Originally Posted by
guv1976
If you will continue to travel with some frequency in Economy Class, you might find it more advantageous to fly on carriers that will enable you to earn status in, say, Star Alliance or oneworld. Note that you do not have to credit a flight to the FFP of the carrier you are flying. For example, flights on AA, BA, or JL can be credited to any of those carriers, or to any other oneworld carrier. Crediting such flights to, say, Iberia Plus, might get you mid-tier elite status pretty quickly; that would entitle you to lounge access, Main Cabin Extra seats, free checked baggage, and other benefits when flying AA in Economy. Getting status on AA would not get you lounge access, but would entitle you to upgrades (when available) when flying AA in Economy.
One of the reasons I posted here is to get excellent advice like this, which I didn't even know I needed. You're saying I can (1) fly on AA, (2) credit the flight to Iberia Plus [I'm assuming this is a partner airline], and (3) get a bigger benefit with AA than if I credited the flight to AA directly?
I tend to fly mostly on United. I've rarely if ever flown enough per year to maintain any useful level of status with them, so I never bothered to learn the rules of the system. Right now I have about 30k Mileage Plus miles, and my wife has a United Explorer credit card and about 150k MileagePlus miles. Right now I have about 100k lifetime miles, and will add about 66k miles, 7 PQF, and 13k PQP with my booked travel this year (not including my 2nd and 3rd trips to India, whatever those happen to be).
Given that, I was happy to have to fly United for my outbound leg, and then looked to United for the return leg so I wasn't spreading points across multiple frequent flier programs. At the time, I didn't look into it more deeply than that.
With this info, would you suggest any specific courses of action for future trips to maximize award value or status?