Originally Posted by
zdeneksme
Hi everyone,
I am about to start a two years long project with requires monthly travel en route WAW-ATL and I have a puzzle to solve:
(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
- upgrades on travel
- good award redemption rates
- better award access
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class?
123036 miles: all BA metal, CE+CW
~50000 miles: everything else, mostly economy, no real pattern here.
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
For work: business. For pleasure: economy.
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Airline can be freely chosen, for this particular project it will be BA biz (preferred) or KL/AF/DL biz (backup option).
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
In this case: WAW-LHR-ATL on BA (strongly preferred)
Alternative: WAW-AMS/CDG-ATL on KL/AF/DL (only when necessary)
I travel to USA & Canada once-twice per year for vacation.
(6) What is your home airport?
WAW: Warsaw, Poland
(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?
BAEC Bronze with ~60k Avios.
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
For the purpose of this calculation: BA. Most common in general: LO.
At the moment I am considering the following options:
a) credit everything to BAEC. Upside: including bonuses it should result in about 500k Avios per year, with 4 Upgrade vouchers yearly when 2.5k & 3.5k TP thresholds are met.
b) credit to BAEC until Gold is reached, then start crediting everything to Alaska Airlines MVP. They seem to have generous rates for BA CW and award-redemption partnership with various airlines across the globe. Also, when I am "forced" to use KL/AF/DL instead of regular BA then I can credit miles to AS MVP account. I enjoy spending vacation in North America, so AS awards & upgrades can come pretty handy.
c) credit to BAEC until Gold is reached, then switch to another OW program?
No idea which one could be better.
- there are no reasonable WAW-ATL connections on *A carriers
- all credit card related factors can be dismissed upfront.
I will appreciate any help and suggestions.
You miss one important consideration with your first option. Based on the mileage figures you're throwing out there for BA Business, you're looking at almost 4.5k Tier Points on those flights alone. Depending on how much flexibility you have for your other travel, you could easily get up to 5k Tier Points and get Gold Guest List and the Concorde Room Card. After one year you only need 3k TPs to maintain GGL. For layovers in London that frequent, having reliable Concorde Room access will be really nice. And that much flying on BA means having the added prestige of GGL certainly won't hurt.
It would also be easy to make up those Tier Points by booking some domestic F travel in the US--there are some incredibly cheap options on which you can earn TPs quickly, both transcon and East Coast shorthaul.
One thing you don't mention is your lifetime tier points with BA. Depending on how many you have, it may be in your interest to push towards lifetime Gold status at 35k.