There we go, 2022 and 2023 has just started 😉
WOW, I have collected a lot of miles and points during 2022! I had 3 vacation and two weekend trips.
Let us recapitulate:
1) Credit cards (Visa Luxair/AMEX Premium/AMEX Platinum)
Visa +- 10 000 miles
AMEX Premium +- 120 000 miles (with 5 referrals + yearly bonus + spending)
AMEX Platinum +- 250 000 MR (75k for uprade + 5 referrals + spending)
2) Hotels (booking.com/points.com) 7000 avios
3) Flights (12 flights) 10720 miles (2 Luxairtours flights not earning miles at all)
Miles and More: 6500 miles
Miles and Bonus: 8500 miles (where 1000 was from 20 years promotion and 500 miles gift as birthdays bonus)
4) Payback points 37.500 + 800 from Amazon which has not yet been credited
5) Amazon.DE 1500 miles
6) QR Promotion 2500 avios
7) Car rentals (national) 0
I could optimize Payback and Amazon purchases, but still a lot places which do not accept AMEX or credit cards in general. I would like to pay more with credit cards instead of wire transfer…
This year I have visited 2 new airports/places, Hamburg and Thessaloniki.
I could not qualify for Senator as our family has grown, but I could qualify for Silver with Aegean Miles & Bonus which I will continue for Gold. I will write another post for this.
I finally booked my first award flights, the first one was with Lufthansa and Luxair flights, the combination would cost over 1300€ but with miles it was only 35000 miles and 33€ fees and the other was just with Luxair.
Also I could use a lot priority pass from AMEX Platinum card as well the dining benefit at Um Plateau and abroad which is nice, but literally there are no offers like in Germany, UK or US which is pretty bad.
For this year, I will try to reach Gold hopefully until May with Aegean Miles and Bonus. Eventually reach some status at different hotel programs and again visit some new places.
It looks like that I also need to downgrade my AMEX Premium card to Preferred as the insurrances seems to be the same and I spend usually more with the Platinum card, so I am unsure to meet the 20k Euros per year with Premium to receive the yearly bonus whoch should be doable with the Preferred card.
J’hésite à annuler la Spuerkees Miles and More (si les voyageurs LuxAirTours ont aussi accès au Lounge il sera encore plus complet et parfois moins agréable que les bars en bas…)
Je me limiterai à l’AmEx Premium qui donne 1,5 miles par Eur dépensé. La Platinium donne des points AmEx et pas directement des miles…
Replying in English
Well, I understand that the lounge gets crowded even more, now that M&M Status holder could entry with Luxairtours flights ticket, but you can enter as well with Priority Pass from AMEX Platinum.
Well, as AMEX Brussels Premium and Preferred has identic insurances, so then the main point holding Premium is the 10k Miles yearly bonus if you hit 20 000€ in spending. If not then the Preferred woud be fines as well, but lower bonus.
AMEX Membership Points are transferable to M&M with the rate of 2:1 = 2000 points will be 1000 Miles.
https://milesfreak.lu/2021/09/06/chart-credit-card-points/