Originally Posted by
itsme
You are a 1K, so that means that in the same year you hit 100K EQM with UA and direct the excess *A miles to BD (BMI)? How many air miles over and above the 100K or so (maybe some non-BIS EQM in the 1K mix) do you accrue? If it's another 50K, then you are forgoing the extra two SWUs that come at 150K and whatever token is there at 125K as an elite reward. (No big deal, since 2 SWUs and that token are minimum incentive to do an extra 50K of flying UA, IMO.)
You cited various examples of benefits to having BD miles as opposed to UA ones, but didn't mention the possibility of lounge access in US if you are BD gold. (Would you explain "without the star net filtering on awards that UA does." Are you referring to the difficulty of getting *A awards on other carriers using UA miles?)
So love the idea, but all my efforts, at least the flying ones, are needed to hit 1K.
I may hit 125K BIS on UA, but not 150K BIS. I don't really need 2 more SWUs. I think the key thing is that the flights I am crediting to BD are the <500 mi segments. Suppose I fly PHL-IAD. That's like 60 mi. Even at 100% match as a 1K, I earned a whopping 60 mi EQM and 120 mi RDM. The 60 EQM aren't really going to help me, and I am not making 1K on segments, so it makes more sense to me to credit those to BD and get 600 mi minimum per segment. I am already an RCC member, so the lounge access isn't really a factor although others certainly take advantage of it. As far as star net filtering goes, there are plenty of threads about it on the UA forum, just search for it, but basically what happens is that UA, unlike most or even all of the other *A carriers further filters flights available to the *A members. A great example is that it seems like once UA hits a certain number of LH awards, they just stop making LH awards available until perhaps the end of the month, the end of the quarter or some other unknown condition. So you can see a flight is generally available to *A for award using the ANA award tool, but UA says they either don't see it or it isn't available when you call in to try and book it (this is because start net filters it). BD doesn't do this, however, so you have another option for booking an award that may not be available to you at that moment using UA miles. For me, it's all about having options relatively painlessly.