The AA challenge has been back since 03 Jan 2016 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...an-2016-a.html

I know that Japan Global Club has a pretty easy requalification. I can usually easily meet 50k+ on AA, but with the future RDM devaluation, i want to look into getting JGC one year and just paying the annual fee in points or $ to keep the sapphire status.

Does anyone have any experience with that? it looks like you need 50k Flyon points with a chunk of it being on JAL flights. how easy/difficult is their program to earn those points?

With the challenge, it seems pretty easy to earn AA PLT depending on your travel. For example I have a CX-operated BOS-HKG business class ticket (in I) coming up-- by my calculations, that's almost 16,000 EQMs on one flight alone (not to minimize the day spent up in the air or anything).

My natural instinct is to credit this to AA as that's who I would fly once I return to the US from 6 months in Hong Kong. But is there another OW carrier with a similar OWS-level status challenge I should consider crediting the flight to? From my very sophisticated research, it looks like CX 811 is only a codeshare with AA, but am I missing any potential options for leveraging this premium fare opportunity into status?