Hi all - A few days ago I was thinking about the Skytrax awards a la "best airline of the year" etc. and I have in the past also completed these questionnaires. If people complete the questions, it just a snapshot of one person rating an experience but without having experienced EVERY airline that is available.

I started very frequent travel when I moved from the U.K to South East Asia in 2010 and the first airline programme I joined was Emirates Skywards and I quickly became one of their Gold members. Without experiencing any other Airlines Gold member benefits, the EK programme set the standard for me.

When EK then removed the lounge access for my wife which is not a gold member and occasionally flying together with me, I stopped flying with Emirates and moved all my travel to Qatar Airways about which I heard some positive feedback (unfortunately from friends that weren't frequent traveller I must say by now).... I booked all my 2011 travel with them and quickly became their Gold Member as well.

Now after I experienced 1 year as Skywards Gold and 1 year as Privilege Club gold, I must say that there is a huuuuuge difference between both Airlines, their frequent flyer programmes and their understanding of customer service in so many ways.

If I would have known before, I would never have changed and stated with Emirates Skywards gold but I didn't. And I am now somewhat stuck with QR due to the fact that my Skywards status diluted to Silver :-(.

I am now with experience able to give a detailed comparison about both airlines programmes because I have heavily used both of them in paid economy and business class and would very much like to kick of a conversation that compares Gold Experiences in one programme with Gold experiences in another programme in order to determine the perfect Gold Experience but only with feedback from people that have experienced two programmes.

Before we start, I recommend to agree upon certain criteria we rate and talk about in order to keep this discussion uniform.

What do you think?

Regards,
thstg