Originally Posted by
guv1976
You wouldn't even have to go to Europe. Travel to India or the Middle East via DOH would get you your four segments on QR.
I meant for BA actually, while both would grant Emerald status, one program might be more beneficial than the other.
For QR I was just looking at the site again, they count QR marketed flights as well, so that could well be on other OW airlines. I don't know if they count non-alliance partners like WB and PG if it's QR marketed but I suppose if those earn Q Points then it should still count. They don't actually have a hard rule of 4 / 8 segments in 12 or 24 months, interestingly it also allows 20% of Q Points earned to be on QR flights, though it's possible, I don't think most people would be earning 120 Q Points for Platinum (20% of 600) with less than 4 QR segments, though LAX-SYD via DOH certainly would do it, that'd be 176 Q Points on a D fare.
Originally Posted by
memanny
Another question that props to mind is with BA, IB, QR and in near future AY all dealing with Avios, is there an arbitrage opportunity. As in would it better to accumulate miles in one program and spend it in another.
I am finding out i do not know much about IB, AY and QR FFP's.
Yes definitely possible. QR has a distance chart just like BA but some of their redemptions are more attractive than BAEC and they also have different non-OW partners you can redeem on (like WB and PG). WB redemptions intra-Africa are particularly attractive since those are generally pretty expensive as revenue tickets. It's really hard to say what AY's chart will look like after the conversion, as of now it's generally not too attractive. IB I believe is the same as BA in terms of Avios needed but they might have lower YR / YQ charges than BA, I can't get into the site now to check, it says my password is expired and won't allow me to change it.
Non-OW partners though are pretty different on most of the Avios programs. BA has LA, FJ, and CZ that could be useful. IB has Vueling, Level, and Binter (as well as LA), AY has LA, HO (which is quite useful for intra-China and some Asia routes), and BRA (a Swedish regional), and QR has WB, PG, B6, ME, WY, and VA.