oneworld Sapphire for 263$ per month, anyone?
 

S7 now sells their Gold/Sapphire status for 15,000RUB (263$ at today's rates) a month. The card will be immediately available in the app ,but it might take around a week for the status to be visible by oneworld panthers.

Not bad if you have a month of heavy travel.

Many of us get similar status for less than that.

And with the travel and miles as well.

I wonder if this flaunts oneworld rules?

Clearly yes, and personally for me it's highly irrelevant as I easily maintain Emerald without even thinking of TP/mileage and whatever runs.

For someone with no status though, it may be a good deal: baggage charges alone on a long-haul round-trip will probably be close to 200$ +lounge access (let's say 40$ on average)+ seat selection fees (CX charges 150$ for a seat in the emergency exit row IIRC). So, I can see why someone might want to pay the $263/month.

I would say it's not in the spirit of OW rules, but does OW care? They are clearly not bothered by all those status matches given by AB (and if you look at the Russian analogue of FT, you will see that many provided fake cards to AB and got matched). Same with TK, except that they are in *A.

can you just buy for one month?

Do you have the link? As I can't find anything related to this on their website.

Obviously not. It might flout them, though. :)

https://www.s7.ru/home/s7-priority/f...l-services.dot

It's not on the English version yet though.

Minimum one month and on a monthly basis onwards.

Anyone flying enough to make paying that much per month worth it, is easily qualifying for Sapphire already

I think the above poster mentioning a particular travel-heavy month has the right ideal use for this: a 1-time charge.

Of course, how many non-status flyers willing to send $250+ to a Russian airline they'll never fly so they can use Oneworld lounge rules on their next AA flight are there? :p

I doubt it. AA sells status through year end boosts and challenges.

My sister and her friend is going to travel around xmas, about 8 OW Y flights and there will be 2 legs that the extra luggage will come in handy. I will sure recommend them buy it if this is still available by then. Not sure if they will need an Russian address to enrol.

For $3,200 a year I could get to AA Plat with minimal EQD run, plus a whole lot of places.

Baggage charges and lounge access can be obtained via credit card(s). Even as a Sapphire, one may find the best seats blocked except perhaps on his home carrier (S7 in this case).

I wonder how much Emerald status would cost? That might be worth it.

Unless you're flying a lot on redemptions/awards, in which case you won't be earning any status from travel, but could easily get a lot of benefit from having it.

Pretty good deal for people who don't fly a lot.
Think about it, a few legs in Y TATL w/o status and you wish to check 2 bags, can be cheaper then already to purchase a monthly pass.
And hey, you can skip the plebs at checkin ;)

Loyalty, ladies and gentlemen.

The airline that provides the status is responsible for paying for some of the benefits. Lounge for sure, not sure about luggage, seat selection etc.

And no matter how many people have give-away AB status, it is still a drop in the ocean for the major Oneworld airlines because the gamers, almost by definition, aren't travelling enough to earn status the usual way.

No, it's not.

In oneworld, it's the operating carrier who pays for the lounge access regardless of which FFP you are using. This is in contrast to *A.

You have to fly at least once on S7 airlines to be able to purchase status. Also, not clear if it’s required to fly at least once every year. If so, would that be calendar year or registration year.

Fair point, I did not think about this...but then again people on the BA board fly LHR>HNL with like 5 stops to get Gold (Emerald) status on BA, so I think a quick FRA>DME>VIE trip will do the trick. S7 is also expanding their OVB hub these days, so something like FRA/DUS/DXB-OVB-Asia is worth looking at if you are starting your trip from these airpots.

.....

and US used to sell status outright - $4,000 got you top tier for a year.

An update on this: I spoke to S7 CS and apparently they stopped selling OneWorld status since 1st of October 2019. Lets see what post-corona world of promos will bring! :)