Originally Posted by
Gig103
A few thoughts for a newbie (welcome aboard!!)
1a) If you're buying premium cabins, then you might as well just go with the lowest price / best schedule, instead of trying to earn status with a single airline. The biggest status perks involve things like baggage allowance, priority treatment, or upgrades, neither of which you need buying business class.
1b) But if you do buy a business class international flight, it's a big boost towards status. For me, when things are similarly priced, I stay with OneWorld, but have bought some Skyteam vacation packages.
2) If you transfer credit card miles to airline miles, those award flights don't earn any miles towards status. It also gets complicated to find the lower-cost awards and, as you've learned, you need to deal with BA Avios to fly on American. However, spending your points on the Chase/Amex travel portals, while not as good a value, are cash bookings from an airline perspective.
This is great, thanks. I’ve learned a ton since posting the original question - most importantly, that I need to start smaller before expecting simple or cheap upgrades to London in peak season! I am going to post in the “which frequent flyer program should I go with?” thread before I ask too many more questions. I appreciate you (and another poster) pointing out the distinction between buying with miles and redeeming with miles. Huge help.