MilesBuzz! - TAP vs. Varig vs. Miles & More..please help

I recenlty moved to barcelona from new york and within the last 6 months i have discovered that one world is not so good when originating travel in europe. iberia is very expensive for business class lang haul, so is BA, and Finnair's biz class is a joke. so i'm considering switchng to one of the following.

i need your advice.

i travel allot inside europe (alhtough i do not care about inter-european upgrades), about 5-10 roundtrips a year to south america, 5 rt's to north america, and 2-3 to asia/australia.

as an american airlines executive platinum member i get 8 long haul uprgades a year and can use miles for further uprades and tons of domestic upgrades. although this is not so relevant to me anymore as i now live in spain.

my questions are these:

how is TAP in terms of uprgrades? if i'm top level with them how easy is it to pugrade on long haul flights and is it a good program?

Varig..exactly the same questions?

and laslty lufthansa. i'm a permier exectutive with united as well, but am considering switching to lufthansa. lufthansa obviously has many more international flights of relevance to me than tap or varig. however, how many uprades will i get as a sentator member? and is it easy to uprgade on long haul flights with miles. also, i heard its easier to eanr miles with lufthansa than lets say aa. please shed some light on this.

and lastly, do iberia upragde their top loyal travellers on their long haul flights?

also if you have any other advice or idea to give, i would be greatly appreciative.

thanks for your time.

christian smith :)

I would stay away from TAP just because the service is horrible. Plus they do not have much of a route network to USA and they don't service Canada. Only reason I would fly this airline is because no other choice avail.

Varig is very good long-haul but I notice the service to Portugal is a bit lax compared to service to New York.

I would stick with Lufthansa if given the choice. Much more flights to choose from and you can't beat route network either from Frankfurt or Munich. Better lounges, excellent with upgrades.

the only reason i am even considering TAP and Varig is because most of my many long haul flights are to south america and they are also members of star alliance. i only wonder if they are genreous with uprades, gaining status etc.

most likely LH will be the best option, but if any of you have some insights to TAP and Varig I would appreciate it.

or any other suggestion to what would be smartest i use as my main frequent airline.

thanks

c.

Check the Star Alliance and Lufthansa forums for more info, but I believe you get the lower threshold for Senator being from Spain.

What you may want to do is see if you can comp over from AA to SpanAir to get *Gold status (for lounge access and priority boarding), then use SpanAir or Lufthansa to get to Frankfurt/Munich and fly LH from there to your final destination, applying all of the miles to Miles and More. I know there were some M&M rule changes that made some of the members unhappy, but that's probably still your best option, since you can take LH to all of your destinations and your best option is to have status on the airline you're actually flying rather than someone else in the alliance.

This is woefully out of date, but still an interesting chart Patron once put together:
How many paid trips are needed to earn an award ticket [in Star Alliance]? (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=183984)

thans for the info.

but what i am curious about is if tap or varig uprades its highest level passengers allot or if they give allot of coupons. some asian and south american airlines tend to do allot of courtesy uprgrades.

does M&M give allot of upgrade coupons?

thanks.

c.

I'm 1K on UA (StarAlliance) and have been a recipient of several operational upgrades on LH. Also, as 1K, you get 6 systemwide upgrades that you can use on UA or LH operated flights. I've flown LH in C and F class from Europe to Latin America (and vice versa) several times and loved it.

I have flown Varig from GRU to JFK in C class and wasn't impressed. South American carriers are rumored to give complimentary operational upgrades to their best customers and friends, so C and F class are sometimes always full. Also, keep in mind that Varig's fleet is old, mainly DC-10s/MD-11s. I heard that they only have two 777.

Forget about TAP unless you are flying from Europe directly to one of the Northeast destinations (Recife, Salvador, Fortaleza).

If you want to continue your AA/OneWorld privileges, TAM flies from GRU to CDG and their fleet is newer than Varig.