I would be curious why you moved from hedging your status between AC SE 100K and QF WP to focusing on strictly QF status (If I read that correctly). Are there specific benefits from holding P1 status that makes it worth while to forgo chasing status with other airlines and alliances? Have you experimented with holding top tier status with many frequent flyer programs?
The time of intensive Canadian travel was before I joined AFF and to be honest, I wasn't focussed on status at all. I always flew J and that gave me just about all the perks I needed/wanted. In fact, with an excellent TA behind me, I was oblivious to just about every hassle we hear about on AFF - the TA just fixed it, sometimes before I even realise there was a problem
. In those days, I flew Qantas because 'that's what you did', and the company flew QF, so their TA booked me on QF ... As I mentioned, I got to Lifetime Gold on Qantas without even realising it!
I was flying Air Canada within Canada and down to the US (in economy) and I got to hear about Aeroplan and the various benefits with status on that. So I started getting the TA to alternate between QF and AC Transpac and soon got to the top of the tree in both schemes. By this time I was 'status attuned'
and was flying a lot more personally, so the status meant more. This was all before QFF P1. Then I joined AFF and the whole thing really blossomed.
I don't believe that P1 is worth
chasing, especially as it required so much flying on Qantas, which you may have gathered I have fallen out of love with
. It may be worth
having, if it just occurs in the course of work travel. If there was P1 in my intensive travel days, I don't think I would have gone for it - Aeroplan 100K SE would still be a good diversification.
I retired - gosh, 5 years ago now ! - and AFF have helped me hang onto my QFF Plat status (see below), but I don't do enough flying now to have elite status on more than one airline, at least by earning.
Well yeah, that's one obvious difference, but what I mean to say are things like booking and the whole experience of travelling. For instance, corporate travel generally goes through a TA which can result in better (or worse) outcomes than had you booked the same flight on your own depending on corporate travel policies. In particular, I know of some TAs that are willing to go out of their way to find fares and routings that you quite frankly wouldn't find on Google flights or the QF website which could potentially accrue additional status credits or in general be more fun (i.e. visiting new airports).
The corporate TA became my personal TA
and they still book ALL my international travel#, which remains in J, or this year, more and more long haul First. In the past 5 years I've retained QFF Plat via a DONE4 annually (which never had much QF in it).
# Except where they can't get close to a 'web special', then I book that myself.
The TA has excellent deals available - nearly always on QR (my favourite airline) and often on LH and is Virtuoso, so there are extra things here and there. Once they even got an exception for me on a DONE4 and the airline allowed me to backtrack after the TA used their contact at the airline. I have no idea how Google Flights works and avoid the QF website as a joke; life's too short for stuff like that.
I'm going to let QFF Plat go this year. I've flying Virgin domestically, SQ and QR internationally and can't squeeze in a DONE4 between other holidays (damn!). I'm going to get somewhere up the SQ status tree with F to Europe etc but I haven't bothered to look at where, to be honest.
and I wanted the eUpgrades, not to mention the concierge services for winter irrops. In those days at least 100K Super Elite was much better the QFF P1 these days.
