<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Flying Buccaneer:
andrzej and fly co to see the yanks: Thanks for your feedback. I actually flew AA for the first time as a paying passenger over Labor Day weekend (AA miles were transferred from TW). Coach on AA is far superior to coach on CO/NW.
I guess my only concerns are with the elite qualification rules on the One World partners. Based on what I have read, AAdvantage members don't earn ANY elite qualification credits on discounted fares with Cathay Pacific and a few others. Am I reading this correctly? Also, AAdvantage members get nothing for transatlantic BA flights. Considering that BA flies TPA-LGW, the ability to earn AAdvantage miles on BA would make this choice a no-brainer.
I've pretty much narrowed it down to AA and UA. The E+ seating in UA would be a major advantage, but MRTC on AA would make my qualification period less "painful."
Thanks again!</font>
Yes you are correct about the deep discounted fares on some of the OW partners, but usually the qualifying fares are not that much more, and if you really want to get full 100%, then you book AA codeshare, sometimes more, sometimes same, and sometimes less. My point is there are ways around it, you just have to pay attention.
It's true about BA. There are some laws that forbid AA and BA from having a wide-open relationship on transatlantic routes. Anyway, I fly to London about 4 times a year and I would not consider flying BA even if I did get miles. I'm self-employed so I have to watch my money. With AA I'm able to upgrade from the cheapest published fare with miles and since I made EXP and received the VIPs, with the certs now. But let's go back to the miles. I usually get a fare to London between $400-600 depending on the time of the year. I use 50K miles to uograde(so far 100% success) and I'm sitting in business. Since I usually take the TPA-DFW-LGW route, it comes out to 11.4K miles x 2 for elite bonus + 1K on-line booking bonus, I end up getting 23.8K miles back. So, the upgrade costs me 26K miles. I can't afford to buy BA business so I would be forced to fly coach, and since you can't upgrade with AA miles on any OW partner, well you see my point.
Don't forget about the challenge if you decide to go with AA.