Originally Posted by
rafaelmagu
Am planning a round the world trip this year and would appreciate some help in finding out what's the best FFP to join.
(1) What is your home airport? AKL
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Y, maybe W
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? This year, ~30K. Hopefully more from next year onwards.
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (UA Premier, M&M Senator etc) None
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? (Frequent upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, good award redemption rates, free lounge access, etc.) Upgrades and lounge access first, priority second. Not fussed about redeeming rewards.
(6) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific etc) Transpacific, mostly. Living in NZ helps with that
(7) Preferred Airlines Air NZ
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?) Pleasure
I think living in NZ you are pretty much stuck with Airpoints. Most if not all cheap economy fares on NZ do not earn anything in the "easy" programs (OZ, TK, A3), and at the end of the day when you consider you can earn status points through credit card spending it is not impossible to achieve gold status.
You should carefully check the NZ board on FT and try simulating how many status points you would receive for your RTW trip. With the RTW trip you could conceivably obtain gold status with OZ (40k miles) if you choose your booking classes wisely, but maintaining it might be very tricky if you only fly economy in/on NZ.