Best program for reaching Sapphire on CX Biz flight
 

Hi all,

Am flying next week AKL-HKG-AMS-HKG-AKL on Cathay Pacific in business class.

I wonder if anyone has any advice on which program would bring me closest to one world sapphire with this routing? I have membership of both AA and Qantas programs, but generally fly Star Alliance so dont make much use of either (the deal on CX flight was too good to turn down! Am looking forward to it.)

I live in New Zealand.

Thanks for any advice!

Here's the breakdown if you decide to credit to QF.

AKL-HKG-AMS-HKG-AKL in J will give you 560 Status Credits (SCs) if you credit them to the Qantas FF program. You need 700 SCs in your membership year to attain Gold/Sapphire. Thereafter, you need 600 SCs to maintain Gold.

Depending on how many other OW flights you have credited to your account in your current membership year will determine whether or not you will be able to reach Gold.

The critical thing to note is that you MUST fly a minimum of 4 QF sectors within your membership year in order to attain Gold. Living in NZ certainly helps as you have plenty of opportunities for relatively cheap SC runs on QF services. QF strictly enforces this qualification rule – a colleague of mine based in the UK has recently clocked up 1,100 SCs on BA and IB, but as she has not flown a single QF sector in her membership year, she remains a lowly Bronze :(

Hope this helps.

I don't think there is any program that would get you a mid-tier status (all alliances: *A, OW, ST) in a single round trip in business class (with an exception to ATW) from the scratch.

You could become Ruby with OF's program, as suggested by inasmuchas, you need to have 4 base QF flights (QF codeshare also works). Since you seem to fly NZ the most, I suggest that you just bank your miles with CX (Asia Miles)... and not worry about achieving status (unless you intend to fly more OW in the future).

Not on the routing given , but in general it can

e.g. business class return SYD-HNL-LAX-DFW-MIA can earn 1000 Status credits on QF ( which is way more than the 700 needed to attain Gold ) and close to the level needed for retaining Platinum (1200) thanks to the domestic legs on AA getting booked into 1st as long as not booked on the QF codeshares

Even a 1 way in business class SYD-LAX can get AA Platinum with the Platinum Challenge or a 1 way in economy MEL-SYD-JFK

Dave

Thanks for the replies... the AA Platinum Challenge sounds interesting... how does that work?

There are more complete details in the AA forum

Basically, you need to earn 10,000 points in 3 months
Travelling business class would earn 1.5 points per mile flown
so SYD-LAX would complete it on its own
Costs USD150 to sign up for
The problem for you is that only AA flight numbers will count towardsthe challenge so would not work for your CX flights

Dave