Cheap Seats vs Mileage ???
 

I'm about 4500 miles away from renewing my Gold Status and still have until Dec 31 to complete. I have an upcoming LAX-MNL-LAX (15k miles) this weekend and I'm sure to have at least 2 more such trips between Nov and December.

Trying for Diamond (was Diamond between 2008-2010) is probably out of the question unless I request for an extension and try to do 4 more returns until Feb or March 2016.

I've been booking these trips with at least a V class bucket to get the full mileage credit. These usually cost about 1200usd to 1600usd per trip so they are not cheap at all.

Same flight on N class right now is 821 with about 3900 miles credited.

Should I just coast for the rest of the year and just buy the N class and save me at least 600 usd per trip, or 300 usd for 6000 miles? I still get the same benefits with the n-class but without the actual miles flown credit.

Its funny, even with the lower surcharges, Cathay still manages to extract the same price for these trips for the last 5 years or so.

You can only get Asia Miles but not Club Miles on N class. It cannot help you getting to GO.

Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I'll go ahead and book a V-class before Dec 31.

OP need to make 3 r/t by end of the year. He's only missing 4500.
If DM is not achievable, then by all means make 2 trips on N fares..

I don't fly to MNL, but does V fares exist on that route?
What's the cost for 3 LAX-HKG r/t on N. Then 3 HKG-MNL r/t on V?

Probably best to just do LAX-MNL two on N, one on V.

N fare is 821
V fare is 1336