Originally Posted by
heyfife
Thanks for any help you can give me. I have kept up with the programmes for years and always found the airline that suited me best but recently I can't find a decent solution. I hope somebody else can recommend an airline that matches my esoteric requirements. I have a BA Amex at the moment but can change to another card for a better option. Thanks in advance!
Welcome to Flyertalk heyfife!
Sorry this reply is a bit late, I've been a bit swamped but hope you're still around.
Seems like the issue for you is that you want status benefits and you're not reaching status. I'm not from LHR, I'm US based, so I guess take advice here with an eye to different perceptions/rules etc. But that being said, your main longhaul flights give you all three alliance options. To ICN, you have KE, OZ, and BA so all three alliances. To ORD, LAX, and SFO almost the same, with Star and OneWorld plus Delta's arrangement with VS.
The problem that jumps out at me is that 25-30k miles is not enough to earn you more than silver status on most airlines. It's a lot of flying, but just misses the cutoff, as silver status usually doesn't get you priority checkin or security or lounge access etc. While some airlines allow you to combine family miles in terms of redemptions, I don't know that any of them allow you to combine the mileage totals for status earning. If I'm wrong about this, hopefully someone will jump in and correct it, because what you're looking at is 4 fliers with silver status versus one flyer with high status that can cover the others with his/her benefits.
So, with all of that, I would echo the other reply, and one I've given before actually, to consider Aegean for awhile to earn you status. This can be reached by your total miles, and then you would have Star Gold status for awhile. You could fly Asiana to Korea, which I think is a step lower than Korean but not bad at all. And you could look at UA flights to SFO and ORD, and have NZ or UA to LAX. After you have status with Aegean, you will have had a taste of Star Alliance, and can either start accruing to UA, which isn't bad in terms of redemptions, or you could look at someone new again and only use the Star benefits when needed and the time is right. Be careful though with Aegean and fare class, as not all tickets earn miles with them. Watch the details on that.
On the other hand, AA is a decent program for redemption of miles. You could look at keep flying BA but accumulating miles with AA, but again it would be hard to get status in my opinion.
I suggest looking at the Aegean, BA, and AA forums to see what people who fly those programs more are saying. But if you're looking for priority status, Aegean is generally considered the fastest route.