Originally Posted by
florentian
I'm based in London so escaping the OneWorld orbit is tough, but I travel to SFO and ZRH for work a lot so I'm going to try :-) I've got two C/D/P LHR-SFO trips with UA in the next few months worth a total of 12,700 PQP and 64,000 MileagePlus miles — enough to get UA Platinum under current reduced rules — but is there a better program I could use for those flights? The only times I fly UA are to SFO in business class for work, flying mainly Swiss or BA within Europe the rest of the time, so the miles I accrue with UA MileagePlus are not very useful.
Clearly it's a lot harder to get *A status with Swiss than with United though, my current booked flights don't get anywhere close to Senator (about 38,000 vs the 100,000 needed). Any others to consider? Thank you!
(1) What is your home airport? LON (LHR, LCY, LGW)
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (C, F, Y, etc.) Business C, D, P, or Z for work. Economy for personal (K, V, L, etc.)
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k) 25k-50k — 4-6 long haul legs per year, ~20-30 short haul legs
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (UA Silver, M&M Senator etc) BA Silver. I had UA Gold pre-pandemic
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Lounge benefits for personal travel; redeeming miles without paying exorbitant fees
(6) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific etc) LON-SFO 2-3 times a year, LON-ZRH 4-6 times per year, plus other travel within Europe
(7) Preferred Airlines UA but usually only for LHR-SFO. Swiss otherwise (and, unfortunately, BA)
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you choose your airlines, class of service? Both; yes
In short, consider crediting to Aegean or SAS.
Aegean has a low qualification threshold, but low fare classes in both Economy and Business (such as P) often credit 0 miles, so it's not good if you're looking to pool all your miles in a single FFP.
SAS will give you 100% miles even for P, but the annual threshold for Gold requalification is 45k miles; that said, it should be doable with your travel patterns, especially if you manage to get at least one long-haul trip booked into C or D (200% miles). SAS Gold will also give you lounge access domestically in the US if you ever happen to fly economy. The downside is that the airline has been going through a rough patch for a while now and could face bankruptcy in the mid-to-long term, so there is a degree of risk. Award fees can also be high depending on the carrier.
Of course, you can also just stay with UA if you don't care about lounge access in the US and you only go there for work. They also have very low fees for award travel and their online award availability is among the best in *A.