Originally Posted by
TCove
I'm confused why you're suggesting I joint both AA and Qantas frequent flyer programs.
Isn't it best to build all my miles with one airline if I can, like AA ? And since Qantas codeshares with AA, I simply feed my AA frequent flyer number to Qantas on each of those legs.
What am I missing? Are you folks saying that as soon as I reach Premier status on AA, that I should then try to build such status on Qantas?
I wouldn't suggest that; the QF scheme is very ungenerous; I would suggest crediting to American; you will easily attain top tier status with AA with PE travel on a monthly basis. ORD-LAX-MEL-PER is over 11,000 miles so 22,000 miles per round trip. In PE your 1st trip will easily get you Gold status with AA, the next platinum and 2 more and will be Executive platinum ( assuming that the PE ticket provides K class or higher between MEL and PER )
You will have OW Emerald status and be earning a lot of value in spending miles. If you credit to Qantas you will earn no more miles than you would crediting to AA but suffer the much worse ( except in a few cases ) mileage redemption costs
When you have top tier status with AA, you may like to change 4 trips to be ORD-NRT-PER in economy and be able to use the 8 complimentary systemwide upgrades that AA awards to its top tier members to upgrade ORD-NRT-ORD to business class. Going via Tokyo is marginally shorter than via LAX/MEL