Dubai_consultant

Hello all,

I'm traveling on a weekly basis between Dubai and Riyadh and usually I fly outbound on EK and return on SV. Almost all my flights are economy.
I've been collecting skyward points but for the Saudia flights I'm not really sure what to do. Since Saudia is part of skyteam I thought of collecting points on my Delta Skymiles (which is not that high to begin with).
I live in Dubai and my goal is to stock up on benefits and free tickets. I tend to travel for leisure to Europe and US but I don't really have any preferred airlines.
My questions are the following:

- Is it better to collect points on Saudia or one of the partner airlines? If on partner, which one is best?

- For collection, will earning miles on a partner airline lose the value? For example, I saw that an SV economy B/M/E ticket gets you 100% of the delta skymiles whereas they only get you 75% of the flyblue miles. Does that mean that its better on Delta or am I missing something?

- For redemption, if I were to collect on Saudia and I want to use my miles for a klm or korean or other partner flight, do I lose the miles value? Is it better to collect on the airline I plan to use? Is there a partner that has the best "transfer out" point value?

- Finally, I saw that Korean airlines is a partner with Emirates as well, do you think it would make sense to collect on Korean since they also partner with Emirates and I'm collecting EK points as well.

Thanks a lot for this!

Cheers.

dvs7310

A lot of people like KE miles for redemption (They are an Amex transfer partner), but for earning there is actually quite a disadvantage. The way they do their Elite program (if you're flying enough to earn a useful status level, typically that's Gold or it's ~50k equivillant). To get Skyteam Plus on KE it goes by Lifetime miles, it's too much for even a heavy flyer to get in one year. If you were flying business class and already had the benefits then I'd say go for it, but if you're flying economy and want your benefits now-ish then probably should look at another program.

I also find Skywards to be a pretty stingy program, but if you have a chance of a status that grants lounge access in DXB it's probably worth sticking with it.

Dubai_consultant

Thanks for getting back to me. That makes sense! So can you recommend which skyteam airline is best to collect on?

Thank you!