My travel patterns earn me BA Gold with no effort, no scheming. Bridging the TP gap to GGL would entail significant inconvenience and cost : that's because Heathrow is no longer my everyday origin, and QR joins *A carriers offering comfortable and efficient worldwide connections out of Manchester and Edinburgh.

Flying QR I could, of course, dump avios in my BAEC account. But what sort of FTer not hunting TP would do that ? My Qatar Airways PC account earns many more avios when I fly QR, and these can be shifted between both airlines' programmes.

Indeed, QR is much more avios-generous than BA across most alliance partners.

My recent Cairo Amman flight with RJ (sadly in deepest economy) saw my QR account credited with the princely sum of 296 avios. No reason to crack open a bottle, but if I'd credited to BAEC I'd have received only 75 avios,

There are some extra sweeteners, such as my QR status getting me through immigration at Doha quickly, whatever class I'm travelling in.

If push comes to shove I'll ditch QR Privilege club in favour of maintaining BAEC Gold, but while I can keep both going I see that as a benefit. I imagine that variations of the scenario I paint work for a number of travellers enrolled in more than one FFP within the same alliance.