JonathanDP81

Hello! My Mom is originally from New Zealand, now living near Asheville, NC [AVL], but most of her old friends and family live in various places in Australia. Every 18 months to 2 years she travels to see them. She doesn't fly domestic when in New Zealand, but she does in Australia.

She's had a United account and credit card forever and a day and a Qantas account for the past few years. The problem is that the Qantas miles are now expiring as she has no way to keep them current here in the US.

I told her it was best to focus on one alliance and oneworld seemed to be the obvious choice with its Qantas connection and the US Airways merger. I was starting the process to switch her over when I looked up the fares for a AVL-SYD trip in September. American was charging $2600 compared ~$1700 for United and Delta.

Now I'm wondering if I would be better having her use Delta and SkyTeam and earning miles on Virgin Australia while flying internally over there. Is usually such a price difference? Is it good bet to trust Virgin and Delta to keep up their agreement?

Please help!

Yoshi212

Have you looked into AS's program? Currently you can bank miles from AA, DL, KE, CX, QF and a lot more. There is also an associated credit card.

http://www.alaskaair.com/content/mil...-overview.aspx

Mwenenzi

Welcome to the forum

If she asks QF for a new frequent flyer card that will cost 1000 points and keep the account alive for another 18 months. Other ways to keep a QF account alive are to fly AA or AS, car rental or hotel. There is a thread in the QF forum on this expiry topic. Or give them to family member who has an active account (be careful about expiry)

You may find QF offer cheaper fares than AA, even when on the same aircraft. That $$ difference seems more than often posted here. Wait for QF sale?

For an infrequent flyer is better to have 1 ffp or at most 1 in each major alliance.
However Alaska is a good FFP with many partners, including QF, AA & Delta, but is not in a major alliance.
http://www.alaskaair.com/content/mil...-overview.aspx

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

spgbus

Get her Citi CC for AA miles. She should be able to fly premium seat to Australia once every two years. AA has the most partners flying there... QF, Hawaii, Air Pacific, Air Tahiti Nui. If she doesn't mind to stopover in Asia, there are plenty award seats on Cathy and Japan Airline as well.

JonathanDP81

Well the idea of going with Delta got shot down quickly with them now screwing over their budget travelers. I think we'll just stick with AA for the time being. I know probably isn't the smartest thing but being a FF club member on Alaska doesn't really appeal to either of us, especially since the closest they fly to us is ATL.

Yoshi212

You don't have to fly on AS. You can fly on any of their partners (AA,DL,CX,QF and others) and credit those miles to AS's program for redemption on all of those partners. Which means you can decide to go based on schedule and price with 2 large US carriers and several international carries to get to where you want to go and redeem tickets when you earn enough.

JonathanDP81

AS sounds good but it seems like relying on code-sharing agreements to continue is bit more risky than an alliance. I will do some research, though.

Mwenenzi

AS partners are not just code-shares. You fly on AA,DL,CX,QF and others flight numbers & aircraft and credit those miles to AS's program. For an infrequent flyer AS is a good FFP in part due t o their quality internationial partners