Originally Posted by sschwenk
Apologies if this question has already been asked before - I did a search and couldn't find anything.
A friend of mine is going on a One World round the world trip (LHR-HKG-SIN-DPS-DAR-PER-MEL-AKL-SCL-EZE-GGU-LHR) in Economy and asked me for advise on which mileage program to join. His primary objective would be to make as many bonus miles as possible, he is not interested in obtaining status (though it would certainly be a nice additional benefit).
I did a bit of research and think American Airlines might be a good program for this purpose - is this true, or did I miss out on something?
The problem with AA is that a lot of the flights he will presumably be taking either earn no miles or reduced miles, depending on the carrier. Here's the basic breakdown based on the carriers he could be flying. I am assuming by DAR you meant Darwin (DRW), and by GGU you meant Sao Paolo (GRU).
CX = no miles
BA = 25% miles
QF = 70% miles
LA = 100% miles
Basically, assuming he has no status anywhere, if he takes BA from London to Hong Kong, he will earn about 14,200 miles. If he takes CX from London to Hong Kong, he will earn about 12,700.
I can't answer your question other than that and to say that if you do a search, this has been discussed at length relatively recently and those discussions might be useful. I just realized you said you tried doing a search. I'll see if I can find the thread I am thinking of.