Travel hacking is so mind-boggling sometimes... Off to Colombia shortly. Return flight from Bogota is on Iberia. 32000 Avios + 200 euros or so. Can obviously cancel for 25 euros. Not sure if I can also just change the date and keep the promo pricing. Anyhow, call it £500 of value. I've been targeted for the TK Miles & Smiles 4x status miles promo, which I suppose I should write up for IFUK. http://flyingpiggie.com/2017/03/targeted-turkish-miles-smiles-elite-status-promotion/ BOG-IST-Europe in J on TK costs £1550 return. Assuming I fancy going back to Central / South America before June, I would earn 100K+ redeemable miles (a J reward to most places) and lock-in *A Gold until 2021! BUT, the BOG-IST are crappy old A332s with angle-flat seating, and the timing is worse than IB (although IB isn't ideal either). And if I'm back in BOG in May or June I'll need to get back home again and I can't figure out a hack to reduce the £1550 and just throw away the return... Dilemmas, dilemmas...
Assuming cash vs Miles is essentially neutral given how much you travel, and valuing TK Miles at 1p each (probably worth more, but I'm certainly no expert), seems like TK is the obvious option to me. Basically you're looking at paying ~£500 in net 'value' either way, but with TK you have the option of the Return flight and would get Star Alliance Gold until 2021. The trade essentially boils down to whether you think that's worth travelling in a less good Biz Class product. I wouldn't get much value from Star Alliance Gold (at least in the foreseeable - who knows by 2020!), but would still definitely opt for TK on this one I think.
Yeah. I probably should take a bit more time to think about it, but would rather call IB+ from Spain than from Colombia... I don't necessarily get a whole lot of use out of *A Gold either, since 90% of the time when I'm flying *A it's in J with miles anyhow. But at the same time, I'll be renewing my BA Gold one last time before letting it go in late 2018. So 3 extra years of *A Gold for possible status matches and potentially flying them more. And TK Elite Plus does actually get 2 upgrades per year from even the cheapest Y fares, so surely I can find a good use for those... Of course, once I commit to TK and returning to South America, then I start cancelling other Avios awards and I suddenly have 300-400K back in my account which means maybe I should be burning Avios after all...
