Forums › Other › Destination advice › LON-SYD airline & alliance advice
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Hi,
Long-time email subscriber, first time forum-poster.
Over the next six months I am going to be travelling a lot from London to Sydney in Business. I currently have 635 BAEC tier points (collected largely in the last three months). My Tier Point collection year ends 31 March 2025 before the change to BAC.
I don’t really know what happens next, but given I am BA silver-in-waiting (need 2 more BA flights which will be done by the weekend), I want some guidance from this community on whether to stick with OW or find a new allegiance. I will probably take about 4 return trips in the 6 months. Thereafter I will likely do 3 to 4 long-haul trips a year east and west.
In addition, I’d be keen to get the community’s view on the best airline for this Sydney route. QR are great, except no Q-Suite on the A380-exclusive DOH-SYD leg. To maximise Tier Points, I am not keen on the single-leg technical-stop with either QF or BA via SIN.
All thoughts very welcome.
I suspect that 4 return trips in business to Sydney will get you to Gold or thereabouts (or equivalent) in most schemes with even a small amount of thinking about how you book to optimise tier credits. You should work out which airlines you would like to use/work will pay for, and which scheme has the best benefits for you.
I suspect that 4 return trips in business to Sydney will get you to Gold or thereabouts (or equivalent) in most schemes with even a small amount of thinking about how you book to optimise tier credits. You should work out which airlines you would like to use/work will pay for, and which scheme has the best benefits for you.
Thanks but what I didn’t particularly want to do was lose the tier points I’d accumulated just recently. BA sadly offers the best routing West for subsequent trips.
Who is paying? I.e. are you looking for ‘value’ for money if you’re paying, or best overall outcome if your employer is?
Who is paying? I.e. are you looking for ‘value’ for money if you’re paying, or best overall outcome if your employer is?
All business-funded. Lucky me.
Firstly, really consider whether you want to put all your eggs in one alliance basket. If you’re travelling in J anyway, does status really add that much more? You have a nice opportunity to try out a whole range of different airlines and decide for yourself which one you like!
If you do want to stick with an alliance, I wouldn’t dismiss QR just because they don’t fly the QSuite on that route. It’s great for families, but not really that superior (in my view) to their other J seats.
My next option would probably be SQ. whilst *A isn’t that helpful in the UK, if you’re flying that regularly with them the PPS lounges are excellent. Alternatively you can credit their flights to Virgin Atlantic.
Finally, and something I haven’t looked into too much due to cost, but QF fly London to Perth, and onwards to Sydney from there could be another OW option.
Will you be taking a couple of the flights before the end of March and maybe able to push for gold? You could stay with one world, but mix it up each time and try out Qatar, Cathay, JAL and Malaysian?
With 4 CW trips to SYD you will be Gold with BA. If it’s status you want, at that point you could switch to another alliance. Star Alliance could mean Singapore Airlines which I’d personally take in a snap versus BA.
Or, just looking at the news, you could get BA Gold and status match to another alliance. Sky Team to SYD doesn’t look overly great, but if Star Alliance hasn’t got a status match yet, I expect one will appear soon.
With 4 CW trips to SYD you will be Gold with BA. If it’s status you want, at that point you could switch to another alliance. Star Alliance could mean Singapore Airlines which I’d personally take in a snap versus BA.
Yeah, I realise that on the switch to revenue-based but I will likely do one trip out and back before end of March and then the rest subsequently. To be frank, I have no idea what happens when the new membership year commences in April. How will my current TP balance be impacted given around 600 have been earned in the past two months
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