Skyteam Status Discussion

[Longtoo]

Hi Brain Trust,

i am a newly minted platinum member with Garuda (Skyteam Elite Plus). However, most of my travel with Skyteam is with Vietnam airline.

Should I prioritise maintaining my Titanium (Skyteam Elite) over the other membership with Garuda?

And a lounge related question: for future flying, if i credit points to vietnam airline, can i still use my Skyteam Elite Plus benefit with Garuda? (flying skyteam of course).

TIA

 

[pauldab]

Your benefits will only attach to the program you have on the booking.
So if flying with VN and you use your Lotusmiles number you'll only get the Titanium benefits.
To access the lounge you'll need to use your Garuda membership (with Sky Team Elite plus) and credit the flying there.

If you are more likely (like me) to be using VN for travel you should focus accruing with them. I have to say the very generous double qualifying miles program this year earned me Platinum and re-qualified with only 12 legs in J and Y+ for my Vietnam and Japan travel.

 

[MELso]

As far as I can tell, Garuda is one of the easiest Skyteam airlines to obtain Elite Plus status on (along with Air Europa). It requires 30,000 miles initially and 25,000 to renew (if I'm reading this correctly). By contrast, to get Elite Plus on VN requires 50,000 miles. BUT VN's Skyteam's Elite status at Titanium kicks in at 15,000 miles vs 20,000/15,000 for Garuda Gold.

The question I guess is whether you reckon you can get 25,000 miles and therefore be eligible to maintain your Elite Plus status with GA (even if you don't, GA will still allow you to retain Elite for the same amount of VN's titanium status).

I'm looking into this as I'm likely to try China Eastern's business class to Europe early next year as it's quite cheap and looks to have a good hard product (this should generate just under 30,000 miles once the business class bonus is accounted for, so not too far off Elite Plus).

Initially, I'll credit to QF to get the points, but if China Eastern proves to be okay, I'd like to use the flights to get recognition of status. It seems that GA will be the best option unless there's a 'gotcha!' I've missed (e.g. a minimum number of flights on GA).