Hello!

We live in the UK and have family in Vietnam (SGN), so generally visit 1-2 times a year. As we have just had our second child, and our first has just hit 2 years so we are now paying almost a full fare for her, I thought it was high time to investigate how we can cut down our spending on airlines with frequent flier programs.

I've been reading, making spreadsheets and scheming for a week or so based on posts here and on headforpoints.com and while it's all been really helpful I'm beginning to find our situation is a bit too specific to base decisions off general advice on which program is best so I thought I'd see if anyone could help clarify my thinking.

The biggest questions are:
- Am I crazy to plan to use points for economy long haul, given we would unlikely ever be able to afford the points for business with kids? Does it make more sense to earn points on the flights to SGN and spend them on EU/Asia short hauls / a blowout holiday to US via Air Lingus or Caribbean via Iberia?
- Air France, KLM + Vietnam Airlines are very fast/convenient for SGN, especially as we could fly from our home airport in Bristol (BRS). Don't know about VN's service but last flight on AF staff gave us a free seat for our (rather tall) infant, moving another passenger, and free champagne in economy so we were a bit starstruck. Have a trip with VN in May so will see how they are - but experience on domestic flights suggest not great!
- Otherwise FlyingBlue not so good for European holidays and Avios are easier to earn in the UK

Generating Points In UK
We've had a Lloyds Avios card for years and enjoyed the reward flight savers in Europe. I run a small business and can see that moving biz spending onto an Amex business card, plus using either a Gold card at home or BA Premium + Clubcard could generate 120-180,000 Avios a year, not including occasional MR / Clubcard transfer bonuses.

Obviously the Amex could still generate FB points and get transfer bonuses but things like the 2-4-1 voucher and tesco clubcard earnings would not be available. Perhaps we could earn 120k MR and use a transfer bonus to FB


Earning Miles On Paid Tickets
We normally buy the cheapest economy tickets we can find. Before the kids were born and when we were poorer we'd even buy flights like LHR-BOM-BKK then get an airasia or similar flight to save a bit here or there. I could be persuaded to pay for flexible tickets to get 100% points if I felt I'd get more value back elsewhere.

Given the number of hubs between the two countries we have the choice of flying Star, OneWorld or Skyteam airlines, or independents like Etihad + Emirates.

Price wise, we have bought AF, Qatar, Gulf (urgh), Emirates, Singapore, Malaysia, Etihad or as above, a cheap return to BKK/KUL/SIN and a low cost carrier so no allegiance to one route. As a result we have also tacked on many holidays/stopovers in South East Asia when visiting family and while we love it, exploring HKG / Taiwan etc might be interesting for a change if we went for BA/Cathay. With young children doing at least one leg direct without a stopover appeals more too.

It does seem that many of the Oneworld partners won't grant any miles if we are in the cheapest Economy, while flying AF is cheaper than BA and I believe VN will also generate up to 100% in Economy (though only 25% for lowest fares). I must confess I haven't checked Star Alliance - Turkish and Air China are cheap but slow ways to get there, Singapore + Thai nice and direct but generally more £ than we normally pay.

Standard Rewards: Relative Costs
Once second child is two four tickets to VN at current rates will cost £2000-3000, depending on time of year and availability.

Cathay LHR- SGN is 75000 miles in Economy, £308 in taxes : 4 tickets would cost 300k points + £1200ish, saving £600 in low season, £1600 at peak or 0.2p / 0.5p mile respectively

AF LHR-SGN or KLM BRS-SGN is 80000 miles Economy, £268 in taxes : 4 tickets would cost 320k points + £1000 ish, saving £878 / £1878 low vs peak or .3p / .6p mile

Promotional Rewards
BA we could use a 2-4-1 but only on direct flights to BKK, SIN, HKG not on the connection to SGN meaning we need an additional paid ticket, plus higher fees for flying BA vs Cathay - but the bonus is effectively guaranteed

AF have 'promo' reward flights resulting in a 25-50% reduction in miles. As these vary at different times of year we couldn't be sure of our destination being available, but given we could easily fly to HKG, SIN, BKK or KUL and transfer

Other practical considerations
BA let you pool points across a family while Flying Blue don't. I can't remember why I thought we might need to but that seemed to be an issue late last night!
Flying VN domestically would be a cheap way of ensuring our FB miles don't expire and is pretty certain each year
In a response to someone else on here I saw someone state that 'if you are mainly flying economy AA may be a better choice than Avios' for collecting miles - but there was no explanation of why. Any ideas?

If we earnt on the long haul and spent on short haul, as well as Reward Savers Cathay taxes are pretty low for eg SGN to HKG/TPE/PVG or even NRT for burning avios on short haul, though Malaysia fees around SEA are more expensive than local low cost carriers (though free domestically).
I haven't done equivalent calculations for FlyingBlue partners in the region (are there any?)

I am very tall so like big seats in economy!

Finally - given the high taxes we will always face, does it make sense to earn points for hotels instead of airlines? VN hotels can be very cheap so on the face of it perhaps not huge savings - but the luxury ones can be very nice treats indeed.