I’m having the same dilemma. I’ve renewed gold six month ahead of schedule, and have been merrily continuing to accrue TP’s on premium class flights. I’m likely to be on a route served by both BA and VS for the next 3 or so months, before changing location to a route served by BA or Gulf.
It’s a tough call, my personally flying is usually on VS in Economy and having Gold is a nice benefit for me and the Mrs, and we’ve done very nicely out of miles in the last couple of years.
But since I’m unlikely to do enough premium flying on VS next year and worse will only be flying economy with Gulf,(and the partnership with Gulf is only a miles earning deal with no VS gold benefits), maybe I should switch allegiance now to BA and try to get status before I’m relegated to Economy class only in and out of Bahrain.
But those VS miles rack up nicely and get the mrs a lot of flights to accompany me.
