Originally Posted by xaemhdvt

I'm currently eyeing up either VS Virgin Flying Club or AFKL Flying Blue.

I'm based north of the wall and my travel patterns are mostly inter Europe for short haul and USA (long haul) for business. Leisure either Caribbean or Asia. I will however have frequent (monthly) trips to London for work too, which is where the recent changes begin to annoy me a bit more. I prefer to fly into LHR or LCY when I'm in London for work (don't fancy shlepping it from LGW or STN), which pretty much limits me entirely to BA.

I'm well served by AFKL at my local airport with connections available in AMS or CDG. This makes AFKL appealing, though I'd still have to fly BA for my trips to London.

VS is something I've eyed up for a while now and I look forward to trying it out this month. Unfortunately due to me being based north of the wall, I'd still be required to fly to LHR and change from T5 to T3, again limited to BA for that regional flight. However VS is part of SkyTeam nowadays which changes things a bit. If I'm already in London for business then using VS for travel to the USA works very nicely.

Overall I'm thinking that SkyTeam could work very nicely for me, though I'm as of yet undecided whether Virgin Flying Club or AFKL Flying Blue is the better FFP for me. I'm also wary of status matching and changing my alliance only to have the rug pulled from under me in the near future. I would not be surprised to see AFKL Flying Blue go down a similar revenue based FFP like BA have done. The difference being that with me being based in the UK, I at least have a BA credit card available to me, whereas that is not the case with AFKL. Virgin Flying Club then becomes the more favoured option, especially seeing as I can still earn Virgin Flying Club TP from flying AFKL. VS recent move to dynamic pricing on rewards isn't great however there are still deals to be had, and I like that you still earn on reward/redemption flights with VS too.

Anyone else in the same boat as myself? I feel if I were M25 based then this would likely be a much simpler decision to make.