status.

Exception:
1.) In a nutshell, CX's system doesn't really make logical sense. As you probably are figuring out, it becomes a game to try to just BARELY clear the mileage threshold. It stinks, for example, to "make" DM with a flight from HKG-JFK (10k miles in J) when you had 119,500 miles. You "lost", in essence, 9,500 elite miles. This would be really relevant for the following year, especially if you were just short of DM by 9,000 miles.
2.) The other problem is the reset timing. They don't do it based on when you FLY, but rather when the miles POST. This is arbitrary. Typically ex-HKG flights on CX post the fastest (1-3 days, depending on when the weekend falls), but some outports and particularly partner airlines take much longer. So, in your example, you fly on Sept 20 AND Sept 25. If the Sept 20 miles don't POST by the time you fly on Sept 25, then your Sept 25 miles are going to be "wasted" as well, pushing you well over the 120k threshold but not rolling over to your next membership year. Does this make sense?

No

Makes sense to me. But then, I've been playing this "how to waste as few Club Miles as possible" game for quite some time now. Last year, using some creative travel planning I managed to qualify for Gold on a very short YYZ-ORD hop on AA, so I wasted almost nothing!

Basically, to answer the OP's question properly, we need to know if he is already DM trying to requalify, or if he is GO trying to become DM. The answer will be different depending on which case.

QRC3288 answered for both cases, correctly.

Elsewhere, someone mentioned that if you've already requalified, you can ask MPC to reset your year early. Is that really possible?

I made many attempts at resetting the year early but never worked if you simply requalified for same tier. The only time your 'membership year' changes is when you qualify for upper tier, then ur counter reset to 0 as a new level, with expiary date being end of that month a year later.

I have the answer to that - from the horse's mouth so to speak - in fact just today. I have requalified way too early for DM this year, and asked if they can renew my membership year now. They said absolutely no problem, but my miles will be reset to zero (that much is fine) but I only have 12 months (instead of 18) for the next membership year. Not a good deal.

There is the DM+ status that one can aim for, but it is not a published level and it is by invitation only. No guidelines on how you will become one even if you fly lots and lots, so that would be a shot in the dark to aim for. The way I see it, it might be worth me flying with someone else and get miles there.

Thanks everyone. I (OP) am already Diamond. I am understanding that unless I ask CX to change my membership year my Diamond membership year will always end October 31 so long as I renew each year sometime during my membership year. Any extra points (not miles) I earn before Oct. 31 will be "lost". This is helpful because I was strongly under the impression that my membership year would automatically change as soon as I requalified.

I think this would be helpful to add to the FAQ: "If you requalify for the same status your membership year will remain unchanged. It is possible to ask CX to reset your membership year once you have renewed but this is not automatic. If you qualify for a higher status your membership year will be reset to end the month you reached the higher status. If you fail to qualify for the same or higher status then your status will be adjusted down in your new membership year."

Also for the FAQ: "Be careful that MPC considers the post date not the flight date for status determinations." This is a significant issue, although it's hard for me to imagine CX denying a renewal or upgrade for a flight that occured on the last day fo the membership year if you called and nagged them.

I suggest that we communally wordsmith my proposed additions above and then move it to the FAQ.

Cheers,
Paul

I think CX will also do it for you automatically, but this is by no mean a rule and seems like exceptions. I have SL for years and when one year I racked up 52K miles in 4 months they upgraded me to GO status and reset my calendar year to that month.

Better way is to call MPC and ask verbally as others seem to have done and it worked.

....not true for DMs. The situation you describe is for SL and GO only. The difference for DM is that there is no higher status to obtain, so they don't reset you early. The only potential exception would be I suppose if you wrote to them asking to reset early. But it is not SOP for them to reset DMs before the membership year ends.

Assuming OP's 20/9 flight is on CX/KA, miles should be credited about 22/9 or 23/9. OP can then immediately call MPC to reset the membership year. It should be done within a day, but the new membership year will end in September 2011.

However, as there is no official rule on this, CX can change this anytime.

Advice here was good. My final qualifying flight posted Oct. 8 and I called MPC the same day. They reset my account with no fuss at all. My new membership year is Oct. 8 2010 to Oct. 31, 2011. So my calendar year didn't change either.

I already have miles posting to the new year. My connecting flight posted on Oct. 9 to my new membership year. It took overnight for the reset to appear online.

Thanks everyone!

I was around 170K club miles with a year end of Oct 31....wondering should I go ahead and fly SQ's A380 to SIN in a couple weeks. My account was also reset on Oct 7 without any request on my part....smart move CX. New account year is same as yours - Oct 8, 2010 to Oct 31, 2011.

I'm a GO member and my membership year ends on 31 Mar 2011. I will complete 60K miles by end of Feb and on 2nd March, I will be flying to NA again and will get another 17K miles which I don't need to go into my current membership year and I want it to go into my new year.

If I call MPC hotline on 1 March 2011 and ask them to reset my membership year as I have already completed 60K miles, will they do that and give me a new GO membership year of 2 March 2011 to 31 March 2012? If so, my return trip to NA can credit into my new year.

According to my experience, they will not.