Holy smokes. What a thread!
I apologise, it was a very busy (but successful) week. About the time Serfty closed the thread we were cracking the champagne. Leaves me wondering what flames were deleted. Sorry I missed it.
And today I've plowed through 700 posts. *The facebook thread too. The loyalty bonus horrors. The charge for JQ business SCs. Marvelled at the Zeiron episode. Probably the wierdest thing was Alan Joyce saying business naturally loved QF, that seemed like pure bravado. Mr Joyce, my employer, like a lot of others, is firmly wedded to BFOD.
And now, noting the OP's request, the pineapple opinion: I've been waiting all day to get to the writing bit!
Usually I easily do SG, but fall short of WP. this year I cracked it, thanks to a couple of JASAs. But mostly through*regularly*catching the big flying bus, POM-BNE and vv. Apart from a couple J runs my employer kindly paid for, all on my own money, hence Y.
I was annoyed at the suggestion that its all good for WPs because of the improved cabin bonus. Many have pointed out that it doesn't work for the WP via Y people. And there appear to be a lot of us frequent Y people. We get more checkins, security, customs, lounges, gate queues, luggage locker jams. We get a big dose of the worst of flying. Not inspiring to be dismissed as 'WPs mostly fly in premium cabins'.
So I would be in the camp for which the 'enhancements' basically bring nothing. There seem to be an awful lot of WPs on this thread who got there via economy. As for the promise of things to come, I'll wait and see, but not with bated breath.
POM-BNE a good sector for SC earn, being just over 1200m, but not a lot of points. Most of my points come through credit card purchases. I pump every dollar I can through AMEX.
The loyalty bonus thing doesn't really faze me. Its pretty marginal points in my case.
Our leisure travel is Y+ if possible, so the additional status bonus for Y+ is nice. But I also note that it reflects how Y+ is rarely the relative bargain it often was a few years ago.
As for the WP experience, well apart from the well known marginal difference over SG in terms of formal benefits, it doesn't really strike me as something worth much extra effort to obtain. Ok, express cards, but the queues aren't very long at departures when I travel. I haven't been given an express arrival card yet. F*lounge? In BNE its a cut down Business Lounge with nicer champagne and no view. Ditto SIN, negligible difference to J lounge. And on my one trip to SYD the restaurant was dull, so again just the nice champagne. The better seat selection the only really useful thing, unless the better seats have all been selected already. Yeah the upgrade SYD-SIN was nice, I'll give that one the tick!
But all in all, I'm happy with SG. When I return to AU in a few months, and employer paid BFOD, it would make a lot more sense shifting travel to Virgin and going for the double gold.
Cheers skip
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