Originally Posted by
bhomburg
AA is definitely good for 'cheapest economy' fliers such as you as their program earns 100% miles on all fares flown on AA, BA and LAN international flights. I'd say it's safe to expect the earn rates transfer to TAM as well after the merger is completed, but that's speculative at this point.
Add reasonably generous expiration policies and solid redemption values (hefty surcharges on BA metal flights though) to the advantages and it looks like a program to consider indeed.
However, the earn rates on LAN (and presumably, post-merger TAM) for domestic discount economy fares are dismal at 25%. So when the majority of your travel is domestic, think twice or credit those to another program.
In any case, I'd wait with mileage runs etc. until the LAN/TAM merger dust has settled, TAM actually is in OW and OW programs have updated their earning charts.
Thank you very much! Looks like I'll be going with AA, I checked TAM's point per flight system and it looks like its really bad when compared to a miles per miles flown system, Lanpass KMs also looks to be pretty bad when compared to AA.
As for mileage runs I am still doing lots of research and I'll probably do it only 6-9 months from now or so(after the rates go down from the World Cup), I still need to check if OW is better than *A for me, and even though the majority of my travel is domestic I'd expect to do mileage runs mostly on international flights anyway.