Life after Diamond?
 

I reached Diamond status on 7/25/11. That's after being gold on 4/6/11. Right now in mid December 2011, I am at 115K miles. Renewal is a done deal.

My question is, do I have any incentive to keep flying beyond the 5K miles before 7/31/12? Note that I fly only economy fares, typically the lowest that accumulates Asia Miles. DM+, as far as I know, is revenue based, so I'm basically out of the running for that. So are all my Marco Polo status miles after those 5K going to go to waste if I fly CX before 7/31/12?

I also like to keep my 1K in United, so I will probably start working on that in January and it'll take me about 3 months to get there too. So what do I do in April or May, when neither airline has a status incentive for me, except to rack up more frequent flier miles for my family to use? Do I start on a third program? I do about 330K painful economy miles a year, with about 33% upgrades due to op-ups and Systemwide Upgrades from UA.

That is a lot of pain...and it's a good question we've had some vigorous debates about. Long story short, since DM+ is out of the picture your incentive would only be whatever benefits you derive from having DM status on your flights. There is no extra benefits earned when you cross 150k, 200k, etc. Club Miles for a year. Those benefits would include all the obvious (lounge access, check-in priority, etc etc), but to me the main factors are:

1.) Op-ups. Depending on your routing, you could hit above 33% op-ups rates for certain flights. I imagine if you're in long-haul Y a lot, this could be pretty useful.
2.) Special upgrade days. These usually include your birthday, MPC major anniversaries (5 years, 10 years), and mileage thresholds (500k, 750k, 1mm, etc.).
3.) In flight service, particularly when an outstanding crew goes out of their way to make life comfy and convenient for DM members on board.

I've ranted about CX's seat blocking system before. It's good precisely when it's not very important (not very full flights), but less useful when you need it the most (those 80-90% full flights).

Personally, despite my gripes here on FT from time to time I find life as a DM to be net net a very impressive experience, and it keeps me pretty loyal to CX even after requalifying. I do occasionally also fly SQ and ME airlines, but give the bulk of my business to CX because of op-ups and the rest of the treatment you get as a DM.

Come on now it's UA, why go through the pain of begin belittle by a bad Airline? If you have the ability to, just pile it on CX. Yes nobody likes to see all those miles go to waste, but the benefit is you continue to get the top-treatment from a 5-star airline.

This year I could of split some long-hauls to sustain my *A Gold (got it through matching, but only good for 3 months). But the thought of flying with anything but CX for 15-16 hours? Forget it. I rather not.

whats your airline mix? how about getting status on another OW airline?
if you fly around 25000miles on JL then you can qualify for JGC (50000international miles which 25000 is on JL, and needs next to nothing for requalification)or AA where you can get lifetime status

I would suggest accumulating in AA after 120k. Best earning rate and redemption rate. Check-in with CX... only at the gate change to AA.

Thanks for the good tips guys. UA I like because they give you upgrade certificates that almost always work. And they give me lots of bonus miles (100%), though that is offset either by higher requirements, limited availability, and threat of bankruptcy. Also, I live in the US about 50% of the time, so UA's domestic network is still important to me, though I do 95% of my miles international....

Here's where I go the most, primarily out of SFO. Taiwan about 2x a month, Singapore about 1x a month, (sometimes in via long haul, sometimes in via TW/HK), Exit to HK 4 to 5 times a year (of course in HKG more times than I care to remember via CX), and Zurich about 4 times a year.

I know I should look at BR but their mileage program sucks. You don't get 100% miles on cheap tickets, weird restrictions on awards, awards not useful outside of Taiwan.

The CX check in and switch at the gate intrigues me. Given I'm nobody on AA right now, does that mean when I switch at the gate, the CX inflight crew will suddenly not like me as much as I thought they did? Also, then I have to be careful to book only high end econ tickets for AA mileage credit.

I'm in a similar situation this year. My membership year expires Sep 30, 2012. By end of December 2011, I will have re qualified for DM (70% in J & F).

So while my miles are technically wasted for the next 9 months from a tier / elite perspective, I will probably fly CX as much as I normally do. The service they provide is too good for me to fly away much. Also I find it very easy to use my miles for upgrades, so have an incentive to keep earning AsiaMiles.

The reason to change to AA# at the gate is by then they would have already processed any upgrades and printed the passenger manifest. So they would use your Diamond number to consider you for upgrades and cabin crew see your Diamond status. So switch at the very last minute before you board.

You can do the AA Platinum challenge (must include 4 AA flights I think) and very soon you'll get 100% bonus. I haven't looked into which CX economy fares qualify for miles on the AA program. You can check it out on aa.com for details and see if this works for you or not. Also for AA EXP (=UA 1K) you get 8 SWUs (eVIPs) on AA instead of 6 on UA.

AA SWUs are good on ANY fare... UA SWUs cannot be used on the cheap economy tickets

If I were you, I will do Delta or any other SkyTeam airlines.

At the least, your current status gives you enough recognition in both OW and *A already.

If you do AA Platinum Challenge you have to fly with AA, but that includes AA codeshare. CX Economy Y, B, H fares give you credit for miles with AA FFP numbers, nothing else, so unless you're traveling on company tab, the cost could be quite expensive.

if OP flies CX most of the time, i'd say fly as CX DM and switch to AA "last minute". since we know CX unofficially counts his/her revenue on CX, not just miles clocked under the CX DM account, it will not be too bad. not so much for AA plat benefits, more for AA lifetime plat. (of course, you could do some AA MRs for the plat challenge!)

I kind of have the same question too...I am 7 months into my DM membership year and already at 165k miles / 75 sectors - having already credited some 40k flight miles into AA these few months as well.

I know I won't be reaching DM+ anyway, since I fly maybe 85% in J (full fare regionally, discounted fares or RTW long haul) and 15% in F (mostly RTW long haul) - I think I average maybe like HKD 500k in a year and don't think it's even close to DM+ at all. I believe it does take quite some long-haul full-fare to get to DM+...

So I have instead also diverted in these few months to Star some 2 SQ J long-haul roundtrips (I frankly like their seat much better than CX old J), 1 TK J long-haul roundtrip, and some regional J trips - these are trips that I might have flown on CX too, but there's just not much incentive for me to do so at all...frankly, instead of betting on getting upgrade on CX to F...I might as well just guarantee my wide J seat on SQ vs. the old coffin seat on CX, if I didn't get an upgrade...

I understand that there's not much they can do for this group of us...who, easily surpassed DM, at maybe easily 240k or easily 360k miles a year, decent revenue contribution (at least all J/F fares, ex-HKG, can't be too low), but not enough to reach DM+...I'm sure there's quite some of us and there's quite some "revenue lost" in this batch since many of our trips go to SQ/competitors after the 120k threshold, but I also can understand they can't create too many target segments and give more benefits beyond DM if we're far from DM+...

Think I may be changing my strategy. Not sure I see much upside to continuing to bank excess miles with CX, especially with the F lounge closed. While I fly a lot in J and will do 300k miles this year, I don;t think I am going to end up as DM+ candidate.

Had a straw that broke the camel's back moment last night.

Have flown SGN-HKG-SGN 10 times in paid J (or I) since Nov 2011 (among lots of other flying, but been on this route a lot). Y always packed, so very often a ton of op-ups in J.

Booked a ticket last night in Y instead of J mostly to see if I would get an up-op. Y cabin ended up overbooked. Watched several op-ups get called up to podium pre-boarding. Not all were DMs either (the ISM kindly confirmed this for me). Not me.

I subscribe to the get what you pay for philosophy, so I am not mad nor do I feel that I didn't get something I deserved, however it crystallized the fact that I may as well put the bulk of the next 140k miles on Star and/or Skyteam, since putting excess on CX has little marginal benefit if I am flying in J anyway.

There is status, and there's also who you know on staff. Staff upgrading friends is probably much more frequent than we'd like. And I presume many important people may also have UGSAs in their profiles.