Nick Art

A little more than one year ago I asked myself the same question. I usually reached about 10k status miles with about 20-25k premium miles, since I flew EDW most of the time.

I did read an article about Eurobonus and was intrigued. I had always been itnerested in flying and knew about the different programs, but as I was still relatively young I didn't really know much about anything other than M&M. (I had flown over 100000 miles at this point and had received NULL in return from M&M because I was a kid, my account somehow locked and my parents did not know about the children program of M&M where the miles don't expire until the kid turns 18. So I wasn't exactly this happy with M&M at that point...)
in the article of Eurobonus, however, there was the mentioning of lifetime gold status which immediatly caught my interest. (At this point Senator seemed like the status of gods to me). But beginning to learn more about other programs, especially Eurobonus, as with the lower miles needed for Gold (45k) together with some rerouting on my travel habits (no more EDW; more LH over MUC and FRA) and maybe a small status run (with the youth ticket) would mean even I could reach *G relatively cheap now.
Furthermore at that time SAS used to provide youths with great cheapt 500.- $ fares to Asia in Y that would give you 10000 Miles.
I usually do one to max two longhauls in J (F depending on the availability of partner specials :P) per year and about two to three european trips in C,D,J and one to two trips in Y. Now regarding routing with a little creativity I could maximize my mileage (ZRH-RAK on EDW 0 miles vs ZRH-GVA-FRA-RAK 12000 miles at a similar cost) and maybe usage of another carrier (flying more Lufthansa and SAS) and hence reach gold status easily. (Except this year as I am lacking one the long haul flight).
The greatest difficulty with the whole thing is that I don't have work I need to fly for, so my status is purely done with travel I pay for myself.

However, the great youth fares have been recently devalued together with all Economy classes to earn significantly less than before. I'm not really impacted as I don't fly cheap Y that often and when I do it's normally the cheapest fare available that didn't give many miles in the first place. And who knows: Maybe they will reduce earnings for LH and LX significantly and maybe even discontinue the Lifetime Gold status I'm after. So it's always a little gamble if or if you won't reach the status in a different program. I for one, am happy with Eurobonus, as I'm much better off. I'm not sure what I'll do once I've reached ten consecutive years as gold, maybe go back to M&M?

AlicorporateUK

I certainly understand the attraction towards lifetime Gold but there's the annoying downside of 3rd party lounge access (or, rather, non-access) when flying SAS, which I really don't like, especially at those airports (e.g. Gdańsk) I tend to fly to/from and where SAS, funnily (or maybe not) enough, has a decent network. Apart from that and, depending on travel patterns (e.g. departing mostly from major hubs), then probably okay[ish].

Again and as your post goes to show, it all depends on individual circumstances (I do not decide where to go nor have I got time for mileage runs due to a good 96% of my substantial travel schedule, meaning weekly travel in a nutshell, being managed by the corporation I work for...).

G

GBM.flights

Those K and L fares are not helping you, they earn very little or nothing in all programs.
Look at SAS Eurobonus that still earns on those LH classes.

I would do a last atempt:
Use the Where to Credit calculator, put the route and class, and see what would have been the winner from all *A FFP's (gut feeling, SAS willl look better due to K,L,T earn)
https://www.wheretocredit.com/calculator

MatthiasWagner

I´m a Eurobonus member and if you are willing to some transfers, you could (relatively) easy get *A gold with your flight pattern!

Pros:
· You fly ≈30 flights, and some of them where to Scandinavia, where you could fly directly. The ofther flights you would have to route to Oslo, Copenhagen or Stockholm. If you do that, you will get around 50 flights, and SAS gives *A Gold for only 45 flights/year on SK metal!
· If you fly just a few Biz/F, SK has a generous earning of points, ranging 100-200% in Biz but 300% in F (also in A class!) and gold is only 45k, if you dont do the segments.
· Eurobonus has low YQ on award tickets.

Cons:
· A lot of flying north to fly south
· As mentioned above, SAS has devalued the points in the Economy (Go in SK terms) a lot, so you will get *A gold, but not many points.
· I dont think SAS does credit cards in Germany... (if you could the Swedish AMEX there is a lot of benefits!)

Hope that helps, otherwise ask

GBobon

I am happy with Aegean, but I dont fly much LH now because of low earnings on most of their Y booking classes (leisure traveller, so usually I book cheapest flights in Y).
To be A3*Silver you only need 12k miles + 2 flights on A3/OA (Olympic) or 24k miles on any airline and then for A3*Gold you need 24k miles + 4 flights on A3/OA or 48k miles on any airline.
To renew your status you need only 12k miles + 4 A3/OA flights or 24k miles on any *A airline within 12 months from the Gold qualification.
You can redeem A3 miles on First tickets on most of *A airlines, except Swiss and tickets on the new F cabins on SQ.

oliver2002

I wouldn't get too excited about Eurobonus... they just gutted the earnings for the lowest 5-6 economy fare clasess, and are probably busy redrafting the *A partner earnings in a similar vein.

flynspill

Are you sure you're calculating the miles correctly with United? Most of the fares earn 100% for Premier Qualification on LH and many other carriers.... the Premier Qualification charts are further down the page....

ekasey

Guys thanks for the all of the feedback!

As far as the calculation, I was just taking the values from the first column. I'm not really sure what the other "tier" columns are for? My guess was that they were for if you already had status, and that the first column was for none.

Still going to be a tough choice to make, and I'll do a bit more excel this weekend to see what I can figure out.

Unfortunately for some of the other suggestions I am the mercy of my company, and particularly one single individual who chooses to fly us on these budget fares even though he doesn't need too.

htb

Scroll down. For status qualification on United you need to calculate the Premier Qualifying Miles. I think you calculated the Award miles you will get (once you have status, you will get 25%/50%/75%/100% bonus on that for LH flights).

Premier Qualifying Miles are 100% even for K and L booking classes. That will change your calculation significantly.

HTB.

egokcen

sw1x

1flyer

Agreed. As the second spreadsheet by the OP shows, he has a number of flights in there on LH group in K and L, including long-hauls. Those would have zero earning in M&S.

ekasey

Sorry I', still not following, How do I calculate the premier qualifying miles from where to credit?

I see this when I referenced a Lufthansa T class fare. RMD, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and 1k.

It looks like I can swing the four flights on UA metal, so this should be covered. Now it's just making sure that the cheap LH fares don't screw me.

htb

I don't understand the problems you are facing finding the table I'm just scrolling down on this page until I find the section "MileagePlus Premier Qualification". If the link doesn't work, just google "united earn lufthansa".

This may be hard to read, but maybe helpful anyhow:


HTB.