Originally Posted by insat3d

(1) What is your home airport? YYZ

(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (C, F, Y, etc.) Lowest economy fare (usually)

(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k) More than 50K

(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (UA Silver, M&M Senator etc) Altitude 35K (flown more than 50K miles but not enough AQD).

(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 redemption. Lounge access is not important as I can get it reimbursed.

(6) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific etc) Toronto to East Africa (ADD, KGL, NBO)

(7) Preferred Airlines - none

(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?) This is my first year on a traveling job. Company policy is lowest fare (work in an NGO). About 70K miles on work travel and flew 4 times for vacation but did not earn any points on them (Swoop, BA, AirTranSat)

Joined a new job earlier this year that takes me to East Africa every 5-6 weeks. My most frequent route is YYZ ADD. I have tried to get status on AC but fell just short of 6K AQD for *A Gold. I am thinking of switching to ET (Sheba Miles). I have a few questions -
a) I want to use the miles for personal travel/vacation. If I switch to Sheba miles, will I be able to redeem miles for US/Canada travel from YYZ? (I have not yet redeemed any miles from this year)

b) There is a direct flight from YYZ to ADD. I had signed up for Altitude/Aeroplan but flew on ET tickets for the first few trips this year. I only realized it mid year that I was not earning any AQD. So I switched to AC flights, but all of them have a stopover in Europe which is usually 4-10 hours. With my frequent trips, I am finding the long layovers are increasingly painful. For 2018, I have earned ~70K miles in my Aeroplan account.

c) Apart from Altitude and Sheba miles, is there any other program that I should consider? I would fly at least 7-8 YYZ-ADD trips in 2019 and some more to Kigali and Nairobi.

Thanks! FF Newbie