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Questionnaire
In order for FlyerTalkers to better assist you, please copy and paste the following questionnaire into your post and provide the requested information:

1. What is most important to you in a frequent flyer program (FFP)?
good award redemption rates, better award access

2. How many miles do you usually fly each year? How many flights/sectors?
We are a family of 5, and we usually take 2 or 3 flights to visit grandparents (1600 mile trip) each year. Southwest has worked well for these kinds of trips for us. We also like to take one or two vacations elsewhere with flights of varying length. I would really like to be able to take all 5 of us to Europe. I'm mostly interested in a program that could get us to Europe.

3. What fare class do you usually buy?
economy

4. Are you able to choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Yes, we can choose airlines and travel for pleasure.

5. Which routes do you fly most often
We most often fly domestic, ATL-SLC, but would like to travel to Europe in the summer (we are flexible about where in Europe) and possibly to the Caribbean in the winter with our children.

6. What is your home airport?
ATL

7. Do you have status in any FFP? What is it? How miles do you have banked in a FFP, if any?
Between my husband and myself, we have:
245,000 MR
192,000 UR (which we will probably transfer to Southwest)
220,000 AA miles
70,000 US Airmiles

No status on any airline.

8. What are your preferred airlines, if any?
No preference, I just try to get where I'm going cheaply and conveniently.

Even though we have lots of points accumulated, we have problems finding award tickets for 5 people. Our kids' school schedule limits when we can travel as well. Is finding low level awards just going to be impossible? Or is there a frequent flyer program that would be best for me to stick to?

Unfortunately, the combination of restricted travel times and a large family is going to make any frequent flyer program (apart from Southwest's) tough for you to utilize. American Airlines currently has off-season economy class saver awards to Europe for half the miles of regular saver awards, and they define "off-season" pretty liberally - but you're still stuck looking for five tickets. And no one knows if the off-season saver tickets will survive the AA-US merger in 2015. Since you're willing to fly economy, you might also look at United's program, as the Star Alliance offers more options for reaching Europe during the summer season. It might be worthwhile for you to work with an award booking service when you're ready to start planning that trip to Europe, as they may have more success finding the tickets you need.

Asia: Which frequent flyer program?
 

Based in Hong Kong, and will be flying to the UK on a Virgin Atlantic flight. What would be recommend frequent flyer program to join be? Is it better to stay with Virgin Atlantic of collect the miles on a different airline for to use to travel within Asia? How about the value of the miles of VA versus others in the network?

Thanks!

Welcome to Flyertalk!

One of the big questions to initially ask is how much control you have over choosing your airline and flights for traveling? (i.e., does your employer book your flights...)

If you choose to fly with Virgin Atlantic, then you should be aware of Star Alliance, the airline network that Virgin is a part of. Other Asian carriers part of Star Alliance include Air China, ANA, All Nippon, Eva Air, Shenzhen Airlines, Singapore Airlines, and Thai Airways.

Other members here may be able to further elaborate on the value of VA miles versus other carriers in the network.

First post. I've been reading through the threads from the Getting Started wiki. Mostly focused on laying out a credit card plan. The most immediate goal is to get my family of 4 to Hawaii in the summer of 2015. My older child is a high school sophomore, so I might also have some college visit trips, depending on school choices.

1. What is most important to you in a frequent flyer program (FFP)?
(e.g., upgrades, priority services, baggage allowance, good award redemption rates, better award access, lounge access)
Ability to generate rewards. I'm fine if the rates are high, as long as the earning potential is high, too. I'm not a very high volume flyer, but upgrades would be nice, too.

2. How many miles do you usually fly each year? How many flights/sectors?
(e.g., <25000, 25000-50000, >50000 miles and <25, 25-50, >50 flights?)
Recently changed jobs, so not exactly sure about travel for work. I would guess in total around 30,000 miles. I would guess 6-8 trips, with 0 or 1 being to Asia or Australia.

3. What fare class do you usually buy?
Economy domestically. Business for international, if it's work-related.

4. Are you able to choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
I can generally choose, although my boss greatly prefers United. So, probably half my trips will be easiest for me to use United. Almost all my travel has been for business, where the policy for me is Economy in US/Canada, and Business international.

5. Which routes do you fly most often
Mostly domestic.

6. What is your home airport?
San Francisco Bay Area. I'm close to OAK, but choose to drive to SFO if I can get a non-stop.

7. Do you have status in any FFP? What is it? How miles do you have banked in a FFP, if any?
United Silver with 28k miles. I will have another 60k when my MileagePlus Explorer signup bonus gets credited. My wife just applied for the same card before the higher signup bonus expires. So, as a family, we'll have ~140k miles there.

Southwest with very few miles/points.

8. What are your preferred airlines, if any?
No strong allegiance, although I've looked to United for the reasons mentioned above, plus they have good presence in SFO. But for personal travel, I've tended to book based on directness and price.

AnotherMarc Welcome to FT

I would stay with United as the primary ffp.
As a secondary backup ffp Alaska may be on interest due its many partners including AA & DL http://www.alaskaair.com/content/mil...ePlan-partners

There are threads on cc earn as the link in post 1

Thanks. Alaska does look like a good backup, and maybe we'll be able to build up for a followup trip, too :).

Which programs for DC resident and newbie?
 

Live in DC, near DCA (20mins) and I want to know which frequent flyer program to focus on. Newbie, don't travel much yet / year but want to start with help from reward flights. Have family in Ireland, often travel there and the UK for side-trips. Dulles is 40 mins away. I think United, AA, or British Airways would all be a good choice? What do you think would be the airline to focus on?

dcflyer10 Welcome to FT

Look and ask here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html (where your post may get moved to)

Welcome.

Right now AA has the better of the award programs, IMHO. As a bonus BA flights can be credited to AA.

How often are you flying across the pond?

I don't know if this is the right thread/questionnaire to use for asking about frequent flyer credit cards, but here it goes. I'd like to start flying places and seeing more of the country.

I'd like an airline-specific card if at all possible, and I'd like to avoid Chase (because I already have a hotel-specific Visa card and the Amtrak Mastercard through them.) I would prefer no fee but I could fairly easily swallow up to $200 in annual fees if the credit card carries more than $200 worth of redemption benefits.

1. What is most important to you in a frequent flyer program (FFP)?
(e.g., upgrades, priority services, baggage allowance, good award redemption rates, better award access, lounge access)
Reply: Priority services - especially being able to get through to live human beings quickly when things go pear shaped.

2. How many miles do you usually fly each year? How many flights/sectors?
(e.g., <25000, 25000-50000, >50000 miles and <25, 25-50, >50 flights?)
Reply: I wouldn't expect to ever break 25000 miles in a calendar year. The vast majority of my earned miles are going to be credit card spend-based.

3. What fare class do you usually buy?
(e.g., first, business, premium economy, economy)
Reply: Domestic first or business class.

4. Are you able to choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Reply: Yes and for pleasure.

5. Which routes do you fly most often
(e.g., U.S. domestic, transatlantic, intra-Asia)
Reply: Domestic

6. What is your home airport?
(e.g., SFO, LHR, HKG)
Reply: Whichever Northeast Corridor airport is going to give me the best utilization of a frequent flyer program. (The closest hub to me is BOS.) I very much enjoy rail travel and would consider it worthwhile to take the train down to EWR or PHL or even BWI/DCA if fares were consistently cheaper or my range of options were much better from any of those places.

7. Do you have status in any FFP? What is it? How miles do you have banked in a FFP, if any?
(e.g., AA Executive Platinum, UA 1K, LAN Comodoro)
Reply: Amtrak Select Executive if that counts as an FFP. Note that Amtrak Select Executive apparently includes no-questions-asked access to United Club lounges, but I haven't had the opportunity to actually try out this privilege yet.

8. What are your preferred airlines, if any?
Reply: No clue! That's what I'm trying to figure out.

2x a year, usually to Ireland or England. I plan to start increasing my trips though in the future.

RailCommuter Welcome to FT (and flying)

As you do not have an airline ffp United (Star Alliance) or American (OneWorld Alliance) or Alaska (many partners) are the default choice for USA residents
http://www.alaskaair.com/content/mil...-overview.aspx

For credit cards better to ask here (from post 1)

Why? Airline-specific cards are actually not the best way of earning frequent flyer miles (apart from the sign-up bonus), as generally they only earn bonused spend on airline ticket purchases - all other spend is at 1x. Most people get airline cards just for the signup bonuses, and then cancel them before the annual fee becomes due. Right now, most of the cards (with the exception of the ones offered by Chase and AmEx) are still churnable. Some folks do keep the cards open long-term for the benefits, but before doing so it pays to do some back-of-the-envelope math and see if the cost of paying for the benefits exceeds the annual card fee.

Too bad, because the combination of Chase Freedom and Chase Sapphire Preferred (and if you qualify for a business card, Chase Ink Plus or Ink Bold) is one of the best points- earning combos out there. Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to United, Southwest, and also Amtrak (so you may not need that Amtrak Mastercard you currently have). Chase Freedom is a no annual fee card which earns 5x points on rotating quarterly bonus categories, while Chase Sapphire Preferred (2x on dining and travel) and the Chase Ink cards (5x on telecommunications (cable, cell phone, internet bills), 5x on office supplies (gift cards!), and 2x on gas) have a $95/year fee.

You might also look at the AmEx Everyday, which is a no annual fee card which earns transferable Membership Rewards points that you can use with the British Airways frequent flyer program to book flights on American Airlines. But if you're interested in this card (or it's annual-fee big brother AmEx Everyday Preferred) get it AFTER you sign up for the AmEx Platinum Card the next time the Platinum Card offers a large signup bonus. You can earn as many as 100,000 points from a Platinum Card signup bonus. AmEx is getting stingy about offering more than one Membership Rewards signup bonus per customer, so it pays to go for the biggest one possible. Sign up for the Platinum Card and get the big signup bonus, then six months or so later, sign up for the AmEx Everyday or EveryDay Preferred and link it to your Membership Rewards account. Then when the $450/year annual fee comes due on the Platinum Card, cancel it. The AmEx Everyday or Everyday Preferred card will keep your Membership Rewards points from the Platinum Card signup bonus from expiring (and they are both nice gas and groceries cards in their own right).

You're not going to get that unless you fly enough on one airline to earn status on it (which from your #2 comment says, you won't).

From everything you've said, I'd suggest opening frequent flyer accounts with American Airlines, United Airlines, Southwest, British Airways (if you want to earn AmEx points), and Alaska (for those times you fly Delta on a paid ticket - Alaska has a much better frequent flyer program in terms of usability than Delta's). For earning American miles, the combo of the Citibank AA card and the AmEx Starwood Preferred Guest card works well - get the AA card for the signup bonus (and cancel it after a year, then reopen it 24 months later for another signup bonus) and use the Starwood card as your everyday spend card. For United, get the Chase United Airlines Mileage Plus card for the signup bonus (but cancel it after a year), and use the combination of Chase Freedom, Sapphire Preferred, and Ink Bold/Plus to earn Ultimate Rewards points to transfer to United, Southwest, and Amtrak. You can also look at getting the Southwest card for its signup bonus - but again, this isn't a card to keep long-term. The Chase Ultimate Rewards cards are MUCH better for earning Southwest miles long-term!