I'm sure this has been asked previously, but with the addition of Swiss and SAA, what is the shortest path to upper tiers on *A? I'm based in YYZ and hope to get the upper tier sooner than later. AC is not exactly great so I'm hoping for a fast track on one of the others. I'm still not sure which program to join now.

Does anyone know if any of the *A carriers offer the "challenge" like AA and the others do?

Thanks!

No challenge. UA might provide a comp if you have non *A status. Other *A FFPs may comp if you present a compelling case (eg you have moved and current program with which you have status is no longer suitable). For more info check out status match thread in Miles Buzz forum.

I presume by upper tier you mean *Gold status. Some FFPs have more than one *G status level (eg UA 1K, LH HON, NZ GE, etc), but AFAIK there are very few shortcuts to earning the very highest status.

AC is one of the easiest to earn *Gold. TG and OZ also have low qualification requirements. But it depends on your travel patterns (eg someone flying mainly longhaul business and first may find BD easier to qualify *G due to higher class of service bonus). And of course you need to weigh up status benefits against other benefits (upgrades, earn:burn rates) - while a particular program might be easy to gain status the other benefits may not be worth as much or vice versa.

I suggest you check out the sticky *A useful reference links and in particular BlondeBomber's *Gold comparison. Note that Swiss Travel Club is no more (effective 1 April LX uses Miles and More as its home program). I'm not sure if South African Voyager details have been entered into the *G comparison yet.

I have a partially complete SAA section in the chart. Until they are officially in, I won't be able to complete that (likely not too many more benefits anyway)