Originally Posted by
vidrineb
Hey guys, I've never flown with OW before but I have a few flights booked on AA and MH this year and want to know what the best option was to credit points to. I'm anticipating lots of transatlantic flights in the coming years since I'm moving from US to UK and will be going back to visit family a couple times each year in the US. I'm currently looking at BA or AA. Does anyone have any advice or better options that I'm not looking at? The airports I'd be flying into in the US often would be MSY and LAX.
(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
upgrades on travel and good award redemption rates
I'd agree that narrowing it down between AA and BA is best. As you said upgrades are your priority, I'd focus on that first.
The biggest advantage of AA is that you can upgrade directly to business from any economy fare class, even the lowest "Q" sale one. BA lets you only upgrade from full-fare economy tickets or paid premium economy tickets.
However, there's two catches:
One: AA charges a $700 co-pay in addition to the miles to upgrade a return transatlantic flight. Add the base fare, and you are looking at roughly the same cash price as BAs discounted "T" premium economy tickets when you can plan ahead and take advantage of sales.
Two, and I suspect this will only get worse instead of better: Availability. I can only speak for the LAX and DFW routes, which are served by an AA 777-300 with arguable the best business class seat product out there right now. Even as an EXP using SWUs, upgrades are far from guaranteed. I have sat next to top-tier members in coach on LHR.LAX whose upgrades have not cleared - the airport upgrade list having 50 names on it is not uncommon these days. You as a Gold or Platinum member using miles and co-pay would be at the bottom of the list and I suspect you'd never see an upgrade clear at booking. This is only going to get worse in the future as the new AA management is reducing premium cabin sizes to match paid demand with the pending retrofits of their 777s and new types coming in from what we can observe.
BA serves LAX with an A380 that has almost 100 business class seats, and upgrades have a way better chance of actually clearing. And, should it not clear, you get to travel in WT+ which is definitely a better experience than economy and well worth the extra money if you can snag a discounted "T" fare.
Also, Upgrades using points upgrading WT+ tickets are an especially good value with BA as you earn most of them back on the base WT+ fare. Look at
this example I did in anther thread.
So, when your primary concern is upgrades, and you don't mind paying a bit more (for the PE base ticket) for less of a lottery , BAEC is the better choice.
Also, as a UK resident, you have far more opportunities to earn Avios than AA miles with co-branded credit cards and the like.