Originally Posted by
adzenith
(1) What is your home airport? (SFO, LAX, MCO, etc.)
SEA
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (C, F, Y, etc.)
Y domestic, C transpac.
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k)
Around 50k: a couple trips to HKG, a few trips to SFO/OAK, and maybe some to BOS.
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (UA Premier, M&M Senator etc)
None at all.
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? (Frequent upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, good award redemption rates, free lounge access, etc.)
I'd most like good award redemption rates.
(6) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific etc)
I fly most to OAK/SFO, sometimes to BOS, and a couple times a year to HKG.
(7) Preferred Airlines
No real preference.
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you choose your airlines, class of service?)
I travel for both work and pleasure; for work I can generally choose my airline.
Thanks in advance!
Given your transpacific flights in C, I would look over at M&M, 100k will give you *G/SEN, with upgrade vouchers, AND lounge access while flying domestic in the US of A.
And those 100k will only mean 44.5k actual miles flown in C, as (starting from 35k miles aquired when you gain FTL/*S) their Status costumers get another 25% extra, and C does yield 200%. So it's 225% of the distance flown. Not that many transpacific's for that, and you only need to hit it once every 2 years.
Back to lounge access, you get free lounge access with a non-domestic(usa)-*A-Gold-status when flying domestic in the usa, so this might be worth something, but I think they (each us airline) are handing out free upgrades but only for their own elites. If you'll be splitting your travels over several carriers, lounge access might be worth more than having an update once in a while. That, and the much better earning in C to M&M makes me believe that if you can make the above mentioned "100k", you should go with M&M