Welcome to OW!

It is a bit hard to figure out the best option without knowing your specific flights, and if these 3 RTs are the extent of your expected flying.

Having looked at this a couple of times, for the premium flyer it usually comes down to BA or QF's program. 3 long-haul F RTs should get you to mid-tier elite on BA (but you'd be well away from top-tier); the same on QF could get you to top-tier. But since you're flying paid F, status may not be a big issue.

The bad news for QF is that it looks like no status or cabin bonuses for QF when flying on CX, so your accrual would be limited. On BA you'd get a 50% cabin bonus, but I don't think you'd get the 25% status bonus once attaining BA silver.

So 3 trips in F credited to BA (assuming @5k miles one way) = 45k BA miles. This would not even get you from Germany to CPT in Y - you'd need 150k to do this trip in F.

You must note that BA is very strict about needing 4 BA flights to qualify for status; QF has the same rule but reportedly does not enforce it.

Thinking about it, AA may be your best bet. If you take the "Platinum Challenge", you'd make mid-tier elite on your first trip and qualify for 100% milage bonus, +50% class of service. 3 F RTs @5k miles would net you 65k miles; not enough to get you to Asia in any cabin, but closer to CPT in F, which takes 100k miles (75k in J, 60k in Y).

CX's Marco Polo club looks to be the poorest choice.

[This message has been edited by JHunter (edited Dec 04, 2003).]