Does moving mean changing alliance?
 

I have been living in Utrecht for more than two years, but I will be relocating to Berlin for work.

During this last two years I have been FB Gold (achieved by segments). I usually fly ~40 segments per year. More or less my flying patter is as follows:

# about 12~15 segments per year to MIL for personal travel (my family lives there) in Economy, often with AZ.
# about 15~20 segments in Europe in economy for work. Probably next year I will be going to Utrecht a few times, but in that case I may actually travel by train.
# one or two longer trips for work or holiday (if for work, also economy there), sometimes with AZ too.

From Utrecht Flying Blue was a natural choice, also due to the partnership with AZ. The biggest advantage of FB Gold were skypriority and lounge access (especially after the short-haul EC fiasco), and sometimes the extra baggage allowance.

From Berlin, however, things are different: there is no AZ connection to MIL (in fact, no Skyteam connection that I know of), and for most of my trip AF/KL would not be the best option.

Therefore, I am looking for alternatives. Even if I would better off asking directly in other forums, maybe someone here can point me in the right direction. I am a bit undecided between going for something like Miles and More, that has the advantage of being recognized by several airlines, going for Airberlin, that is interesting due to the partnership with Ethiad or keeping Flying Blue (but I wouldn't know how, really).

Any advice?


(moderators: I hope I'm not straying away too much from the topic of the board)

Depends, do you want status in either Oneworld or Staralliance (also factoring in the airlines for your longhaul trips)? If so, are you looking for the quickest status, best recognition or best award possibilities?

Besides AMS, what other destinations would you be flying to for work?

The best fit for you heavily depends on where you will most often go. A lot of your flying is to MIL. If there are no direct Skyteam flights, you will probably be bound to Air Berlin on this route. Air berlin is part of OneWorld, as is Finair, Iberia and British Airways.

So personally I would take a look if the OneWorld network satisfies your needs for work and holiday travel. I have heard many good things about the BA Avios program, so that might be worth looking in to.

Alternatively you could fly to Milan using a connection somewhere, or use Easyjet as an alternative direct flight. Easyjet not being part of an alliance will probably make it difficult to reach/keep status with any alliance. However if that offers a substantial financial advantage I would definitely consider it as an option.

Flying with a stop to Milan is going to be tiresome, but it is doable. It has the advantage that you will collect miles faster, and flights with a stop are often cheaper than non-stop. Though I am not sure if that is also the case when both Easyjet and AB are active on your route..

Does moving mean changing alliance?
 

If you choose OW, you can probably status match with AB. I don't know whether AB is as good as BA's Executive Club but a match with EC is out of the question so you'd have to start from scratch with them.

Thanks for all the input.

I am not sure of where I will frequently fly, except MIL. I work in academia, and my business travel consists of going to a conference or to give a seminars/lectures somewhere. Roughly speaking any place that has a decent university may be a potential destination (lately I visited LON, PAR, LIS, BCN, BRU, EDI, GVA, VCE, TRS...), but generally I don't go to the same place more than once or twice a year.

I looked a bit into connecting BER-MIL, but it seems to be quite expensive: the cheapest option is provided by KLM at around 180 EUR. A direct flight is around 100 EUR with AB (even less for fares that get no segments). If I managed to match with AB Gold (the lowest tier that gives lounge access) indeed it would be very attractive, but it seems that the typical requirements there are a bit higher that FB gold's.

I also wonder if AB is not more of a LCC to some extent (well, KL and AF are getting there anywhere...), and whether I should expect poor legroom/recline/in light service, etc. (but it seems that gold allows to access some economy confort for free)

AFAIK, AB only matches LH elites.

I got an AB match from my (Matched) Turkish Star Gold card. They only needed a picture of the card, not even proof of account activity. Not sure about Flying Blue though.

I have read reports that AB matches FB Elites for 4 months in which a fast track is offered to extent the Elite membership.

@Xandrios where you given a status match for an entire year?

Yup, 4 months as well. Which is perfect as I have a few oneworld flights coming up for work :)
They ask for 17K miles or 20 segments to keep status for one more year.

That sounds quite reasonable, especially since the mileage earning on AB seems to be much better than AF/KL. I'll definitely try to contact them before I have to move to BER.