Renewing AU on very last day of my membership year

...is what it looks I will be doing this time round, as VS travel has been a bit limited over the past 12 months.

Question is, has anyone else cut it that fine, and does the lag in posting the TPs cause even a momentary drop down to Silver? I just want to make sure that VS's systems don't perceive me to have broken my gold run in the quest for lifetime status...

To answer the obvious question, no I can't travel any earlier than I am - I'm pushing my luck as it is...

Oh I did it once, flew to Edinburgh and back on BMI. I don't recall a lag.

You really should go for GfL of course :-).

You can fill in a missing miles claim as you get of the plane to claim an instant credit of points it works on little red at least as that is how I got my silver and then gold when little red started.

Oh I did it once, flew to Edinburgh and back on BMI. I don't recall a lag.

You really should go for GfL of course :-).

Well yes Slinky, this is the perennial agony I put myself through... I have 5 more renewals to go, and then I'll be gfl at the tender age of... Well, under 50 anyway. Young enough to see some benefit. But there's a part of me that thinks of gfl as being a bit like the state pension - will it actually be there for me when I expect it, and will it still be recognisable?

Part of the reason for the paucity of VS earning travel has been the cost of their flights for leisure recently - their so called 'sale' has been something of a let down, to the point that this year I'm flying with Qatar to Dubai, for considerably less than half the cost that VS wanted from me.

In the meantime, I've been stacking up reasons to shift over to BA/OW carriers, not least the usability of miles for things like cheap european reward flight savers. But the hurdle I see there is that's really been most useful as a gold with BA, with the extra redemption availability that I get.

But I realistically am not going to maintain gold with both BA and VS, and decision time for me will be later this year. And it's really not easy, as I do like the Virgin brand, otherwise I wouldn't have built up 700k points in the past 4 years with them. Points that given my current family circumstances/need to fly in hols etc, means that I have never had a sniff of using. Even my 80TP upgrade voucher expired unused.

Apologies, this turned into a bit of a monologue, but as I think you may have guessed, I am agonising over this one - ditch VS and take BA gold (no realistic chance of hitting their gfl though), or continue to hedge between them... Hmm...