Hi,

I am a rookie frequent flyer based in Oslo, Norway. Just got a job including a whole lot of flying, so I decided to sign up for a few programs. No one says you cant do so, but you can only earn points on one program for each trip.

Here is my strategy for Star Alliance-trips:

Since my trips always go roundtrip from Oslo and are mostly with SAS, the best thing for me in a short term was to go for the SAS Eurobonus Gold card asap. 45k points are easily earned if you fly at least economy extra/full-flex on a regular basis. I got Eurobonus mid-Oct and I now have 25k points (Silver) after one roundtrip to Cairo and one to Singapore. I am hoping to get to Gold by the end of november, and 60k (roundtrip OSL-NYC) before christmas.

Now, once I have gotten Eurobonus Gold and a free trip to NYC, I will begin working on my Miles&More account. As far as I've understood, the two programs calculate miles quite differently so 100k requested for M&M Gold doesn't necessarily have to be harder to earn than EB 45k. M&M Gold requests 100k within a CALENDAR YEAR, which means earning miles these last two months of 2010 would be rather useless for me.

Miles & More seems to me as a better program with more benefits in the long run. Once I get the EB Gold, I will stick to M&M and push for the Senator (=Gold) in the year of 2011. God knows how far I can push it after that, but having both EB Gold and M&M Senator at the age of 23 isn't that bad of a start!

So, wrapping up, what do you think of my strategy? Would you do anything differently?