I generally travel domestically about 6 return trips a year on the eastern seaboard from Melbourne (CBR, SYD, OOL).
These are usually on Qantas or Virgin dependent on flight time convenience generally (apart from MEL-OOL which is always Virgin).
Recently I received Etihad Guest Silver due to Flybuys. (I have no actual points at the moment, but I do have points with Qantas, Virgin and just over 100K Amex Points.)
Some questions:
Should I be adding my Etihad # for Virgin Flights or leave them on Velocity?
Should I strive for Etihad Gold and then try to do a status match to a oneworld as around 2018 the family want to do a US trip and my wife is adamant to fly QF.
How long do I have to earn the remaining status points to reach gold? (If it helps first tier miles were awarded 31/10/15, with Silver awarded 18/7/16 following the 30/06/16 flybuys tier miles update.
Thanks for your help in advance, I was not expecting flybuys to get me status but since it has how to make best use of it may be a question that others may have too.
Having no experience in this front, I will try and analyse it from my point of view so please do ignore my words if it doesn’t make sense to you. In the event that what I am say is irrelevant, some one else might have something more meaningful to say.
Question 1 depends on Question 2 so I’ll try to answer Q2 first.
Since your wife is adamant to fly QF, I think its best for your to credit your status credit to Etihad to try to reach Gold. To reach Gold, you need to fly 50000 tier miles or 40 tier segments. Not very sure what Miles or Segments you have currently from Flybuys. The longest flight I suspect is MEL-OOL (845 Miles approx). For this flight on Virgin, you stand to earn 15 (Disc Econ), 30 (Full Econ), 45 (Prem Econ), 60 (Business) status credit. Assuming 1 Velocity status credit = 1 Etihad tier segments, you have a good change of achieving that if you fly 6 return in a year.
Q1 = Etihad
Q3 = My best guess is 12 months from when you achieved Silver. This is the case for QFF. So you may have until end of July 2017 to get yourself to Gold. Depending on when you intend to fly in 2018, the Gold needs to be maintained by 30 Etihad tier segments as it is likely to expire in July 2018.
Point you may want to consider before doing all of that above
On http://statusmatcher.com/company/qantas, it says Qantas tend to challenge you to earn Qantas Status points within a fixed period before granting you the status match. Have a read if you are interested. There was one case where a Plat Etihad member was challenged to get 380 status points in 90 days. Doesn't actually say what membership level he was after /offered in Qantas.
I’ve got just over 26K at the moment so if they do get me another year to get the rest I may have a chance. My best hope is probably a tier miles multiplier offer like Coles had last year.
With regards to status match, I may try one of the other one world partners but getting to gold is my first task.