Originally Posted by
Raffles
Why not join BMI Diamond Club instead of M&M?
The thresholds for status are very low - 16k for Silver and 38k for Gold. Compare this to M&M, which needs 100k for Gold (135k for German residents).
...
Reward availability is the same as you'd get with M&M. BMI miles also do not expire as far as I know.
Yeah, I do like that too, but one of my main sources of miles will be a Visa or Mastercard. My flying pattern is mainly on Skyteam (KL/AF).
I do have bankaccounts in Germany, France and the Netherlands, so mainly creditcards based in one of these countries can do the trick.
I only know of these cards:
M&M Visa (Netherlands)
M&M Visa (Germany)
Citibank AARewards Visa (Germany)
I don't mind if the card is in EUR, USD or GBP, because my expenses are in all these currencies almost equally, so the exchange rates will always apply for 2/3 of my spending.
The BMI card is only available for UK residents, do that's no good for me.
The only other miles-earning card I Know of is the Swiss AirFrance-FB-Mastercard, but this one is in CHF, so that's not an option for me, even though I collect FB-miles. I do have several Amex-cards, Diners Club is not an option for my situation.
Originally Posted by
tom911
I'm pretty happy with the redemption side. One jewel in the AA program is One World awards which are mileage based. I have a trip to Asia/Australia next year with multiple stops in business (25,000 air miles for 150,000 AA miles). Just going to Australia in business from the U.S. would be 125,000 miles, so for 25,000 miles more I get nights in Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Hobart, and Brisbane.
I've used AA miles on Qantas to get to both New Zealand and Australia, but could not get business seats on my last trip in April and ended up in coach. There has been a lot of discussion in the last year about availability of business/first seats on Qantas.
Originally Posted by
Kiwi Flyer
In my experience *A is much better for awards between NZ/Oz and Europe than OW, especially in premium cabins, and with lots of routing options. That said, M&M awards are not cheap (in general AA awards require a fraction of the number of miles).
So two different opinions. I'd lilke to know more experiences before making up my mind, so please let me know, if you have some experience about this.