Hi everyone,

I'm about to requalify for TG Gold in Jan 2017 so I'll have *A gold until at least 2019. But now that my company is enforcing PE/Y only for paid flights, I will be migrating away from TG as it has no PE for the routes I fly. I'm also considering an alternative FFP for crediting my A* flights, if there’s a possibility of getting better earn/burn rates and more free upgrades. Many thanks!

(1) What is your home airport?
LHR (LGW possible but not preferred)

(2) What types of fares do you usually buy?
PE if possible, otherwise Y

(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year?
45,000-5,5000 miles

(4) Do you have any kind of status at present?

TG Gold until Jan 2019. My other statuses are BA Silver (which I think I could maintain from flying CX PE) and Alitalia Freccia Alata (from status match, will let it expire in a couple of months)

(5) What is most important to you in a FFP?
- Free upgrades to J (which I get each time I attain/requalify for TG Gold) will be essential now that I can no longer fly paid J.
- Reasonable burn rates on *A partner airlines with flexibility for one-way or stopovers.

My main complaint with TG ROP is the poor earn and burn rate, especially for one-way award flights and *A partner award flights (which have a very poor, i.e. excessively high award chart that only allows round trips). The annual 'birthday gift' of 50% miles discount on TG award flights is nice, but I would rather have a less crazy redemption chart with lower YQ in the first place.

(6) Which routes do you fly most often?
Mostly ex-LON to various parts of SE Asia (BKK, HKG, PEK, HAN, CGK, TYO), but on occasions transatlantic.

(7) Preferred Airlines
On A* TG has served most of my needs up to now (with the occasional TK, NH). Now I can see most of my paid flights going to SG as I’ve heard good things about their PE. TK unfortunately don't have PE on my routes.

For my routes, I could also quite easily shift all my business to Oneworld (CX and JL being obvious contenders) but it’s good to diversify.

(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you choose your airlines,
class of service?)
Work, with some flexibility in choice of airlines. For longhaul flights I can choose PE or Y, but the company policy is also funny about refundable/flexible fares so I’d like to avoid Y if possible (I don’t want to end up with 0% mileage earning Y tickets!)

My thoughts:

At the moment I’m considering Aegean: reasonable partner award chart, relatively easy to redeem; but with no longhaul flights on its network to Asia I won’t be able to take advantage of its free upgrade vouchers?

Is there any advantage for me to credit to SG KrisFlyer, given I’ll likely be doing most of my paid *A flights there? I heard they give more award availability to own members.

I have considered a status challenge to TK Elite, but I wouldn't get free upgrade vouchers until I reached Elite Plus (difficult - at 80,000 miles in 12 months). And from their FT forums, redeeming *A partner awards seems impossible unless I go in person to their ticket office at Heathrow.

How about Asiana as a way of getting a longer lasting *G status?? But I have no idea how easy they are for partner award redemptions.

Thanks all!