2 Months Left To Keep Easy Star Alliance Gold W/ Miles+Bonus

If you are one of the thousands of flyers who earned “lifetime” status with Aegean Airlines over the last few years, you are now finding yourself a mere 2 months away from the end of the qualifying timeframe. With the very low threshold of re-qualifying, you may want to consider it!

2 Months Left To Keep Easy Star Alliance Gold

Last year, Aegean Airlines overhauled their frequent flyer program, the Miles+Bonus program. With the overhaul, they put yearly qualification requirements in. That is inline with other programs now for qualification purposes. However, one big difference is their qualification date – instead of you having until December 31, there renewal date ends November 24. That is less than 2 months away now!

Keeping Star Alliance Gold With Miles+Bonus

Aegean put some really nice perks in their program for Gold members like:

• Pooling miles from other members (an easy way to get at least 5,000 award miles)
• 4 business class upgrade certificates
• 2 buy-one-get-one domestic certificates
• Free parking certificates

If you have travel in Europe, and particularly in Greece, these can be very valuable for you. So, if you currently have Gold status with them, it may be worthwhile to keep it going, especially for the mile pooling. I have been able to take advantage of that quite a bit already this year with a few business class flights on awards.

Low Re-qualification Threshold

One of the interesting things that Aegean did was keeping the requalification numbers lower than the actual qualifying numbers – half as many, in fact. To qualify for Aegean Miles+Bonus Gold, you need to fly 48,000 miles in a year or 24,000 miles and 4 Aegean flights in a year.

But, to retain Gold status, you only need to fly 24,000 miles in a year or 12,000 miles and 4 Aegean flights in a year. So, it is much easier to keep Gold status than to earn Gold status. If you like Star Gold benefits (like Priority check-in, Priority boarding, Priority security, lounge access), it may be worthwhile to simply credit 12,000 miles to Aegean and fly on 4 Aegean segments. Just be sure to check the fare earning chart as not all fares on partner airlines earn 100% when credited to Aegean.

Summary

So, if you want to retain your Gold status, you have 2 months left to fly and earn those miles! I ended up flying a lot more this year on miles than I thought (it is a good thing!), so I still have to finish up my requalifying for Aegean Gold. I have my flights booked so it will be done in time. For me, it is invaluable to have since just about every first flight I take is on Aegean. But, it still might be valuable for you as well.

However, if it is not in your schedule or wallet to requalify, consider getting the United Club card. Yes, it is a high-fee card, but it does come with United Club membership as well as priority access when flying with United.