smashingly

Hi,

Thanks to FlyerTalk's great advice, in 2011 I joined A3 and got *G within a couple of months of long haul flights. It was great advice and I've absolutely loved the little perks of priority check-in, boarding, baggage perks, and lounge access. I'm pleased with A3*G and I'll be doing enough flying for the foreseeable future that I won't have any issues maintaining that status. My quandary is about how to best utilise the 60k or so miles I'll be flying over the next 12 months, to maybe gain status on another FFP?

I'm about to book the following itinerary (I've already booked that first 21-JAN bit with SQ, but haven't attributed the miles to any FFP yet, and I can cancel it with only a $100 penalty, so feel free to suggest other carriers to get me to BCN). With this Europe trip coming up, I figured that now would be a good time to ask for advice about how best to use those miles, whether that's building up status in another FFP, or just topping up my other *A FFPs purely for awards/upgrades etc.

Upcoming trip (miles in brackets):
21-JAN WLG-BCN (12179 if done on SQ, WLG-CHC-SIN-[MXP]-BCN)
23-JAN BCN-PMI (will just be some cheapie like Air Europa) (126)
30-JAN PMI-LGW (ditto, probably Easyjet) (814)
01-FEB LHR-LAX-SFO (I like Air NZ, so I'll probably go with them) (5778)

Total of ~18k miles if you ignore the 2 short budget flights. All flights will be booked in economy. The 21-JAN SQ booking is in booking class E.

Other future flights (these are just for work):
Mid FEB: SFO-LAX-HNL (2888)
Mid MAY: YVR-AKL-WLG (7358)
Early SEP: WLG-AKL-LAX-SJD (7721)
Mid NOV: reverse trip, i.e. SJD-->WLG (7721)
Mid JAN'15: WLG-AKL-LAX-SAN (6917)
MAR'15: return from JAN'15 trip (6917)
Total for work flights Feb'14 thru Mar'15: 39.5k miles
Including upcoming BCN/SFO trip: approx 57.5k miles

And to paste in the usual FFP questions from the forum template:

(1) What is your home airport? WLG, AKL

(2) What types of fares do you usually buy? Economy. Usually discounted, but I sometimes pay a little extra for flexibility or to ensure miles are attributable to relevant FFPs (A3 can catch you out with this).

(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? past 12 months 31k, next 12 months 55-65k

(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it?
A3*G - 40-45k miles accrued so far, no risk of losing gold any time soon
OW (BA) - no status, 0 tier points, 200 lifetime tier points, 14.5k Avios
SQ/KF - 68 miles, lol
NZ Airpoints - 96 status points
Some others from random one-off flights - Qatar, Air Berlin, etc where my old employer gave me no choice of airline or route.

(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? I already have A3*G, and I chose A3 because I wanted gold ASAP to get the perks that make long-haul flying more tolerable: lounge access, priority check-in/boarding/luggage, etc. If you were to recommend I start accruing on another alliance's FFP (e.g. OW), I'd opt for the same priorities. However, if you think my yearly mileage is pushing it to get Gold in another alliance's FFP, then we would be better to aim for whatever program's going to give me the most bang for buck in terms of redeeming for award upgrades, so I can upgrade myself on all those work-paid flights. NB: I haven't even begun to investigate supplemental options like credit cards that earn miles - I'm a kiwi citizen but have US and UK bank accounts also, so it might be possible for me to up the mile-earning that way too, if there's some affiliated credit card or whatever. Sorry, not a simple answer

(6) Which routes do you fly most often - looking at the above "next 12 months" list, it's basically WLG/AKL to wherever the boat is, and the boat's on a RTW cruise till mid 2015: Hawaii - Vancouver - Mexico - San Diego - Florida - Caribbean - NYC - Europe. So I guess for the next 12 months the common thread (other than New Zealand) is that most of those flights will be to, or via, West Coast USA. From then on, i.e. March-Dec 2015, the boat will be in Europe, so it'll be mostly WLG/AKL to Western Europe (France/Germany/Spain/Italy), at least 2 return trips by end of 2015.

(7) Preferred Airlines? Currently I'm flying Air NZ a lot for obvious reasons i.e. NZ being my home country, having *G, etc. I'm flexible, but I look up recent Skytrax reviews when thinking of trying some un-tried airline, and won't fly them if I identify a recent pattern of bad performance or service. I'm really "anti" any airlines that have those economy seats that slide the butt forward. I'm 6'6" (but slim) and knee-room is always a concern for me. SQ and NZ Y-class are never an issue, but on other airlines I always do my Seatguru checks first!

(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? The upcoming WLG-Spain-SFO trip is personal. The remaining future flights are all for work. I can influence which airline (or at least which alliance) my employers book, but their decisions are dictated by a mixture of cost and scheduling, so if my preferred flight/airline costs more, I'd have to pay the difference. I usually don't mind paying this, if there's a benefit to me - e.g. better route, or a stopover somewhere, etc. At the moment I try to push them to book me on *A carriers because sometimes, due to the banana-republic places where the yacht ends up (e.g. Sorong), they have to book nightmare flights like SOQ-JKT-(3hr gridlock taxi ride)(overnight hotel)-CGK-SIN-SYD-WLG (50 hours total). That's a rare occurrence tho, once every year or two maybe.

My main question now is this - now that I have A3*G, I don't need to 'waste' extra miles that could be spent building up status on some other FFP(s). What other FFP(s) should I choose, and why? OW? (which one? and will I really be flying enough miles to get decent status on any OW FFP?) Also, I just read that Virgin Australia's Velocity FFP has a deal with SQ/NZ where SQ/NZ miles flown can be attributed to Velocity? But is Velocity really going to be that useful outside of Aust/NZ?

Or I could stick with *A and accrue miles on whatever *A program will give me the best rewards for upgrades, etc. I don't care that much about getting free flights, but I am interested in award class-upgrades, to make the upcoming work flights more bearable & enjoyable!

Thoughts? Suggestions?

smashingly

I'm so sorry for the duplicate threads! I'm having problems with my browser... it was giving the impression of having failed to post my new thread, and upon checking (via a different browser) I now see with horror that there's 4 copies of my new thread and none of the original post text has actually made it. Moderator has been PM'd.

jackal

The technicians were doing maintenance on the forums last night, so it probably wasn't your fault. No worries--it's all good now.

smashingly

(bump!)

Anybody got any ideas?

jackal

Would one of our helpful experts be able to help this poster choose a program that suits his/her needs?

smashingly

.... .. ...... .. ..... ... ...... .... ......@ (tumbleweed)

TallestHotelInJapan

OP, why don´t you focus on your A3 status? Why do you need another status? That makes little sense

csidler

I would say credit everything to Singapore Airlines...

Singapore has the new deal with AIR NZ meaning they are working together more on flights through to europe via Singapore.

Singapore isn't very friendly at releasing their premium cabin to other *A members... So your best bet on getting in the nice seats on SQ Metal (And they are nice seats!) would be using SQ Points..

That's my thoughts.

bhomburg

Looking at your itineraries and seeing you'll travel discounted economy, you basically need a carrier with a presence in NZ to give you good earning rates for discount economy fares. Apart from AA and BA with their JV, discount economy fares on alliance partners usually earn only a fraction of the mileage awarded to members of the 'home' program (same if not worse story than you already experienced with A3).
The only OW carrier flying to WLG is QF and its JQ subsidiary, which also has the most oneworld options from AKL. So my recommendation would be QF by default... With a little careful planning you should be able to make it to OW Sapphire status (50k miles) which will come with lounge access and advance access to preferred seating: check out perfect-for-tall-guys-like-you seat 80 AK on the Qantas A380 - with no status you won't ever sit there as those are snagged by elites way before check-in!

AFAIK, the QF program is the only alliance program that lets you earn status miles on Jetstar (on whose planes you'll likely be ending up when flying out of WLG), although limited to certain fares.

smashingly

Because I already have A3 *Gold, and I don't need to accrue any more miles for a while to maintain that status. Another status (for example, on Oneworld) would give me more options for which airlines I fly - although obviously I'd then be enslaved to maintaining the OW status too.

Really, as a relative newcomer (1-2 years) to the world of FT, I was asking people, "what would you do, if you had a 50k miles of flying coming up, and already had A3*G?". I know it seemed a weird (and possibly vague) question to ask, but I just wondered if there wasn't a better way to make the most of all the miles I'll be accruing.

smashingly

Hi and thanks very much for contributing to the discussion. I had also thought about doing that. I haven't used my KF card for a long time but IIRC it takes 25k miles to get silver. And I *am* flying Air NZ a lot, and they have good routes on most of the upcoming year's flights (all between NZ and W.Coast USA/Canada, really).

What exactly does the SIA/ANZ deal mean? I read the press release linked to by an FTer and it sounded like (a) SQ is going to run the A380 on SIN-AKL, and (b) ANZ is going to run the 777 (IIRC) between SIN-AKL too - which didn't make sense to me - why is there suddenly enough pax demand for both airlines to start running bigger planes on SIN-AKL? Why doesn't ANZ just sell codeshare tickets on the SQ A380?...

smashingly

Hi bhomburg, thanks heaps for your input. Let me just qualify what I said about discounted economy flights - I'm still getting the hang of FT so can we just check the definition of discount economy? Is it "anything other than fare code Y" ? Or is it not that easily defined.... As an example, on my CHC-SIN-BCN flight I opted for a "flexi" fare (fare code E), it was $1760, only an extra NZ$100 over the cheapest fare available, and it was worth it - 1) accruable miles on *A partners... 2) free changes/cancellation, which I ended up utilising when I got sick. Is that still discounted economy? (I just did a quick FT search and it looks like on long haul, flexi still = discounted).

Regarding WLG, we can kinda disregard it and for the most part, treat this as if I live in AKL. I'm always happy to choose the most miles-friendly long-haul carrier out of AKL or CHC, and book a separate flight from WLG to AKL/CHC. If I'm worried about the separate flights (or lost baggage) increasing the risk of missing my int'l connection, I stay overnight in AKL (I have family up there) or ensure a safely long layover and sit in the Koru lounge. Obviously it's always better to book the whole shebang on one booking so you're covered by delays and lost baggage etc but like I've probably indicated, I'm often prepared to be flexible (or pay an extra couple of hundred $$) in the name of squeezing the best out of FFPs

I'm really grateful for the QF suggestion and I'll take it under consideration, as it's an option I'd not thought of. In the end, due to the timing of my trip and the relative lateness of my post on FT, I stuck my A3*G against the CHC-SIN-BCN flight (I'm writing this from my hotel in BCN). I looked up the A3 redemption tables and I was (before yesterday's flight) about 300 miles short of a biz class *A class upgrade on my LHR-LAX flight... or 5300 miles short of the entire biz class flight. (oddly, 40k miles required for the Y-J LHR-LAX upgrade... or 45k miles for an award J-class LHR-LAX flight...?!)

Anyway thanks for the suggestion, I'll start researching the QF program and how it stacks up with my upcoming work flights.

csidler

I know you were interested in additional statuses.. But I think to the average person on the street.. 50K miles of flying in a year sounds like a lot, but I think to most of the people here it isn't??

My opinion with Singapore was, not that you should try gaining Singapore Status (because that would require 50K+ a year for Gold... and it's not really going to give you much more than your A3 *G, (because they would treat their own better before other *G)), but more to acquire points with the hope that you can use the Krisflyer points to get into the nicer cabins on SQ.

If you think you will fly a lot on-going into the future, maybe see if you can take advantage of Qantas much? Because with Qantas you can get life-time One-World Sapphire (Qantas Gold). So if you think you will be doing a decent amount of flying... it would be nice to accumulate something you can "keep" rather than have expire that requires ongoing "maintenance"

kaka

QF? what.... well, i would still suggest to work on SQ and then look into BA or JL since it seems like you fly enough on SQ for earn and burn and you only need to credit 1 bis mile onto A3 to keep status. QF has terrible network these days after marriage with EK. JL has a pseudo-lifetime OWS anyways after 50K FOP on OW metal with 25K FOP on JL. which is a lot better than the other lifetime status out there.

disclaimer: I've gotten A3 a few years ago and only credit minimal miles to them since. other starmiles i give to UA or NH (because NH has limited 100% accural). For OW flights I've gotten JL Status for everything earn and have loads on CX AM to burn (from local credit cards).

smashingly

Ahhh, OK I see what you were getting at. Yes I agree, 50k sounds like a lot to the average person, but in reality it's barely enough to scrape up Gold in one program. Your comment about having to 'maintain' a status is what I'd be afraid of. I think you're right to suggest that with A3*G, it might make sense to focus on a *A FFP that has the best earn/burn for award upgrades. That said, I will look into the Qantas thing too - life-time would be fantastic and avoid the problem of having to maintain that status.

One other consideration that I want to add to this discussion: I don't know how many of you are familiar with A3's M&B program, but it's young, and many people believe it's too good to last. 20k miles to get Gold, and no requalification (other than racking up at least 1 mile every 3 years to keep your account from being deleted). If A3 was to suddenly tighten their rules - say if they reduced requal to 12 months and required 15k-20k miles a year to maintain *G - that wouldn't completely screw me, as I obviously fly enough to maintain that. I'm just sayin' - A3 may change their rules at some point. To some people that would suggest a flyer strategy of "use A3 to get *G fast, then pour miles into a better (earn/rewards) *A program to crawl up to Gold, in case A3 turns draconian".