Dear Bruce

No worries.

I tried to steer away from giving examples that cast the program in one particular light. The examples I used were largely from personal experience and reflect the reasons that I chose to accrue or redeem miles on United. Based on my travel patterns (infrequent, long haul flights with redemptions from Melbourne to Perth or Cairns), United's program is good value. Add to that the thousands of miles it gives me for filling our surveys online and other free online bonuses and it is excellent value. I just redeemed 80,000 miles for 4 tickets MEL-PER. The cost to me of earning these miles was a total of about $A1,100. I doubt that I could ever have earned 120,000 miles for this amount on Qantas's program.

Mind you if Qantas dropped its joining fee
and had the right promotion (eg double points to London) I'd join.

I might add that I don't have any particular grudge against Qantas - I am just ruthless in extracting the best frequent flyer deal every time I fly. Their service is OK. For example I purchased a round trip package on Qantas to Hong Kong 2 years ago (6 nights $A834 all up) and accrued 15,108 miles for the flight all up on Swissair's Qualiflyer program. Whilst in Perth a couple of days ago I met a chap who had flown to London on Qantas and not claimed any FF points! I advised him to contact Qantas, American, Cathay etc and see who would be prepared to credit his points if he joined up. Qantas was my first choice in this instance.

I must say though that a considerable disincentive to me joining the scheme is the $82.50 joining fee. Given that few international ff programs charge joining fees (many in fact give free miles for joining) I find it very hard for Qantas to justify this impost. In competitive terms it is unacceptable.

With respect to the 20,000 miles award in Australia I don't see any reason why things will change in the short term. I understand Northwest has 20,000 mile awards in North America - I think it probably more likely that United will drop their North American rates to compete with Northwest than raise their Australian redemption rates.

Overall there have been some improvements in Qantas's FF scheme (over short hops) and some backward steps (real increase in points/miles required for most domestic awards in Australia. I guess everyone will have to look at their circumstances and weigh up which is best for them. As the French say ' Chacun a son gout' (To each his own). It is noticable however that I am a member of about 20 frequent flyer programs but not Qantas FF.

cheers Peter