Originally Posted by
sea_to_sky
Hi, I'm based out of Delhi and my home airport is IGI, New Delhi. My travels include at least 2 return trips from Vancouver, around 5-10 domestic roundtrips and about 1-2 roundtrips to NYC and Hong Kong. I usually fly economy but do select business when there is a good fare available (for e.g. 4/12 of my last year-round trips were in business). I usually try to find cheap fares and do not really stick to airlines but for the past few years my travel has been predominantly been through Vistara, Qatar and Cathay. Which frequent flyer programme would you advice I should enroll in?
Thank you so much!
I would assume you also have some credit cards that earn you miles. Look at the common denominator there as well because apart from status miles you also want to earn as much redeemable miles as you can.
From what you have said.. QR (Avios) and UK (CV points) would be most beneficial to you. UK will get merged into AI early next year... so CV points will become *A miles. If you're chasing status you might want to give SQ a look. However the problem with SQ will - no direct flights to HKG. SQ has a SIN-YVR flight but they are discontinuing/have discontinued it. So your options then would be through AC/AI and perhaps even LH/LX. But a qualitative downgrade from QR J. So there are significant downsides to SQ - the only upside being a single FFP which improves your odds of *G status.
If you don't want all that inconvenience for status - QR + UK would be the programs to focus on - along side a credit card. AS + UK could have been another very rewarding option that would also require you to fly a lot in AS.. which I can see you don't do.