Dear Kind FlyerTalk folks,
My big question: Is it worth changing our family OW earn partner from BA to Cathay for three years?
<newbie disclaimer>: I’ve tried to find the answers to my questions for the last six weeks or so through this forum and the airline sites, but after reading numerous posts and threads here and on the FF sites I still can’t seem to reach a satisfactory conclusion. So, apologies in advance if this is obvious to anyone else. Many thanks for any help -- and hence this first post.
Background: My family of four is currently all members of BA because we alternate through periods where we travel quite often (25K miles a year for three years) and periods where we hardly travel (5k miles a year for the next three years). We almost always fly economy because we travel for pleasure/family visits and have small children (aged 5 and 7) -- Business gets pretty expensive when you’re buying four seats. We originally chose BA for two reasons. First, in our slow years we live in London and earn BA miles and maintain our accounts through the Amex BA Card. And second, their Household Account allows us to pool miles across accounts.
The problem we recently encountered was with Cathay acknowledging any BA history. My husband flew Cathay economy on his own, and even though he had flown 20K miles on Cathay in the prior few months, mileage was earned with his BA FF number. We assumed OW shared information about FFs across carriers, but the check-in counter clerk said to him, “I would love to upgrade you since there is a lot of room in Business, but you clearly never fly Cathay.”
This has made us reevaluate our FF plans with OW. For the next three years, we are going to fly from Asia (Hong Kong has excellent connections for us), and to fly about 25K+ miles a year, which should earn us the first level of benefits. But who to earn with?
My questions, oh wise ones:
A. Is it worth changing to Cathay’s Asia Miles to earn/try to gain status, so that they see we are FFs? Even though we will then have miles across two OW programs?
B. Can I join Asia Miles but not pay $400 to join Marco Polo? Can I earn any status with Asia Miles or does that only come with Marco Polo?
C.I read that you may be able to get around paying the Marco Polo Club fee by either
- earning 25K miles in a year (does this really work?), or
- earning status in another program and then swapping into Marco Polo. But if we stick with earning on BA, we won’t technically get Ruby status (since we don’t fly BA-labeled segments).
D. Is there another OW partner with whom I can actually earn the first level/Ruby status without ever flying on their metal?
Below are also the questions that the sticky on the start of this forum pose.
Many thanks!
KT
Questions
(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
In order of importance,
1. upgrades on travel
2. lounge access
3. good award redemption rates
4. extra baggage allowance
5. priority services when flying the airline
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
This year we will fly about 25K+ miles on 9 flights, and possibly some other small trips. It will be:
4 short regional hops to Hong Kong
5 long haul segments (HK-LHR-HK, HK-LHR-LAX-HK)
So: 25000-50000 miles on <25 segments
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
Economy
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
We can chose airline, but can only usually afford economy. We travel for pleasure 90% of the time.
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
Asia to London and Asia to US, which we have been doing on Cathay/Dragon Air.
(6) What is your home airport?
Currently Phnom Penh, so decent OW hub at Hong Kong – for the next years. After that likely London will be our home airport again.
(7) Do you have FFP status of any kind in OW or other airline? What is it? Do you have any miles banked in a FFP?
No current earned status.
We have a decent number of Avios, but also have some AA miles, and some on Virgin. We move around so find ourselves in different optimal earning situations every three years or so.
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
Dragon Air/Cathay have great HK connection to LAX and LHR, where our families are