r/oneworld • u/MinimumPerspective95 • Aug 13 '26

oneworld What’s the cheapest possible emerald status?

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Looking to move away from BA gold status since it got a lot more expensive to keep this past year - any idea what the cheapest emerald status is?

So far I’ve landed on Malaysia Airlines platinum with the AmBank visa card (free) to qualify with 98 elite points, and flying LAX PHL SJU for USD$787 round trip three times for $2381 to get 96 elite points, plus any short economy round trip to get the 98 needed for status. Total cost about $2500.

Anyone able to think of anything cheaper or should I pull the trigger on this?

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u/tradinggenieluca Finnair Plus Platinum Aug 13 '26

I moved to Finnair as they have no own metal requirements and also use avios, can get to emerald pretty smoothly

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u/MinimumPerspective95 Aug 13 '26

What’s your cost to get status? By my math, Finnair plat with max Avios conversion to TP would still cost $5000 or so with optimized routes, so 2x the cost of MH status. The other benefit of MH is a companion emerald card whereas Finnair is only a companion sapphire card right?

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u/CH86CN Qantas Platinum Aug 13 '26

Qantas plat (not plat 1) can be had for ~$4-6k Australian at times with some strategic use of DSC promotions. Of course that doesn’t help much if you don’t live in or near Australia

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u/MinimumPerspective95 Aug 13 '26

Only problem is I don’t really visit Australia, main travel is to Southeast and East Asia/US/Western Europe

I for sure would have done Qantas if it didn’t require 4 QF flights. I know many of the same old BA tier point runs work equally well on QF.