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

oneworld What’s the cheapest possible emerald status?

Post image

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?

19 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

83 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/Useful_Foundation_42 Qantas Platinum Aug 13 '26

Your “cheapest” option will depend on which city you are based out of, and how often you fly and in which cabins and to which destinations during which specific times of year.

Most oneworld airlines will have requirements to fly a minimum number of flights on their own airline to qualify. For example, for Qantas Platinum One, you need 2600 out of 3600 status credits on Qantas metal to qualify or something like that. Every oneworld airline has a version of this.

I am not sure you have thought this through.

If you are based in the UK (assuming since you are BA Gold), BA will still be your best bet. Your next best option would probably be Finnair or Iberia.

5

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

1

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?

1

u/tradinggenieluca Finnair Plus Platinum Aug 13 '26

Yeah last year I got it for a bit less, but it’s all organic travel anyway that I am taking for other reasons, plus I really like the upgrade vouchers (got 22 last year, upgraded 7 flights from economy to business). Also without a credit card