Frequent fly quandry - what should I do?

[fifo]

Gday...

I'm a qantas platinium with 300ish SC left to requalify for this year (Nov 30 is my requal date). I fly SYD>PER for work a lot (around 12-15 times per year), but soon, work will stop paying for these flights. I still have the requirment to travel SYD>PER on the same frequency however.

I am also airnz gold elite, having got a status match recently. So I have until 29 April 2014 for Gold elite to get another 855 airnz SCs to retain this.
This will let me fly virgin as a ff as well and earn SCs from virgin flights. This also gives me star alliance gold, which I use when heading into SE asia from PER, usually flying singapore airlines.

My plan before the demise of work paid flights was to keep my qantas platinium, use the next year or so to get Aegean airlines gold (whilst still getting the benefits from airnz and virgin for the next year).

Now that I will be flying domestically off my own bat, virgin is more attractive due to the pricing structure of their flights over qantas. So my issue is, what do I do? Cost minimisation is a high priority, but also keeping the best range of ff programs active to avoid excess baggage costs (which I sometimes have a lot of, I carry a lot of equipment for work and travel on occasion).

I dont think I will be able to keep qantas platinium past Nov 30 2014, as with sale fares I wont get enough SCs to requal in the next status year. However I will keep it in the next few months of flying for the 2014 year. I think I will get at least one more return PER>SYD fare and a few more PER>ZNE and PER> PHE to get it pretty easily.

I dont think I will be able to keep gold elite with airnz, as its only 40 SCs return SYD PER on a virgin saver fare, even if I used my singapore airlines and virgin status credits.

I'm really not sure what to do, does anyone have any advice they could offer?

 

[samh004]

If your international and Asia-flying is always with SIA and Star Alliance in general, then switching from Qantas Platinum to another program certainly seems like the right thing to do. However, which program is a tough question.

I was of the impression the ANZ GE requires a certain amount of their own metal to be flown each year, and seeing as you usually head West, not East, that's probably not something you should be focussing on keeping.

A status match to another program would make more sense, maybe even Virgin Australia if you need to have domestic status too, or at least consider an international partner of theirs that also works with SIA for your Asian flights.

Also, I'd say welcome, but you've been here a while

 

[markis10]

Star Alliance is not much help transcon, I would suggest Velocity Gold is a good compromise as its handy for SQ, easy to achieve yet offers good earn/burn/benefits on your desired travel plans.

 

[fifo]

Cheers and thanks for the advice... yes I have been here for a while, lurking, but only very occasionally!

I just need a velocity status match and i would be fine!! ... no chance.

 

[markis10]

Cheers and thanks for the advice... yes I have been here for a while, lurking, but only very occasionally!

I just need a velocity status match and i would be fine!! ... no chance.

They are done on a case by case basis, never hurts to ask or even send a nice PM to VelocityRewards. Would also suggest you do a Turkish status match, that will give you two years of * benefits at least while you build up Velocity status.

 

[fifo]

thanks for the advice guys. turkish airlines ans quite annoying with the back and forth it takes to get a status match!

 

[fifo]

hey jayday13, might want to repost that on a new thread so it gets a bit more airplay