Originally Posted by scotty00
I've been banking my AA miles for YEARS with the eventual intention of cashing them in for two biz class tickets to Oz. Right now that total is going to run me 250k miles. I almost fell over though when I saw above that on UA this would only run me 180K miles. 70,000 miles difference! Is the level of service that dramatically different? Are there any other reasons I'm overlooking? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Essentially it is because UA is using its own metal while AA tickets on Qantas and QF doesn't give seats away for cheap. The QF product is better than either the AA or the US product in Biz but not by that much really. In economy I actually think UA is better than QF since QF has suprisingly small seats....
Of course if you ticket on NZ via New Zealand with UA miles you would get a pretty comparable experience to QF for a lot fewer miles.
Ticketing with QF miles is even worse - they double the economy rate for business rather than the 1.5 multiplier.