Hello guys!

I'm new to this world and I’m trying to understand all the secrets of frequent flyer programs. My goal is to learn how to play the game to pay less for tickets but, most importantly, to maximize points to get award tickets at a lower cost.

Here are some of my answers to the questions you might ask to help understand my approach:

(1) What is most important to you in a frequent flyer program (FFP)?
Good award redemption rates, better award access, occasionally taking business class award flights, especially for flights longer than 6 hours.

(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year and in which class? How many flights/sectors?
Few miles, around a dozen flights per year, sometimes even less, definitely <25,000 miles and <25 flights.

(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
Economy, the cheapest fare.

(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Which airline do you fly the most? Do you travel for work and/or leisure?
Only for leisure, I’m based at a southern Italy airport, CTA, so my main airlines are Ryanair, Wizzair, and ITA Airways.

(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
ITA domestic.

(6) What is your home airport?
CTA, FCO, MXP.

(7) Do you have FFP status with any airline? What is it? Do you have any miles accumulated in a FFP?
No status, I have about 42k miles on Miles&More because I have a credit card that prevents my miles from expiring. About 9k miles on BA thanks to surveys and shopping purchases. I also have an Italian American Express with about 45k MR.

(8) Preferred Airlines
ITA Airways.

ITA getting taken over by LH Group means its Volare programme is due to be merged into Miles & More in the coming months. You having an M&M account suggests to me it's best to just build there whenever you fly ITA, once the practicalities of crediting ITA flights to M&M are sorted.

Thanks chacor for the response. A doubt... would you suggest accumulating everything on M&M, meaning also hotel bookings, car rentals, etc., or should I accumulate Avios for this and use M&M for flights/purchases with the card? Sorry if the question is stupid

my wife and i usually dont care for status, but it seems that an ow status could be useful given how often she flies with aa. we are thinking between IB and AY. she should be able to hit silver (which translates to OWR) easily with either program, although she might have a shot at gold with IB. the only concern is IB may go spend-based and it becomes a lot harder to earn status. are there other ffps we should consider? any advice is greatly appreciated.

(1) What is most important to you in a frequent flyer program (FFP)?
my wife flies quite a bit with aa in basic economy. she doesnt hold an aa credit card, so having a OW status (even ruby) will be useful for priority boarding and check-in luggage should she needs it

(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year and in which class? How many flights/sectors?
20k-30k miles biz or PE, maybe 20k-40k miles in econ basic, about 5-10 roundtrips

(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
biz/PE and econ basic for domestic flights

(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Which airline do you fly the most? Do you travel for work and/or leisure?
able to choose both. leisure (her company doesnt cover flights when travelling to attend conference). SQ, QR, AA

(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
SQ/QR for NYC/PHL - SIN and aa domestic flights

(6) What is your home airport?
PHL

(7) Do you have FFP status with any airline? What is it? Do you have any miles accumulated in a FFP?
no status. have miles in aeroplan and baec/qrpc

(8) Preferred Airlines
SQ, QR, AA

IB Plus' status-earning year runs from April 1 to March 31, so if IB does not announce a change to a revenue-based status-earning scheme soon, I think that your wife would be safe to go with IB Plus -- at least for the 2025-26 earnings period.

Under IB's current scheme, JFK/PHL-DOH-SIN-DOH-JFK/PHL in Business would yield 2,200 IB Elite Points -- just 50 short of oneworld Sapphire status. If she were to add a short domestic connection in one direction (PHL/JFK-BOS-DOH, or the reverse), she would have OWS by the end of the roundtrip.

Edited to add: Of course, Avios are generally considered less valuable than AAdvantage miles, but that's the price one has to be willing to pay to earn status quickly.

BA QR AY IB IE all use avios as the frequent flyer currency. Avios, but not status, can be moved between these avios ffp's.
As have avios in BAEC & QRPC will be eaning status if flying.
For AA flights what ffp does she credit to?
AY IB & BA have moved to a revenue based ffp. Harder to get status now,
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/iber...-earnings.html
Finnair Plus to go spend-based and Avios [Implemented 9 march 2024]

Iberia Plus is revenue-based for earning Avios; it has not (yet) gone to a revenue-based scheme for earning status.

yup it's easier to hit gold with IB, but im not sure if it will be too troublesome to change ffp later on. also another consideration is we just returned from SIN with JAL and she hasnt credit her flights yet, so she can hit status with either right now. since IB runs from apr 1 to mar 31, we will have status for slightly more than a year, but will get status with AY for 2 years?

also agreed that aa miles are more valuable on paper, but we struggle to accumulate meaningful quantity of aa miles, except with credit card SUB. and we also cannot pool our aa miles, avios end up being more useful to us

she credits her aa flights to BAEC/QRPC currently, but she flies basic econ on aa, so there is barely any points to be earned there. but the reason for being with BAEC/QRPC is simply because we redeem avios for jfk-sin flights. we havent given much thought for status until now; she recently complained about having to pay for checked-in luggage and difficulty finding overhead bin space.

i know that AY and IB are revenue spend, but she flies QR and AA generally, so she still earns by distance. we also just took JAL and that still earns by distance. even with the move to revenue based, it seems easier to get status than QRPC. also, in the long run, it will be easier to maintain status with IB and AY because they do not have requirements that you need to fly with them like QR do. we do not fly QR every year. sometimes we redeem miles, sometimes we fly SQ, this year we flew JAL. BAEC is out for now for the same reason.

Status earning only goes to 1 ffp. BAEC or QRPC. Not both. They are separte ffp's.

yes, apologies for the confusion. i just treat them as 1 because we only use them to redeem avios and not for status. she usually deposits to QRPC. QRPC is not for her for the long term because she needs to fly QR every year for status, which we do not.

The rules for retro claims vary. Can take some digging to find the detailed rules
With some you can join a ffp and retro claim for flights up to X days before join date.
Others can ony retro claim if a member on the day of the flight.

Not all airlines share revenue data, so common to have a secondary distance based earning for redeemable miles/avios/points and status.
Revenue based ffp's has made it harder to predict ff earnings,

well it seems that they maybe, Iberia Plus Program Changes Announced On February 12, 2025 - LoyaltyLobby

Maybe, maybe not. See Post #51 et seq. in this thread for some speculation:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/iber...e-based-4.html

It's now confirmed Iberia will go spend-based status from 1 April 2025.

Yes, but for flights, the spend only counts for AA, BA, and IB; for other oneworld carriers, Elite Points will still be earned based on distance and class of service. However, the number of Elite Points required for status is increasing.