Read Ian’s tier-point run diary …. 1,390 British Airways tier points for Brussels to Hawaii

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• Alfred Harding says:

  20 Aug20 August 23:53

  We own vacation rental property on Oahu and the Hurricane(s) turned out to be a non event. We had a guest flying in from California and it was nail biting time watching when their departure time and watching the weather. They arrived on Friday and it was sunny and beautiful.

  I have Bronze status and I would like to move up to Gold status. I already have lifetime platinum status on AA. From reading the posts, looks like this would work in reverse? Book on AA.com but put my BA FF# in instead of my AA #? Would that mean though that I would loose any perks that come with my AA status as AA will think I’m a BA flyer? Per heck, upgrades, 1st on, etc.

  • mac Clelland says:

    21 Aug21 August 06:52

    Just an update on AA/BA elite status. I phoned AA desk in the USA And paid £150 for a platinum challenge. One leg in BA world traveller plus to Asia got me the points required for AA PLATINUM which gives the equivalent of BA SILVER. I know that we have already mentioned above the soft landing in BAEC. But for somebody with a lot of travel coming up in a short time it is a worthwhile investment I think for the extra luggage and lounge access, etc.

    Now all I need is for a star alliance status match!

    • Rob says:

      21 Aug21 August 08:23

      Yes, I will try to remember to do something on the AA challenge once all the free Cathay Gold cards start to expire!

      • Col A-B says:

        21 Aug21 August 08:32

        Both me & my husband have had letters from CX extending the gold cards by 6 months – is that the general experience? We haven’t used them other than to gain lounge access, choose seats free & take some extra luggage.

        • Metty says:

          21 Aug21 August 09:01

          Mine was extended recently by another 6 months to Apr-15

• Metty says:

  21 Aug21 August 09:18

  Having been a Gold for less than a month, I’m finding it to be way more worthwhile than I imagined.

  As a Gold, one’s interaction with BA via the Gold Exec Contact Number feels like getting through to the boss rather than the secretary (no offence to secretaries intended); my experience is that you’re speaking to an interactive person who is empowered to sort things out.

  My first contact was in a fairly annoyed state after BA had lost 3 of our 4 cases on the outbound sector of family hols to the USA; we were reunited with them all on the 4th day of holiday, but with several items missing. The suggested route was Amex Plat and their insurer AXA, who were nice enough but the claims procedure was too long winded for my jet lagged brain and online patience to cope with. I rang BA Gold where one person sorted everything very pragmatically so most of the loss was paid within 48hrs (by comparison the email complaint requesting some sort of compensation for e.g. screwing up our hols, distress to my 16yo who had all her birthday cards opened and contents ‘lost’ etc) has not been answered yet.

  Second contact was when fiddling with Xmas bookings home from Bangkok. I was sitting on 4 Club seats back from Chengdu then noticed 2 Club come up on BA10 direct back to Heathrow, so rang to get these and put the kids in economy. This time the human on the end of the phone asked if I was aware that I could put the kids in Club for double miles even though there was no Avios availability and then should BA release any Club seats just ring in and change the booking for the fee and get the extra Avios back. All very much like speaking to someone on this forum rather than BA. I guess I should have been aware of this aspect of Gold membership – I understood the economy guarantee – just hadn’t processed that Avios-wise it applied to any cabin.

  So far, Gold is exceeding my expectations!!

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