ShebaMiles

Elite tiers

Gold confers Star Alliance Gold — the lowest tier in this programme with alliance-wide lounge access. Alliance mapping last verified 12 July 2026. Conditions beyond the threshold: Segment alternative: 50 qualifying sectors.. Compare lounge access across programmes →

Programme calendar year (1 January – 31 December); Status Miles reset to zero each 1 January. The ladder is DISJUNCTIVE — either the Status Miles or the segment alternative (Blue 2, Silver 25, Gold 50, Platinum 80 qualifying segments) qualifies, unlike Air New Zealand's conjunctive ladder. Segments count on Ethiopian metal only: Ethiopian's own note is that domestic flights and ALL partner flights do not count toward tier Qualifying Segments. The segment path IS published for Ethiopian international metal (1 / 0.75 / 0.5 / 0.25 segments per flight by booking-class band) but a segment currency cannot be combined with a Status-Miles calculator, so it is disclosed rather than computed. PARTNER EARNING IS CAPPED AT 100%. ShebaMiles' own earning calculator reports Status Miles and Award Miles as two separate figures, and 27 probes against it (31 Aug 2026) show Status Miles = distance × the LOWER of the chart percentage and 100%, while Award Miles take the full charted rate — confirmed on seven carriers across eleven above-100% probes (Swiss, ANA, Thai, Air China, Brussels, Turkish, EgyptAir), with Air China's 110% class the tightest case, clamped exactly to distance. That closes gap ET-G1: the "Only Base Miles … are Status Miles" sentence means the 100% base portion, and every partner rate above 100% has been corrected to 100%. AIR INDIA IS THE ONE EXCEPTION and is left uncapped — four probes across two classes and two route lengths return Status equal to Award at the full 250% and 200% rates. The published minimum-mile floors govern AWARD miles only: three floor tests on routes short enough to bind show Award raised to the floor while Status stays at the raw figure, so the 51 status-side floors have been removed. Lufthansa's chart is now encoded too — ShebaMiles serves it in full but does not list Lufthansa on its partner index, which is why it had been recorded as missing (an unlinked page, so re-check it next pass). Ethiopian's OWN metal is modelled separately and is deliberately NOT capped: no own-metal probe was run, the calculator is a partner instrument, and with Air India proving the cap is not universal, applying it to an untested case would be inference dressed as a reading. Ethiopian's own-metal figures are now PRIMARY: Ethiopian publishes a second, own-metal earning calculator (miles/earn-miles), and its Status-Miles ladder on a 3,674-mile probe reproduced every held rate cell for cell — C/J/D/P 150%, Y/G/S/B 100%, L/V/M/K 75%, H/U/Q/T 50%, E/O/W 25% — with Status Miles byte-identical across all four member tiers (the elite bonus moves Award Miles only). The same probe settles the clamp question: own metal is NOT capped at 100% (Business earns 150% of distance in Status Miles), so the partner-side ceiling deliberately not applied to Ethiopian metal is confirmed correct. Renewal at the same threshold, stated on the ShebaMiles status-and-benefits page (capture Y, 11 Sep 2026): ‘You will need to have earned the required amount of Status Miles or flown the minimum number of tier Qualifying Segments in a program calendar year (January 1st -December 31st) to upgrade to the next membership tier or maintain your existing membership tier’ — one annual bar that both reaches and keeps a tier, with no lower renewal figure published. The sentence that stood here until 11 September 2026, that reaching a tier holds it for a further 12 months and Platinum for 24, was WITHDRAWN as unsourced: it appears neither on that page nor anywhere in the ShebaMiles terms and conditions, which were read with every accordion expanded and searched for it. Verified at shebamiles.ethiopianairlines.com, 9 Aug and 31 Aug 2026, and again 11 Sep 2026.

Earning reference