Originally Posted by
sky417
(1) What is your home airport? YVR
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Y or discounted rates
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 25~30K
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? CO Gold, KE Morning Calm
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Lounge access, maybe upgrade?
(6) Which routes do you fly most often : YVR-ICN
(7) Preferred Airlines : SQ, KE, OZ
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? pleasure
I am trying to decide between CO and AC..
I received CO Gold status via SM this year(from KE), and now I don't know if I should collect the mileage with CO.. the 100% bonus sounds pretty nice, in addition I just found out that the 100% bonus also applies to the AC flights..
Next year I'll have two trips to ICN, which are around 10k+ each, so with the 100% bonus it'll add up to 40k+.. which will make it so easy to maintain my gold status with CO.
Many people say that AC has one of the best FFP around, but I don't see why.. is it about the redemption rate? or low qualifying mile? (35k I believe?)
I admit that it is so much easier to collect miles on AC from using Canadian CCs, but those miles don't qualify for the status, right?
Youīre right that miles earned through CCs etc. do not count for status.
Basically there are status miles (which usually can only be generated by flying) and award/redeemable miles. Status miles determine your status and are reset to 0 at the end of each year, award miles can be redeemed for flights etc. When you take a flight you usually earn the same amount of status and award miles. The only exception to this is "Elite bonus miles" which depends on the FFP, e.g. LH M&M status members earn a 25% miles bonus that both counts as status and award miles, while Aeroplan status members earn 25%-100% extra award miles (bonus doesnīt count towards status), CO bonus miles also donīt count as status miles.
Regarding your question: In order to earn any (meaningful) status, youīll have to choose between KE and Star Alliance carriers. (IMO, SkyTeam is an overall much inferior alliance, so Iīd go with *A)
Another problem you have: If you mainly fly discounted or even regular economy fares (vs. full fare economy which is ridiculously expensive), youīll often earn zero miles when flying SQ or a only 50%-70% with SQ/OZ. If you fly CO/US/AC youīll earn 100% miles on all intīl flights regardless of booking class.
If I were you, Iīd go for AC/Aeroplan:
- Elite (= *A Gold) status only requires 35k status miles
- lounge access included (with CO you canīt use the lounges on domestic/transborder flights in the US)
- excellent redemption rates (do a search for "mini-RTW" in the AC forum), generally more generous stopover / routing rules
- more opportunities to earn award miles living in Canada (CC etc.)
- upgrade credits (theyīre currently changing from paper certs to e-upgrades, so the exact details for next year havenīt been released yet), generally you can upgrade 4 days before departure when travelling in discounted economy on intīl routes (if there are seats available) or you can confirm seats at time of booking when you buy more expensive fares (CO/UA only offers SWUs = intīl upgrades to their top tier members). The advantage of CO/UA is that you can also upgrade using miles, which you canīt on AC (at least not at the moment), but I usually donīt consider using miles for upgrades a good investment.
Anyhow, AP is most beneficial if you actually fly AC due to the upgrades (which can only be used on AC operated flights) and the miles bonus (50% for Es on AC/UA/CO operated flights and 25% on some other carriers, but not SQ).