Originally Posted by
Lucifel
The problem would be I hardly ride Asiana...I ride it sometimes when I visit Seoul but that is not as often as Lufthansa for Europe and United/Continental/ANA/AC to USA.
So all in all I would not benefit that much from the Asiana status but only the *Gold. That was why I considered BMI (since it seems they are getting folded into Lufthansa) or United or Aeroplan or ANA...however as everyone knows ANA gives bad miles to Discount tickets. United is ok and not my airline of choice with its terrible service...BMI does have low threshold for *Gold status...Aeroplan has the requirement to ride Air Canada flights...plus Asiana I hear has terrible redemption. Correct me if I am wrong.
I don't think Asiana is the way to go. In that case I can also argue I might as well go with Krisflyer since I can at least gain some status with them if not up to Gold since I ride their airline more often then Asiana.
P.S. Asiana does not offer flights from Tokyo to US. At least I can't buy tickets through to US with Asiana websites unless I go to a travel agent and at that point it costs way more than United/Continental/ANA/Singapore/AC which is why I never bothered with Asiana except to fly to Seoul
Actually, LH announced recently they'll try to sell off BMI, as they think there is no chance that it could be made profitable within the LH group. Might even mean they'll be dropped from *A alltogether.
Why don't you choose TK for flights to Europe? IST does have a great lounge, and flight times should be at least as good as with LH, as well as connections to the EU. (Unless you're heading for some smallish airports within Germany)
TK *G is quite good, easy to get Gold, and when you fly on them, you get plenty of benefits. They're also growing quite quickly, so you can expect a lot more destinations. And, for flights in their Premium Eco, you don't have to spend huge amounts of money to get a really decent product. While flying them to the Western coast of the US would be crazy time-wise, for the east coast it might be not THAT much longer, especially when you can avoid having to catch a connection in the US domestic.