How long do you get to keep your status?
 

My MP membership year goes from Oct 1 to Sept 30. If I fly 30,000 miles in the next 2 months, I will get Silver immediately with my status miles reset to zero.

My question is do I get to keep the Silver Status next year meaning I can earn the Gold status if I fly 60,000 miles from Oct 1, 2007 to Sept 30, 2008? Am I correct? Thanks.

Let say, if you achieved sliver status in April, 07, I believe your sliver status will last from April, 07 to April 30, 2008. During this period, if you fly more than 60000 miles, you will be upgraded to gold status with a valid period of 12 months immediately follow.

Just to expand on that, if you achieve 30,000 miles on, say, 20 April you will become Silver and your new membership year will be 20 April 2007 to 30 April 2008.

If, for example, you then got 60,000 more miles by December 12, you would become Gold and your new membership year would be 12 December 2007 - 31 December 2008.

Your membership year stays the same if you renew at the same level or drop down one or more levels. It changes when you go up a level.

It is still a bit confusing. Does it mean that to get to Gold from 0 club mile, you have to fly 30K miles first to get to Silver and then an additional 60K to get to Gold? It'll make the total miles to achieve Gold 90K miles. Is it correct?

If this is the way it works, to get to Diamond, it will take someone with 0 club mile initially a total of 210K miles (30K + 60K + 120K). Sounds very tough.

It is also very different comparing to the other frequent flyer programs. For example, it only takes someone 100K miles (in total) during Jan 01 to Dec 31 to get to the top tier for Air Canada Aeroplan.

Correct, for the single year case. If you are Silver, you only need to fly 60K in subsequent years to reach Gold. CX plan is a bit unique (though BA is like this too); and yes, single year to Diamond is 210K miles, making it the hardest status to earn in 1 year. But again much easier in subsequent years. But if too tough to do in 1 year, just do it in 13 months (then it only takes 120K after Gold year has ended).

CX Diamond is probably the most valuable airline status around, certainly a lot more valuable than AC top tier. CX has deliberately made it hard to earn, to keep the number of Diamonds small. Well worth having if you fly CX, esp. if not in F.

I also think that there's a difference in service levels, amenities, benefits, lounges, aircraft, seats and awards. More likely than not, the reason why the likes of BA, CX, LH and SQ make making top tier so difficult is to maintain exclusivity and to ensure that already high (by domestic USA carriers) service levels are even higher for these top fliers.

Bringing up this old thread because I am still confused. I thought it says in the MPC letter (when one gets status) that an individual may only go up one rung a year. So I was just an AM member, got the requisite 30k/20 segments (mostly in Asia) and was given Silver Status just 2 months ago.

Now I thought I would have to fly 30k this year just to maintain it and that I would not be moved up regardless of how much I fly due to the "one level a year" rule. In other words, I fly another 30k/20 segs before next August, I get renewed and then I can go for gold... Yes? No?

Seems based on these posts that one can move a number of levels in a year...

My apologies in advance if this is beating a dead horse for many.

You can try to fly the required amount for the higher tier once "Silver" status is achieved. So 60k club miles or 40 club sectors and there you go.

Other airlines don't do this, so I can understand why you're finding it hard to believe.

For instance, with Qantas, you can go all the way to Platinum without your status credits being reset to zero - they even give you two years as a new member!

But CX resets you to zero at every upgrade. It makes Diamond hard to achieve, and once you get there, you wonder whether it was worth it ;-)

For a long time I hope :D .... or better yet qualify to Diamond

One thing I hadn't considered about the program until now...the barrier to entry is pretty high, and since officially there is no soft landing (although I realize a few people on this board have had them do that) it may give fliers an incentive to keep flying CX to maintain DM, lest they have to work all the way back up to DM again (unlike other carriers, who say would just give you top status after going 100k or 120k miles flat). Because for those of us who fly all the time maintaining DM isn't hard at all, but working up to DM still can take 6-8 mos or so (210k miles) due to all the resets. So maybe in a perverted way it keeps you hanging on, not because you love it but because you're afraid of losing it.