Quickest way to *A Gold
 

Hi everyone.
I've spent a lot of time working on getting more savvy about staying at hotels since my engagements frequently have me staying at different hotels. However I need to work on a way to get some status on *Alliance now. I usually only travel economy class since my projects rarely allow business class travel. I've accrued 55k points that went to my KrisFlyer account this year, but only 15k qualified for elite krisflyer. I don't think there is any way for me to qualify this year, but is there an easier way to get *Gold? Would it be better to switch to LHT or UA instead?
Chris

It's an old thread, but this might be of interest to you:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=183976

US isn't listed, but it should be the same as UA. I think LH has changed since then on some of it's values, but I'm not really sure.

That thread is a little out of date with changes for Miles and More (LH/LO/OS) and Airpoints (NZ) and probably others too.

Also many FFPs seem to have so many special rules for particular carriers/fare class/routing that I suspect you'd get quite different results depending on what your sample routing (and carriers) is.

From what I've read here the easiest *G to get seem to be AC, TG and OZ.

Check out BlondeBomber's *G Comparison Chart. Other useful info links are found at *A useful reference links

Air Canada has always been the quickest route to a gold card, but you probably need to investigate closely by looking at the SQ fares that you buy and the points you earn on various airlines.

The cheapest SQ econ fares generally dont earn miles (most FFPs).

AC's Aeroplan doesn't credit any mileage for SQ classes O I R G Q X N or V. Any itinerary/ticket with those classes renders the entire itinerary void for mileage, even if there is only one segment in one of those classes.

Presumably mileage is still earned for carriers other than SQ on the same itinerary in this case.

I don't think so. You can buy cheap LH/SQ tix from Germany to Australia which are usually booked in SQ Q class. Therefore, in the past you didn't get miles for the whole trip even for the LH flight. At least that's what I thought but I may be wrong.

If it was booked as a codeshare on an SQ flight number but LH operated, I guess you still wouldn't get the miles. Instinct tells me that other airlines' flight numbers (eg, LH xxxx) on the same ticket as one of the verboten booking classes, will still earn the normal number of miles.

In practice, you'll rarely have an SQ non-mileage booking class in the same ticket as another airline, because the SQ portion would be nett-fares or special sale fares - That means you will normally have to pay the full normal fare for the other airlines' sectors if you choose to add it onto the same ticket, which will likely result in a very high fare.

With regards to the booking classes that don't earn miles on SQ, this restriction applies to every FFP on which you can earn SQ miles. So there is no way around it, one shouldn't buy those fares if you want miles... full stop. :o To my knowledge, there is only one program that doens't give 100% miles on SQ, which is ANA. The rest all earn 100% (or nothing, if the "cheapo" booking class), regardless of the price of ticket (unlike some airlines which earn less than 100% for the cheaper fares).