Jimmyinoz Welcome to FT
I have gold with Virgin Australia just now, but will not have sufficient status to renew now I've retired and unlikely to have much business travel in Australia. I also have around 200k in Qantas FF points. I have 40K AMEX - 57K VA 40K with Delta, 80K with Avios and 40K Singapore Airlines. Just a few with AA and Alaska
You have a big overlap of ffp's
QF, AA, AS & BA are ff partners of each other. Although the AA-AS ff partnership is very limited compared to last year.
VA is a ff partner of DL & SQ
Having multiple ffp’s with low balances is never a good idea. You may never get enough ff miles/points to be of use before they expire. Adding frequent miles in a ff program that you can use are worth more than ff miles in an orphan ffp that you will never use even if the earning rate is
better.
You will need to be careful about expiry
Miles/Points that Do and Don't Expire. Click to open the wiki.
Originally Posted by
tom911
Originally Posted by
Jimmyinoz
...My question is whether I should add the miles from my ATW tip to AA or Alaska rather than Qantas. I'm looking for good reward future redemption rates to USA in Business class.
Alaska-booked award travel between the U.S. and Australia on Qantas is much more valuable than AA award travel on AA/Qantas for two reasons: free stopovers and less miles required. I have a trip this month to Brisbane in business for 55,000 Alaska miles. AA wanted 80,000 for the identical Qantas flights. My return trip from Brisbane in business/first includes a free stopover in Sydney for 70,000 Alaska miles. AA does not allow free stopovers, so I'd have to pay 10,000 miles to fly BNE-SYD in coach, followed by 110,000 miles in F to fly SYD-SFO two days later, for a total of 120,000 miles. I'm saving 50,000 miles one-way by booking with Alaska miles compared to AA miles for this portion of the trip.
I've seen some reports of U.S. travelers connecting in Asia to get to Australia, but as it's something I wouldn't do myself, haven't paid a lot of attention to it. The Alaska web site says a Cathay routing from the U.S. to Australia would be 60K in business and 80K in first. I'm guessing that you'd get a free stopover in Hong Kong or somewhere in Asia with a routing like that, but just don't have the experience with the Asia routings to Australia, so that might be something worth pursuing on the Alaska forum.
And QF ffp would be 96,000 QF points
and ~Au$500 for business class one way. A comparison (but not up to date) in
post 330
QF have now made it very hard to find the award cost in QF points. The simple basic calculator has gone. And the simple QF display of award flights available over a month when searching for an award flight is now well hidden/near impossible to find.
But as well as the burn need to look at the earn. And QF fails that test compared to others.
A guide for redeemable miles
https://www.wheretocredit.com/ But the check the airline ffp web site. Is now harder with revenue based ffp's