Is Gold worth it?
 

Hi, first of all let me say what an interesting board this is.

My question is by the time my silver level is meant to have been reached, ie, August 31st, I have a number of regional and long haul flights over the next two months, but calculating the mileage gained, I will be only about 2,500 miles off my next level, Gold.

Is going to Gold worth it?

Is it worth me paying quite a deal more to go J class on a longer haul flight or contacting CX for a one month extension and booking a flight in September (when I hadn't planned on doing so)?

Many thanks.

How much extra money will you spend in order to attain gold? Which of the Gold benefits do you think you will appreciate most? Do you only fly CX?

It would probably cost me 12000HKD plus. I generally only travel on CX, so I suppose it may help with future upgrades I assume.

I encountered the same situation a few years ago. I did not do a mileage run. I traveled around CNY the next year and ended paying K fare instead as I could not use seat guarantee. I still did not regret it. This depends more on the traveler.

Currently, long haul J cabins often get full before Y. Even as Diamond, the chance of op-up from Y to J is low, but from J to F is high. On mileage award upgrades, the chance of getting should be higher for Gold compared with Silver.

I think with the changes coming to the asiamiles program in the fall, it is kinda hard to predict the relative worth of any of the tiers until the new changes are implemented and people have first hand experience with award/upgrade availability.

So if it was me I might hesitate to go for the gold unless I was planning to do a lot of traveling on cx between now and october under the old rules...

Actually it really depends where you actually NOT fly with CX or not. BEcause if you are SL already, you get Lounge access/ excess bags, priority bags on all CX op flights. However with Gold that entitles you to Oneworld Sapphire benefits and that will give you Oneworld Lounge access.

EY (down to V) Seat Guarantee does help me to save quite a lot of money. Moreover it increases the flexibility of your travel (to decide and grab a seat lately). Personally I would go for a run if you are very close to it.

Just to avoid doubt, if you are green now, and you qualify for Silver for first time in Aug31, you will need to have another 60,000 in 2months to attain gold. If you are already silver and you meant you will "requalify" by 31 Aug by getting 30,000 miles, you simply need additional 30,000 prior to your current silver membership expirary date. From your post, I can't ascertain which of these category you fall in.

Thanks for the responses. Fakecd, I'm currently at silver and have already requalified.

Dave Marsh, that's what I was thinking.

I currently 6 months into my gold level and 1 of my LAX-HKG and 2 of my HKG-LAX Y flights were upgraded to J. All of my HKG-MNL-HKG segments have been upgraded to J as well. On silver, I was upgraded once MNL-HKG.

Needless to say, I'm enjoying being gold at the moment. One other benefit is being able to get a friend/relative into the lounge.

Go for Gold! It is worth the your mileage run efforts. Used to be gold and enjoyed every moment of it.

Just to minimise confusion, "2months" is obviously a typo for "12 months".

Good for you. I am a DM member. I fly SFO-HKG often. After a double op-up around CNY, I flew 14 sectors, including four long hauls. Guess what - I only got an op-up on HKG-TPE once. With a full J but not completely full Y, I got zero chance of op-up on those long hauls. Nevertheless, I am still very pleased with the service I received.

Haha... it's ok... I have same situation with you. I am Gold and only got HKG-MNL upgrade once in past few months. All my long-haul and regional flights had NO op-up... :p

After I read quite a few op-up stories here and flyertalk, sometimes I think ==> Am I in the black list of having op-up for whatever reasons??? (At least you got your double-op up...haha...)

I think that may have to do with the routes, and possibly your point of origin. Some routes have a lot of J passengers and the chances of op-up are much smaller. Also it seems to be quite direction-dependent.