Originally Posted by
Melka
After searching for tickets I found that Garuda had deeply discounted tickets available and I decided to give them a chance. My first flight with them will be soon and if Garuda is okay I will keep flying with them between LGW and AMS. It would be great if there is a frequent flyer program which allows me to earn miles on deeply discounted economy tickets (S). I have tried to find something but have not been very successful so far, it seems like none of the ST members offer a program that would work for me. I am mostly interested in priority services. I expect to do 10 return flights between LGW and AMS a year, all as cheap as possible.
10 returns a year is 20 segments, which would earn you
Silver (SkyTeam Elite) status on Flying Blue, which gets you an additional baggage allowance and some priority services (although not lounge access). However, these segments have to be in a fare-class which earns miles on FB - and
it seems S (and V) do not. If you're willing to pay for T (or above) then you would earn miles, and hence segments, on FB.
It seems Garuda Miles also only gives miles for
T-class or above. With Garuda Miles, you can earn
Silver status with only ten segments, but to obtain SkyTeam Elite status, you have to reach
Gold (30 segments).
As
Supersonic Swinger has said, if Garuda are unwilling to offer miles for S (or V) class fares, it seems unlikely any other FFP will either. (But, you would have to look through the earnings charts for all SkyTeam FFPs to check this...)
Also, see
this thread for my review of the inaugural AMS-LGW flight this week (in J), as well as a discussion of how long the AMS-LGW-AMS route is likely to continue (as Garuda want to replace it with a direct LGW-JKT service at some point, if there is sufficient demand to warrant it.)