Originally Posted by Ssin

I'm the kind of traveler who tends to book whatever's on sale. As that doesn't get you a lot of miles, I tend not to bother with FFP's.
However, with one relatively high-earning trip coming up on BA/QR, and possibly slightly more flying in the future (kid's getting a bit older), I figured it may be time to start paying attention. Status still seems unlikely to ever happen, but the idea of some free/cheap holidays is enticing. The trip is an AMS-LHR-DOH-CGK outbound on BA/QR in business lite (P) and a return CGK-DOH-AMS in Economy (L). Not usually our price range, but economy trip prices were sky-high for our school-holiday dates, so the upgrade to business on the overnight outbound wasn't too much more expensive (still a lot of money...). That should earn a decent chunk of miles for three people.

Obvious choices would be QRPC and BAEC (as they're the ones we'd be most likely to actually fly in the future, have family pooling, are interchangeable and can earn points via booking.com), but are Alaska/Finnair much better for earning/redemption even if you never fly them? Any other considerations?

Questions
For members asking for information, to help people to assist you, can you please provide:
(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
Reply: Earn/redemption possibilities (based near AMS, and not big consumers, so not going to get much use out of credit card points, but we do have relatively frequent hotel/holiday let bookings on booking.com, which can apparently also earn avios? Any difference between BA/QR programs for that? We tend not to go for the big chains, so the separate Hotel loyalty schemes seem less appealing) For redemptions, we'd be looking at either short hops in europe or South-East Asia (economy?), or possibly 'pooling' points between me/partner/kid to get one/two mid or long-haul business class trips every few years and pay the rest in cash, so a good pooling/family scheme is a big plus.
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
(<25000, 25000-50000, >50000 miles - <25, 25-50, >50 flights?)
Reply: One long haul trip per year (AMS-CGK with possible stopovers and regional travel), possibly 1-2 short EU trips (UK less likely due to visa hassle). We tend to book whatever's cheapest with reasonable times form AMS.
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
(First, Business, Premium economy, Economy, cheapest)
Reply: cheapest (although we may look for a good deal on business class long-haul in the future)
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Pleasure only, so we can choose
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
(US Domestic, Transpacific, Kangaroo, in Asia etc)
Reply: see above. We often use LCC in asia and europe, but the 'normal' carriers do also come up
(6) What is your home airport?
(SFO, SCL, London LHR, HKG, Singapore SIN etc.)
Reply: AMS is a 20-minute bus ride away
(7) Do you have FFP status of any kind in OW or other airline? What is it? Do you have any miles banked in a FFP?
(AA Executive Platinum, QF Gold, UA 1K, LAN Comodoro, etc)
Reply: Hehe, no.
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
Reply: For the long-haul trips, we've used LH/swiss occasionally, more for the good sale price than the experience. We do tend to like Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Garuda if they have a good price. Cathay is ok.