Originally Posted by
Samuel Curtis
Hi all,
I'm currently on a Star Alliance FFP, and is in the market for an OW plan. The answers to the sticky questions are as follows:
(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
(upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, extra baggage allowance, good award redemption rates, better award access, free - discounted lounge access, etc.)
Reply: Good redemption rates.
(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: I would say 25k-50k--however I was talking about the 2010s, and may not return to that level until 2028 at least--we are going to have a baby, and we don't think bringing a baby to a Transpacific flight is a good idea.
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
(First, Business, Premium economy, Economy, cheapest)
Reply: Economy to Premium Economy.
.....
Also note that we may consider moving back to East Asia in the future (I mean closer to 2030 than now), so that might be a consideration.
25-50k per year on economy fares isn't whole lot, so where to bank them really will come down to how you want to redeem. It is worth note that most CX economy fares do not credit anything to AA.
Your note about moving back to East Asia in several years probably would not affect my decision on where to bank miles because it sounds like you are unlikely to earn status in any of the programs (at least not enough for OW Sapphire level). Many OW programs especially in Asia have hard expiration dates on miles that can't be extended with activity. So you're best going with a program where miles don't expire as long as you have activity in xx amount of time (AA, BA, QR, etc.), AS miles don't expire (currently, this was a merger negotiation but that could change in the future).
AA has a fixed award chart for most partners, and has some decent sweet spots, though none of those are to/from North America. AS, BA, QR, IB, AY all use a distance based award chart and are excellent for shorter flights that may otherwise be costly. I keep miles in both AA and BA for different purposes. With AA, AS, and BA you can earn a good amount of non-flying miles from online shopping and travel reservations. With BA the earning rate per £ / $ is often much higher on the British site than the American one, but it's always good to compare because it's not always the case. AA's and AS's shopping portals are usually dismal in comparison, though AA has short bonus earning windows quite a bit.
So which program is right for you really comes down to how you'll use the miles as it sounds like you'd likely earn at similar rates in any of AA, AS, or BA programs.