7bp3u

Have some noob questions about miles and upgrades.

What are the differences between tier miles and 'normal' miles? I have over 60,000 normal miles but only 34,000 tier miles even though all the miles are from the airline that I'm a member with. Is it the expired miles that switch from tier to normal?

This is how I think it works so correct me if I'm wrong. The tier miles are what counts towards your membership class upgrade / renewal and once these tier miles expire they just become normal miles.

If offered an upgrade where will the miles be taken from tier or non tier? I was offered an upgrade (by spending 40,000 miles) to business on a recent long range flight. If you're quite close to getting a card upgrade is it wise to take a cabin upgrade? i.e. I need 6000 miles to get to the next membership class (sapphire) and my upgrade costs 40,000 miles so will I need to earn another 46,000 miles to get to the next membership class?

Mwenenzi

With frequent flyer programs there are
- redeemable miles/points used for awards flights, upgrades and the like (your “normal” miles)
- status earning for the various tiers/level (example ruby, sapphire, emerald)

USA based and some other frequent flyer programs unfortunately often use the word “miles” as a measure of status earning. Non USA based frequent flyer programs usually use a different word/phrase like tier points or status credits. That lessens the confusion between status and redeemable frequent flyer miles.

The status earning miles/tier points/what ever they are called are rest to zero and the end of your membership year. They do not convert.

humble noob

Hi All,

I wasn't sure where to post this and it may get moved.

From: PSA or other Italian airport
To: DFW
Departure: 7/21/17
Arrival: 7/25/17
Status: AA Gold
Priorities: EQM
Money: <$3000USD
Points: 70,000AA or 85,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards that can be used for getting out of Italy.

I know Europe in summer is not a good time for a mileage run but I have these days available to me and no flight seems cheap. Wanted to see if anyone could get creative and help find me a schedule that could work. EQD are already over $6000 but EQM only at 30,000

Also any advice on what I should change for future posts is appreciated!!

Mwenenzi

For AA questions refer to the AA forum http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...advantage-733/
It can be difficult to navigate, as it has many posts per day and many new threads get rolled into existing threads on the same topic

Value of any mileage run is variable: just what works for you

mario23

I got oneworld emerald on LATAM a few days ago but it isn't showing up on finnair how long does it take for status to update?

Mwenenzi

Sometimes never.
The usual answer if a reservation was made before a status change is to remove the freq flyer number from the reservation, save and then add back the freq flyer number into the reservation to refresh it with the upgraded status.

EkekoBWI

A friend of mine with no OW status and no FF miles accumulated will be flying CWB/GRU/JFK all on a single Economy class ticket on LATAM. He plans to stay in New York 3 days and then fly to SEA. I'm considering using my AA miles to buy him a F ticket JFK/SEA on AA metal, hoping to connect the PNR and, in turn, make the entire routing eligible for Business Class baggage allowance, including the normally very restrictive intra-Brazil 23kg limitation. Will this work?

Complicating things, does the exNYC airport need to be exclusively exJFK or could he depart from any NYC area airport and connect the tickets?

Could I book DL metal (767 vs AA's 738) instead of a OW Partner for the JFK/SEA leg and still connect the tickets and get the Business Class baggage allowance for the entire itin?

TIA

JAXBA

Quote:

Originally Posted by EkekoBWI

…hoping to connect the PNR…

Unfortunately the chances of you being able to add an award booking (or a DL booking) to the existing LATAM PNR are very low. AA might be able to pull up the PNR but they most likely won't start booking an award in it. DL won't be able to see the LA/JJ booking at all, nevermind link it.

If the LA/JJ ticket can be changed to add the SEA flight on the end, then you might get somewhere, but that would probably be more expensive than simply paying for an extra bag…

EkekoBWI

Thanks. I'll probably just advise they pay for the intra-Brazil bag fee. And if I'm calculating the excess baggage fee correctly, it is actually very cheap.

7bp3u

Hey everyone,

I recently became a Sapphire member in Srilankan airlines and when my membership card arrived there were also some personalised luggage tags in there.

I was just wondering if attaching them to my luggage gave any advantages when flying with Srilankan or other Oneworld airlines (do they come out first on the conveyor belt?).

I'm not particularly fond of them but if they have any useful perks I don't mind using it.

Thanks for reading.

JAXBA

Luggage tags with status might do something, sometimes, but if you'd rather not use them it doesn't really matter. As a Sapphire you're allowed to check-in at business class desks where available, and they can attach priority tags then.

Usually the info determining priority handling is linked to the label barcode - anything else is just a visual cue.

Furton

I've booked a LONE4 RTW starting in August and I've managed to pre-select seats for most of my flights where it's free.

I've chosen my seats for 2 flights within S.American (both XL flight number) on the LATAM website, however for some reason it won't let me choose flights on JJ flight number. Any reason why and how I can go about choosing these seats?

Lou Cravenstahl

This is a first-time posting for me, and I am totally bewildered by all of the acronyms that I see in various posts.

I currently live on the East Coast of the United States, and have worked for a British employer for a few years. I flew British Airways for all this time, and just ticked over into Silver (One World Sapphire) for the first time. I was just happy to get lounge access.

But I'm about to quit that job and move to Western Australia for a new one. I will still be returning to the United Kingdom three times a year, and the new job will require a fair bit of domestic travel in Oz. So I will be flying Qantas quite a bit. I will also return to the United States at least once a year for family reasons.

Qantas, as most of you will already know, will not allow me to transfer my Sapphire status to them, and I would need to start over at zero in their Frequent Flyer program. Still, this might be worth it, depending on how quickly I could grow into Sapphire status with them and how much better they treat their own customers instead of those of their One World partners. But I'm not sure if I could use my BA Silver status to get access to lounges when my ticket is booked using my new Qantas account instead of my old BA account.

I've read a few threads here that tell me to compare the mileage requirements of the two different airlines, but I have to say that finding any exact details to run some comparisons of BA vs. Qantas is pretty damn difficult.

Any advice would be appreciated.

JAXBA

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lou Cravenstahl

This is a first-time posting for me, and I am totally bewildered by all of the acronyms that I see in various posts....

Welcome to FlyerTalk Lou! We do use a lot of jargon on this forum - and we seem to be able to make new initialism and acronyms up very quickly! Fortunately there's an FT glossary that might be useful, as well as some sub-forums having dashboards with airline specific lingo listed, such as this one for BA: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...-glossary.html - hopefully you'll get the hang of it soon enough!

Quote:

I'm not sure if I could use my BA Silver status to get access to lounges when my ticket is booked using my new Qantas account instead of my old BA account.

Yes, you could - if you do switch to QF, you'd need to be able to show your BA Silver card while it lasts, otherwise QF won't know your BA status.

As to whether you should switch from BA to QF, you may want to consider looking at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...help-here.html. In my opinion, if you think you may be able to do 4 BA flights every other year or less, it may make sense to just stick with BA and maintain Silver there, even if you occasionally go down to Bronze for a while. Have a look at that last link though and see if you can answer some of the questions in the first post; someone else is sure to have different suggestions.

Welcome!

Mwenenzi

Lou Cravenstahl Welcome to FT and Aussie when you get here

In addition to the good post above, how long will you be in Australia for? A few years or for ever? Is UK home?

If you put your BA freq flyer number in a QF reservation you will get OW sapphire benefits, including lounge access. And earn TP & avios as on the BA web site.

BA does not allow frequent flyer members from Australia, so put a UK or USA address in you BA profile. Otherwise BA will/may kick you out and loose status/avios. Be careful about this.

Also QF is not a good ffp compared to others. AA & BA are often considered better ffp's. But you can get some QF points from credit card spend, but this is reducing with some banks.


Freq Flyer Award assistance tools
Use at your own risk. (These are not recommendations)
These links give a guide of ff miles needed. These may not be up to date.
Availability is from the airline ffp web sites/phone.
Award flights are never guaranteed. You need to be flexible with date and route.
Frequent flyer miles/points are not equal to or burn. They are not 1 to 1
If a multi segment award check the rules/cost carefully. With some ffp’s it can be 2 or more awards or cost more ff miles/points than a direct flight.
If the award is on partner airline it may cost more miles/points than an award on the ffp airline.
Some awards/airlines/routes can have cash surcharges, in addition to real taxes.
Real taxes/regulatory fees are the same for all airlines on the same route/class.
Some carrier imposed surcharges can trigger additional real taxes when the flight changes from non-revenue to revenue.
-AwardAce: Compare Award Redemptions Across Airlines In Seconds --> http://www.awardace.com/ Has surcharge indication
-Economical Excursionist's Tools to compare Frequent Flyer Mile Redemptions --> http://www.flyermiler.com/
-http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...ast-miles.html --> http://www.awardhacker.com/