Questions about SAS status qualification
 

Right now, I'm looking into places to get star alliance gold and SAS seems interesting. I currently maintain Star Alliance gold through Asiana and have United Silver through Marriott Titanium status.
In a typical year, I fly about 50,000 miles in cheap economy class fares split between ANA, EVA and United with another round trip US/Asia on Singapore Airlines or Asiana, spending around 4000 USD. I don't fly to Europe each year so Aegean doesn't really make sense. I have several questions about SAS:
1. The websites for the airline partners points earnings isn't clear. I assume the multipliers for fare classes will be multiplied by miles? What does "fr." mean? For example, on the table for UA, the row says points and then "fr. 600" and "fr. 300" under business and economy respectively.
2. How likely is it for SAS to suddenly make it significantly harder to qualify for status or leave star alliance/go bust?

I'm in my 20s so I'd like to pursue lifetime star alliance status. It looks like I can make SAS gold without too much mileage running but if the risks are too high, would it make more sense to spend an extra 4000ish USD a year over the next few years to mileage run UA lifetime gold instead?

The fr. 600 means minimum 600 basic points. For partners it is basically the distance in miles times the multiplier indicated, though there are minimum earnings. ANA is pretty good, as most if not all economy fares earns 100%, earnings on SQ are pretty abysmal in (wh)Y. If you use gcmap.com to show the distance between two airports, and round up to the nearest 100 and the apply the percentage for your booking class, you will rarely fail in getting to the exact amount of miles applied by SK.

for point 2, your guess is as good as mine.

SAS is currently a great bet for people who never touch SK metal. Eurobonus consistently gives more points to flights on alliance equipment than to flights on their own, and currently has no demand for any flights on SK metal.

The big question mark is what will happen in the future. A good bet is that if it is bad for SK then they will pursue it, but who knows. SAS has never been run logically, so it is not really possible to guess what they will do...

Paging Nick Art ... also in his 20s aiming for LT EB Gold ;)

I think chances of SAS going bust or leaving the *A are rather low, the pandemic downturn will push that out by another 5-10 years.

Using EB points outside of Scandinavia and SAS metal is possible, but tricky.

The pandemic bought SAS a new lease on life in a way. But the chances of SAS being eaten by LH within 5-10 years are not entirely negligible -- much as I hope to never see that happen. SAS being swallowed by LH likely won't be good for SK elites going for lifetime *G status; it may even turn out to be bad even for those who are already SK*G for life.

Lifetime status is a rather new concept in Europe so merger/acquisition expererience is almost non existent. The only recent datapoint I can think of was BD dc being absorbed by BA EC. AFAIR they didn't honor the LT Golds. When LH M&M absorbed the Swiss, Austrian, Sabena and LOT FFPs they did not get any of the customer history except for some rudimentary data.

I was on course to become a BD*G for life and credited most of my SK flights to BD at the time; but the BA takeover of my BD Diamond Club account balance ended that and scarred me for life. :D [I'll probably never end up as a BA elite for life from my use of the BA FFP; but, as I have lifetime elite status in Oneworld, I am not interested in getting further into it with BA.]

While European FFPs offering lifetime elite status is indeed younger than is the case for some US FFPs, some current or past European FFP or another has had lifetime elite status going on for at least 8+ years (if not even longer).

And I'm still right on track as well! Only seven more years to go :)

I think if LH absorbs SAS, especially with LHs introduction of LT Senator status, there would be a good chance that SK LTG would be honored. For me personally being based in ZRH a LH takeover *after* I reach LTG and if it's being honored by LH would be pretty beneficial to me personally actually :)

Anyway, regarding SK LTG I think it really depends how much and what exactly you fly. I would try making a listing of all your flights in excel and then calculate how many miles you'll earn for status in different frequent flyer programs. Here I find SK to be pretty beneficial as Mileage runs in Europe are a possibility, although not exactly cheap. Furthermore you can even buy up to 10k miles with either cash or by using points you can spend in a 10:1 ratio to exchange in to status points. This is especially helpful if you are missing a few hundred points for the status. I'm not spending any of my miles currently anyway so for me that's a win win situation.
My plan personally right now is to achieve SK*G every year with one Lufthansa First Class partner special (approx 2500.- CHF, 40-70k SK miles) + one European Business Flight in D or higher with 3 legs each way (approx 1000.- CHF, 10k SK miles). Compared to your 4000$ to status run for UA you'd actually come cheaper status running on SK, without even counting your Economy flights. :) Obviously this year and last year are a bit gifted to me as SK extended status even though all my flights were cancelled. :P

I think that might cover the basics, everything else has been answered already before me. Do you have any more questions?

PS: Already starting with silver on UA, I and some other users on here are allowed to give away EB Silver as EB Golds, we usually make a post on here somewhere announcing it, first come, first serve. ;) So just based on that I wouldn't chose UA.

Received an email from SAS this morning. They are extending status for another year for those whose status expires between 30 Sept and 31 Oct. In my case, Gold is guaranteed for 2022. Happy days. Really great news. Previously, only those with status expiring in August got renewed. Takes pressure of having to do major travelling in Aug/Sept.