I did not make a recommendation for BA over QR. I know little about the BA ffp and less about the QR ffp. As you have note BA economy awards are often poor value compared to a cash ticket, and more so with aother carrier cash tickets. Better to have a look at the BA & QR forums.

http://www.awardace.com/redemptions/...p_type=one_way (may not be accurate)

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...demptions.html linkto
http://www.flyermiler.com/

Okay, thanks Mwenenzi for the links, useful stuff for me to work it out on my own!

My wife and I have both retired, and loving it. We realize that we do not fly enough to get medallion status with any one airline, but would not mind a free pass or a rare upgrade once in a while. Heck, being greeted with a smile would be wonderful.. Splitting our time between AA and Delta is not going to work for us. We just cant decide which airline to stick with. We belong to both FFP, and have the corresponding credit card for the airline. Any help in picking a airline for us would be appreciated.




(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?

upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, free - discounted lounge access,

(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?

Two international flights a year, plus a trip or two within the US a year.
Presently have 71000 miles with Delta - and 60000 with American

(3) What types of fares do you usually buy ?

Premium economy, Economy, cheapest

(4) Travel is all pleasure, Been using both Delta and AA

(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often

US Domestic, South East Asia Europe

(6) What is your home airport?

BNA (Nashville)

(7) Do you have FFP status of any kind in an airline? What is it? Do you have any miles banked in a FFP?

Belong to AA and Delta FFP. Have miles banked with both.

(8) Preferred Airlines

1- Delta at this point solely because they use terminal 3 in Manila as opposed to terminal 1. AA is a close 2nd for us though

terapin welcome to the forum

Now days the chances of in frequent flyers getting upgrades are low to very low, especially on low priced tickets. You need mid - high status for lounge access, but (with AA) this is only for international and not domestic travel. Discounted lounge access does really happen.

Alaska has both AA & DL as freq flyers partners.https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...ePlan-partners
You can fly AA & DL and get AS miles. Have a read of the AS forum. The AS award chart is limited.

As many ffp's are going to a revenue based system your earnings will not be much on low priced fares.

I have around 30k points in american express points, not sure which program I can transfer to get the most bang for the buck. Please help me out.

1. What is most important to you in a frequent flyer program (FFP)?
upgrades, priority services, baggage allowance, good award redemption rates, better award access, lounge access, etc.
>>> Reply: good award redeption

2. How many miles do you usually fly each year? How many flights/sectors?
less than 25000 miles, 50000+ miles and 20-25 flights, etc.
>>> Reply: Maybe around 3 - 4 flights short or long haul combined

3. What fare class do you usually buy?
first, business, premium economy, economy
>>> Reply: economy

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

5. Which routes do you fly most often?
transatlantic, domestic USA, intra-Asia, etc.
>>> Reply: canada to US, canada to Asia

6. What is your home airport?
>>> Reply: YYZ

7. Do you have status in any FFP? What is it? How miles do you have banked in each FFP, if any?
>>> Reply: alaska airline around 7300 miles

8. What are your preferred airlines, if any?
>>> Reply: None


Thanks

Which airline would you recommend concentrating on for someone who's mostly flying between SFO/LAX/NYC, and very occasionally going to DC?

What do you want out of the situation?
-Frequency?
-Upgrades?
-Lounge?
-Rewards?
What class of service?
Going to IAD or DCA?

I mostly fly coach, 2-3 times a month, and I go international a couple times a year. I want upgrades and lounge mostly. Not too picky about the DC airport.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

AA status won't get you lounge access. Not sure what Delta's policy is about that.

BA status would get you lounge access on AA domestic flights, but even if you credited all of your AA flights to BA, you would not earn BA status without taking four BA flights per calendar year. Any trips to Europe planned?

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"AA status won't get you lounge access."

That should be corrected to read, "AA status won't get you lounge access on domestic flights."

AA Platinum or Executive Platinum status would get you lounge access on international flights.

Are a member of any airline ffp now?
Upgrades are now harder to get, more so on long - popular routes (such as yours) and if you buy cheaper fares. Status helps, but the ffp are moving to revenue based programs
Freq flyer miles from credit card spend are a good mile earner for many

USA based airline ffp's tend to be more generous (status benefits/earn/burn/upgrades/award cost/award cash surcharges/expiry/affiliated credit cards/promotions) compared to non USA based airline ffp’s (even after the recently announced changes to some USA ffp’s)

The airline you fly most or an airline of the country you live is the best ffp for many people. Generally however you are better earning on your primary airline due to greater recognition, ability to upgrade and opups. The airline you fly and the airline ffp you credit those flights to does not need to be the same.
Freq flyer miles are not equal to earn or burn.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html

You might think about enrolling in Alaska's FFP.

It doesn't appear they'll be going revenue based,

you can credit both AA and DL to AS,

if you gain MVP status, you get benefits on all three airlines,

AS has some decent partners to claim awards with.

1. What is most important to you in a frequent flyer program (FFP)?
upgrades, priority services, baggage allowance, good award redemption rates, better award access, lounge access, etc.
>>> Reply:

Ranked by importance:
1) Family Pooling - as I will be travelling mostly with my spouse
2) Lounge Access
3) Seating Comfort - as we generally take long haul flights

2. How many miles do you usually fly each year? How many flights/sectors?
less than 25000 miles, 50000+ miles and 20-25 flights, etc.
>>> Reply:

Domestic (US) - We fly about 2-3x a year to see my spouse's family (via New York JFK - Chicago ORD) - frequently with Southwest, and occasionally with Jetblue for other fav vaca hotspots (New York JFK - Florida MCO)

Internationally (Asia) - We fly usually up to 2x a year to Asia to see my family (New York JFK - Singapore SIN = 9k-10k miles [with layover]). My spouse also has family in Taiwan (New York JFK - TW = 7k-8k miles)

As our questions are more specific to our international travels, I would say we hit just about 50k-60k if we pool out miles together.

3. What fare class do you usually buy?
first, business, premium economy, economy
>>> Reply:

Usually Economy (Y), but we are willing to pay for upgrades if we take long haul flights.

For domestic, we take whatever is the cheapest.

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

We travel for pleasure, mostly to see family, but would love to capitalize and accrue our points for the future to do long-term travelling (in about 2-3 years time)

5. Which routes do you fly most often?
transatlantic, domestic USA, intra-Asia, etc.
>>> Reply:

As mentioned we have family in Chicago/Taiwan/Singapore

Domestic is about 2-3x a year JFK -> ORD

International 1x-2x JFK-> SIN, or JFK -> TPE

6. What is your home airport?
>>> Reply:

JFK

7. Do you have status in any FFP? What is it? How miles do you have banked in each FFP, if any?
>>> Reply:

We have about 12k in Jetblue, 30k in Southwest, none international yet - that's why we are here to seek advice on a good *A FFP for our situation

8. What are your preferred airlines, if any?
>>> Reply: We recently just came back from a Multi City Trip

JFK - BKK: We took Emirates and we loved our A380 experience to Dubai (then layover to BKK), even though we paid economy, but the seating were very spacious, we felt like we were flying premium economy. We pooled all those points into Jetblue because they were the only partners available to what we will use.

BKK - SIN: We flew budget, TigerAir, not sure if we can credit any points, but those we negligible in our aspect.

SIN - JFK: We flew back with Turkish (I know we should have sticked to 1 alliance, but we wanted to test out how different flights felt), both our flights home were awful, even with the layover at Istanbul. Seats were narrow, food was awful and we felt perpetually suffocated because they were blasting the heat on. We didn't really know how the points system worked so we tried signing up a membership account via the website after our trip. The sign up keep giving us an error on the security question with no drop down option. We called customer service, but was answered by an outsourced office in India which could not even sign us up as members via the phone. We hung up frustrated and realized we were so glad that we didn't as the points could go to a more valuable *A partner

Having said that, we researched a few favs (home country flights obv), Eva, Singapore - but were greeted with strict redemption rules and 2 years point expiration system. SG Air doesn't allow pooling, so we are eliminating it. Eva has a very confusing "points transfer" policy on their webpage. They allow points transfer, but quoting from their website "the transferred mileage cannot combined with the transferee's own mileage or any mileage transferred by a 3rd party." - So what's the point of offering a points transfer system in the first place?

Now we are looking into ANA, as they have a family pooling system, and have flights via JFK. But however, we are unsure of their redemption system.

We haven't flew Aegean or Asiana, we know those give very good status membership to access the *A partners lounge, however we also want our points to steer towards a more comfortable flight that we can redeem for upgrades in the long run. For a fact, we have decided that we'll never take Turkish Air again based on our last experience.

We also currently have 35k worth of points in our Chase Sapphire preferred card, if we transfer these points into our chosen *A FFP, will those points count to earn us status as Gold? As Gold members gets to bring a guest in for any lounge access. This might be another deal breaker for us to choose our *A FFP too.

I know there are no completely WIN situations for all FFP, but we don't think our expectations are that outrageous, we just want to pick best the value for our buck that fit our priorities - which is comfort and upgrades. Hope you guys can chime in your thoughts and help us make a more informed decision.

Hi all,

I'm pretty new to this stuff, I've recently been given a responsibility at work that means I'll be flying roughly once a month for a week at a time. I travel all over (based in the UK), so far I've been to Paris, Texas, Madrid, Johannesburg in the last few months and I'm due to fly to Melbourne and Dubai in April (flights not yet booked), and more to come.

I had flown BA before so I just went ahead and stuck with them, but the last few flights I've been on with them have been in very old planes with no power, no wifi, so I'm wondering if I could make better decisions here. I'm just flying economy. My tier points actually reset last month so I'm now only sat at 40 and still at blue, with about 6k Avois. Nothing much.

Seems like a good time to decide who I should fly with. I do like my mod cons (power, decent TV, wifi [or at least a chance of]).

I also have no idea about stuff like getting upgraded and the seat classes (other than they exist), do free upgrades still happen now that so much is done electronically?

Also, is there a branch of hotels I should book that work well with a particular airline? I don't currently book hotels by preference but I know they do schemes too.

sawell Welcome to FT

The airline you fly most or an airline of the country you live is the best ffp for many people. Generally however you are better earning on your primary airline due to greater recognition, better service when flight disruptions, ability to upgrade and possible operation upgrades. With alliances & ff partners you can fly another airline and get miles/points/avios & sometimes status earning.

What airlines & ff alliances fly to your destinations?

Free upgrades are uncommon on non USA airlines. With non USA airlines always expect in the class you pay for. But status helps a lot with upgrades, if available.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...help-here.html

The grass in not always greener on the other side