Back to Gold after a year off - it was a near run thing.

[Warks]

I'd been VA Gold for almost ten years until last year when a decline in flying meant I didn't come close to the 400 SCs required. I swallowed hard and paid for Lounge membership - at $300 it's a better price than QF, albeit without as many lounges (TSV and HBA noticeably absent). A new year meant I now needed 500 SCs to get back to Gold and the reduced SCs for cheaper fares had made my task that much more difficult. I did a fair bit of domestic flying for work (self-funded) and gradually built up the SCs. However with the rolling SC total VA uses I found I was getting close to 500 and then some of last year's SCs would drop off sending me back down. I hit 498 SCs at one stage and thought I'd make it but a chunk evaporated so I had to keep going. Luckily it is a rolling total though so I didn't have to start again with my anniversary date.

Anyway I mucked around a bit setting up my wife for her SCs and points to pool to me - my son had been my pooler before but he turned 18 and dropped off. I had a trip to the US on the cards and thought I'd make it but was still going to finish short. We flew SYD-LAX and on to SAN so accrued some more but not quite enough. But then the great VA 10 SC bonus appeared which got me closer but still not there. But my wife also got the bonus which passed to me and I was there! Gold! Gold to Australia!

So it was nice to be able to go back to priority check-in (which wasn't a big deal flying out of LAX anyway) and priority baggage (which also doesn't usually make much difference) but best of all was access to the Emirates lounge in LAX. We'd arrived early due to worries about traffic and had many hours to kill. Thankfully for me we could spend the time in the lounge which wasn't half bad. I miss the Air NZ lounge in LAX but the food here was pretty good. The best thing was keeping my wife happy. If only she knew how much she had contributed...

Oh and I've saved $300 for the coming year.

 

[serfty]

Well done; that rolling target to qualify up a level can be a real pita ...

 

[Denali]

Congrats - may your card always be Gold at a min and the lounge always available.

 

[sometime_flyer]

That's a great story, CONGRATS! There's always the potential to earn a few additional status credits via Coles/flybuys when the going gets tough

 

[Warks]

Thanks all. I have never joined FlyBuys probably because we only have Woolies near me and earn QFF points with them. However the incentives offered to FlyBuys seemed to be getting better and better so one day I might get around to it.

Hopefully I'll do enough flying this year to maintain. At least it's 100 SC less/fewer this time.

Gold card just arrived in the mail. So I can get rid of my Lounge card and my Silver card from last year and replace them with one card, thus lightening my wallet.