Efficient ways to earn Platinum
 

Hey all!
Tips to a newbie, what would be "fastest" yet cost-effective ways to gain Platinum (+lifetime) level? :)

I am also interested in this topic. :)
I've never actually been Platinum myself so I shouldn't say too much, but my guess is that the best trade-off between cost and time would be to buy cheap LH business class tickets. That is what I am currently trying to do personally at least, aiming for Plat for the first time this year.

But since I am also not too experienced with this I am not 100% sure what a good points per euro ratio to aim for is, obviously the more points the better but ~30 points per euro is maybe a good lower limit to go by?

I like the title here! We’ve been discussing this in several topics over and over again, but this title is likely to catch the attention of many, so perhaps it is in order to try to move the discussion here.

And welcome to FT and the AY forum, Cavallier. And hi to you, too, AlgoRhythmic!

To be able to give you an answer we’d need to know your home airports. I’ll assume HEL for my brief summary below, but if that’s not the case, then much of what I say will not apply to you.

You can reach Platsku either by segments or tier points. If by segments, you’re not likely to be getting a whole lot of points, so you can forget lifetime status. If that’s what you’re after, you need to (1) fly immensely, and (2) live long. Those thresholds are not within easy reach.

For Platsku, you need 76 segments. If you’re based in HEL, you should be able to find discounted flights to ARN and OUL for some €70-80 return. That should be about €3000 for 38 returns, but of course it’s very time consuming.

If you go the points way, you’ll need 150 000 points. You don’t need to fly this much, because you can exchange award points for tier points at a ratio of 3:1. In practice, starting from zero, you’ll need to get 120 000 and can then make the exchange. If you already have points or get them from other sources, then you can fly less and exchange more, but in all cases you need to get at least 75 000 tier points by flying.

Ex-HEL, your options are basically:
(1) Fly (perhaps on same plane turnarounds) to DEL on Value tickets, €500 each, after 7 returns you will have 121 600 points. Change 90k for 30k tier points and reach Platsku for about €3500
(2) Buy J campaign tickets, sometimes available for as low as €1300 ex-HEL, mostly to Chinese secondary cities. After 4 returns you will have 139 200 points, can make a points exchange and will reach Platsku for about €5200. Not as cost-effective but more comfortable.
(3) Combine (1) and (2); one DEL/Value and three J campaign tickets would be €4400 and 120 800 points, enough to make an exchange to reach Platsku
(4) If you’re more adventurous, you could also seek out fares from India to the US, or vice versa. Fares are usually cheap and include four longhauls, so lots of points. Eg. one Value return ticket to DEL and one Business return ticket DEL-JFK would get you approx. 84 000 points and cost €3000. You would then need two DEL/Values or one J campaign ticket to reach 120 000, so the total cost would be in the €4000-€4300 range.

Note that on your way to Platsku, you’ll reach Silver and Gold, giving you a 10% and 15 % bonus, respectively.

Russia-HEL-China I runs are pretty decent e.g. 35,640 points €1,120 SVO-HEL-(most Chinese cities) return.

DEL same flight turnaround is ending soon (April?), according to discussion in other thread. Other than that, I will also be keeping my eye on this thread! :D

Looking at June schedules, the plane still stays on the ground from 5:25 to 9:45. With no flight Saturday to DEL and Sunday back to HEL, we'll need to buy nested tickets to make it work (which could be a bit risky if there are cancellations).

And Value tickets exAsia are pricey.

I've actually been thinking about this quite a lot, first year as Platinum and the new Platinum Wing is definitely going to be awesome so I think I have enough incentives to try and renew my status. I think I'm going to achieve my goal mostly flying cheap Value-tickets to Asia plus a few cheap trips to the States. Last time I had 86k flown tier points and then exchanged 195k normal points to tier points to make up the difference. Value tickets to (interesting) Asia destinations are usually around 650 euros if you are flexible on dates and will net you 16-20k tier points roundtrip depending on your current status level.

Thanks people and awesome to hear that I drafted an interesting thread!
My home airport is HEL.

Cheap trips to US/Canada can not earn good mileage anymore, since AA guted earnings to AY.

To earn 100% on transatlantic routes, you need either uneconomical M booking codes (or above), or premium economy (available on AA or BA metal) - either way preferably AY-coded.

What do you get if you book through AY Holidays? A HEL-NRT or ARN-NRT AY Holidays booking comes with one bag (maximum 23 kg), but to my knowledge, all Japan JV fares include at least two bags, so it seems that AY Holidays doesn't use a JV fare for Japan bookings at least.

I don't know, but I don't see why FH would use anything other than lowest fare available, which is most probably somewhere between R and V, earning 50% meterage. There are some cases where nothing below M is available. But in my experience, that affects non-JV codeshares flights primarily - e.g. AY codes on QR flights.

I remember someone saying that Finnair Holidays book into Value fares?

Correct, long gone are the days of great mileage runs on AA ticketed flights. This was more of a comment on my personal plans than anything else. Value tickets to available destinations is the way to go.

Hi, and thanks for the information. :)

Especially this option seems great in my opinion, just doing this run once a year on top of my normal flying would likely be enough to become plat for me, and I like the idea of making one big run mostly in J instead of having to do lots of runs in Y.

But money wise buying economy (value) tickets seem to give the best return in points for your money, which surprised me. I fly a lot of economy to Japan, and often the points you get for the money paid is really bad (my next trip will for example only give me 10000 points), so I assumed this is standard for Y tickets but now I realize that there doesn't seem to exist any value tickets for flights to Japan and this is probably the reason for the low return, and thus buying value tickets to DEL gives much better returns.
This made me really confused though, why is it only some destinations that have value tickets? :confused: