Flying Blue / Virgin vs BAEC status earning

[yonasl]

I recently posted a message on the daily thread because I am a BAEC Silver member about to do some business class flying to the US and was wondering if it would be worth maybe flying with another alliance to get status with them. (or do them with BA and get Gold) I was doing some more research and was wondering if people could help with the following …

If I had zero status I would chose BA because my flights will give me (almost) silver: LHR-LAX / LAX-NYC / NYC-LHR = 140 x 3 = 420 ~ silver

However, I was checking with other alliances and would be very far from there:
– AF 36 + 6 + 24 XP points = 66 (you need 180 for Gold which matches Silver status in BA)
– Virgin I am having trouble finding how many points you get but I think 300-400 out of 1,000 needed to have Gold status with them

So taking this into account the best option seems to be:
– Get Gold with BA
– If I ever end up booking a PE flight with Virgin then do a status match, get gold with them for a year too (that you can use to enter the lounge for instance)

Am I missing something? How come other alliances feel so hard to get status with vs. BA?

PS: I live in London to BAEC Silver makes sense to me vs. all other options (but Flying Blue / Virgin would be nice to fly Ana/AF/KLM/Virgin in PE having access to seat selection and lounge)

[dougzz99]

I bothered to answer when you posted this in daily chat. What you don’t seem focused on is the value of the status to you. You’re doing this one return in business to LA, and concerned with status in multiple alliances. What would you use status for, what are you likely flying patterns? If you’re flying business some of the value of status is eroded.

BAEC is relatively easy to obtain silver.

You seem concerned with status rather than the value that comes with status.

[AJA]

As @dougzz99 says why are you interested in achieving Gold with BA? Do you want to have access to the First Wing and the Galleries First lounge at LHR just for the sake of trying it? If not what would having Gold give you? You already have lounge access via the Silver status.

On the other hand as you have discovered earning status in another airline alliance is more difficult and again what does that status give you unless you intend to travel frequently with that other alliance.

If you are going to do a lot of flying across alliances it may make sense to diversify but if you are likely to choose Oneworld flights anyway then just concentrate on BA’s scheme.

[Guernsey Globetrotter]

Definitely go BA silver as that is the path of least resistance to you and also offers the greatest return in terms of a status that allows lounge access etc.

Virgin give matches to people with BA status, whereas it doesn’t tend to work the other way around. Once you are BA silver you can get matched to Virgin silver if you want to explore their network too. Check out https://statusmatcher.com/company/virgin-atlantic?page-to=2

[yonasl]

Cool thank you all. It was just strange to realise how achievable BAEC silver was (even at 600 TPs) vs. other alliances.

To be honest, I am not married to BA but obviously living in London and being from Spain means BA/IB are two airlines I may keep ending up with.

Gold is not specially interesting (other than to have even more avios per flight) and the advantage of silver soft landing.

What’s interesting is to see nobody really seems to push for status with other alliances. Maybe this forum is more BA focused.

I will see how Gold plus match from Virgin works. Could be interesting to have the Virgin status if only just in case I end up flying Ana or AF/KLM in PE at some point.

Cheers!

[dougzz99]

Status benefits frequent flyers, particularly if using short haul economy. This is a London centric UK site, so BA is absolutely the focus. Virgin is really the only other game in town, and they have no short haul network, and a somewhat limited long haul one. People based in regions have mentioned viability of KLM, but in regard this site I’d say that’s fairly niche.

Time will tell, but maybe one thing the last two years may have done is make people care less for status and much more about flight by flight convenience, quality and price.

[memesweeper]

@yonasl I’d likely prefer BA gold as the ‘soft landing’ means an extra year of useful benefits when flying economy with BA/IB.