Thanks for your suggestions!

I did some research in BA forum and found that someone had done a comprehensive study with spreadsheets and stuff to compare BA to QF and his conclusion was that it taks half less flights to achieve the same status on QF.

I will keep my AA status til February next year but since I travel mainly on biz fares then I have no real need for it as far as lounge access goes. 2,5 return flights on QF to Europe will get me to the same status level on Qantas.

BTW, how does QF define its FF membership year? My membership started in mid January, years back. I will not make enough flights to get to any status before January, so what should I do? Open another QF FF account (QF has some critical personal info errors in mine anyway) or post my miles to another FF program?

As far as using my AA points then I have to admit that it is relatively easy to get award seats on various flights out of OZ but this is ONLY for full award seats i.e. I cannot upgrade with AA miles from OZ. I can only upgrade from NRT which is the closest AA port of call and it just happens to be quite a few thousand miles away. Maybe I am getting too old but I just don't see it feasible to travel to another continent in order to stay loyal to an airline.

[This message has been edited by Spider (edited 09-23-2002).]