Hey all,

Looking for some advice. I like to maximize the points I get for reward travel in business class, this is important to me as I'm the only one in my family that travels, earns points, CC, etc yet I have my parents and in-laws to consider. Wife doesn't travel for work. We're of Asian descent so all of our trips home (US to East Asia) are very long, especially with aging parents so I like to treat them when I can.

Typically in everyone's experience, how good is "C" class availability on AA? I believe that's the AA business class upgrade fare code for instant upgrade with SWA. I plan to do quite a bit of corporate travel this year. I can either get AA EXP or AS Gold 75k, but not both (lots of common partners, I do mostly international travel on partners). With AS, I get a lot more points per flight, typically 350% or more of the flight distance (J fares and Gold 75k 125% bonus). For AA, it seems I'll only get 11x per dollar on AA or around 250% of the flight distance (if partner airline, and factoring in 120% EXP bonus). What it comes down to is the AA SWA for me, I can get 4 SWA (probably hit 150k miles and get another 2), which to me is 2 round trip tickets for when one set of parents wants to return home. I'm trying to consider the odds of getting 2 SWAs to clear when I use them on guests with absolutely no status. With AS, I just get more points so I can just book the seats outright, but obviously I'm not getting 4-6 SWA equivalent.

So what's everyone's advice on which FF program to use when I'm trying to maximize the number of business class tickets I can potentially get? Note: I'm based out of PHX, an AA hub. Have very limited flights on AS (Only SEA, SFO, PDX)

Is there a better thread for this question?