Three years on....

Preview

Three years have passed since I last went tier point running. My first adventure back in the spring of 2014 saw me travelling to Hawaii and the Caribbean on a 38 sector mission to hit 5000 tier points and attain Gold Guest List status with BA. I enjoyed 22 months as a gold guest list member before soft landing to silver for a further 12 months.

Since 2014 the tier point earning rules have changed significantly in North America making it much harder to hit the top tier BA status in relatively few sectors. Namely the all business London city to New York BA “babybus” no longer attracts first class tier points (140 now as opposed to 210 then) and similarly domestic flights within the USA in 2 cabin aircraft now only attract business TP’s instead of first.

All of this means that a round trip LCY-JFK-LAX-HNL-LAX-JFK-LCY will now earn 840 Tier points where it would have earned 1260 back in 2014.

Not one to be deterred by a challenge I’m again attempting to qualify for Gold Guest List status, only this time it’s going to take a more ‘relaxed’ approach over several different trips.

I’m combining some business, family visits and a love of formula one to put together some exciting routings and try to gain GGL status once again, as well as taking advantage of some cheap Finnair fares from LHR-TLL. The goal is once again 5000 Tier points!

Trip 1: Broadly a trip to visit family in Hong Kong, and to visit a supplier in Shanghai whilst taking in the Formula 1 with some exotic routing to maximise TP’s

Routing codes:

LHR-HEL-TLL-HEL-LHR-HEL-PVG-KUL-BOM-KUL-HKG-KUL-BOM-KUL-PVG-HEL-LHR-HEL-TLL-HEL-LHR

(1760 Tier points)

Trip 2: Texas to watch the Formula 1

Routing codes

MAN-HEL-ORD-DFW-SAT-DFW-ORD-HEL-MAN

(600 Tier points)

Trip 3 : Abu dahbi Formula 1

LHR-HEL-LHR-DOH-AUH-DOH-LHR-HEL-LHR

(720 Tier points)

After that I’ll be 1920 points short of GGL, so will be keeping an eye out for something exciting to pop up or if all else fails it will be a few weekends of turnabouts to Tallinn.