Best *Low-Tier* Program
 

Currently, I am a DL (formerly NW) Silver Medallion which expires soon. I have matched into CO with their promotion to ensure I have some sort of status for 2010 but would like your opinion on a program to primarily earn miles/status with. I reside in PEK and fly economy trans-pacs 2 times a year and may occasionally fly short hops within China. So as you can see, a rather strange situation...I usually just make the lowest tier elite status on the airlines. Now, I would like to know the best program to stick with - in addition to DL and CO, I have accounts with UA and AA (prefer not to be OW as they do not have much of a presence in Asia) as well as AC which I may have used once or twice and QF which I have never used. UA sounds interesting for UGS (which I might make in what, 25 years or so :D) and I already have about 50k miles with them and DL seems alright for rollover MQMs, but have me somewhat disappointed compared to NW. Which *A or ST program offers the best benefits for a not-so-frequent flier and is it worth slowly building up miles for lifetime status (I am still young and have pretty much a lifetime ahead of me ;))?

I would go with AS; lots of partners and reasonably priced awards.

If you fly TPAC's, and don't upgrade to C or F, then I would highly recommend United. Economy plus alone is worth it! Travel within China might be problematic, but I think Shanghai Air is now part of *A.

And United (along with AA) has the best availability for awards of any domestic carrier.

both Air China and Shanghai Air with United are part of Star Alliance (as soon will be Continental).

so the choice becomes whether you have enough flights on Air China to get a sufficient miles for free trips or want to go with United to get economy plus seating

In my opinion, that is not quite correct. United is well known for aggressively blocking award seat availability on other *A carriers (StarNet filtering).

My main beef with UA, and the main reason I abandoned them this year, is its new award chart, which is near the bottom of *A barrel. Add *net filtering to the equation, and the miles are basically worthless (though not as worthless as DL's). E+ is nice, but you can always trade for a 3P sponsorship (for E+) and accrue in a more generous program.

Although with the purchase of Shanghai Air by China Eastern, they may join Skyteam as speculated in this article - http://redirectingat.com/?id=42X1295...toryID%3D18149

Again, not enough info. What is your objective? Free award flights in business or economy? Domestic US or international? Better comfort (i.e. UA's E+ seats) or upgrades on your international flights?

Simple accumulation of lifetime status can be done on any of the majors (though AA includes all earned miles including credit card miles ^)'

Personally I like AA for lowest tier because you can reserve exit row seat, plus the domestic sticker upgrades are cheap and often clear. UA is better if you want extra room in economy class for international flights, but awful for award redemption on partners and until recently pretty mediocre on international business class saver awards.

Whoops, sorry if I didn't give enough info. Well, since I mostly just fly TPAC domestic awards (and upgrades most of the time) are not big priorities for me. Award travel between PEK and the US is an objective as well as having plenty of options out of PEK. This would normally be in economy but I might occasionally book a business award if there is a deal or certain forseen changes in my travel pattern in the future.

Oneworld currently does not satisfy this very well as they have limited China-US options especially to the west coast.

*A covers China well with CA and FM and ST is alright with CZ onboard. I believe MU actually wants to join OW with FM however their int'l options are still pretty bad.

As for the AS comment, I'm not so sure if that's a great option as I don't see myself travel domestic much or even ever flying AS themselves in the future.

So if my ~180k DL miles are worthless, what program is better with redemption?

Moondog, interesting note on the award chart, where can I find more details? Also, since you have abandoned UA this year, who have you switched to?

Happy to be proven wrong here though...and also open to other airline suggestions. Thanks!

Just google: United Award Chart.

I've been crediting most of my flights to AS this year (in addition to AS itself, I find myself on DL and AA often).

At the same time, I've been getting as many AA credit cards as possible, which has resulted in nice war chest of miles that are relatively easy to redeem for transpacs on JL (one way awards are really nice).

On the rare occasion that I end up on a *A flight, I credit to my BMI account. I like BD's award structure (like AA, one way awards are on offer, and they also have a nice cash+miles feature). I still have status on UA so that gets me E+.

Just because you don't plan on flying AS doesn't mean you can't use their program!

AS has a wide variety of partners that crosses alliances, including a couple who are fairly strong in Asia (DL/NW, KE, CX, and AA, BA, and KL when you need them). Check out the list of partners at http://www.alaskaair.com/as/mileagep...rs_Airline.asp and check the award chart to make sure the routings you need are offered.

One downside of AS is that you can't (yet) combine multiple partners on a single itinerary (unless you book two separate awards). Not sure how much that would affect you, though.

Hmm, some of the AS redemption rates appear alright however some of the earnings and blackout dates don't look so good...

The 50% bonus (for plain, vanilla MVP) on AA and DL is 25% better than bottom tier AAdvantage and SkyMiles members earn.

What's more, you get 100% accrual on most KE fares. Unfortunately, KE flights don't count towards status.

I guess things are pretty bleak on the tpac front right now (i.e. I'm reflecting upon the fact that the best advice I could give you was to suggest a plan that forces you to go out of your way to fly DL/NW just to rake in ~50k miles per year that you can actually use at sane redemption rates).

On the other hand, being locked into UA is no picnic either, most (if not all) Asia based FFPs have nasty expiration policies that prevent people like yourself from booking decent rewards. Furthermore, tmk bottom tier Asia Miles isn't exactly awash with benefits that would compensate for the lack of realistic redemption opportunities.

I would suggest thinking about OZ if you want to stick with *A, as it is easy to get *A Gold status at 40k miles.....their burn rate is not great and I do not know about award availability....but your status lasts for 24 months and you can get lounge access/preferred check-in with all *A. BD is also very good for low thresholds and has a better burn rate than many others. I gave up on UA early last year and now have *A Gold with OZ....I have ended up in E+ every time I have flown UA on the back of that....(not that I rate E+ on UA being worth much of anything). Just my opinion....good luck deciding....

the question you pose is what is the best low tier program

I too am going to say AS. Simply because AS as it stands now has 2 tiers and is attainable with less miles than most other low tier frequent flyer choices and upgrades arent rare or unheard of for MVP on a lot of routes. You also get 50% bonus RDMS...again unheard of on most silver/low tier status


What is the best program for you the OP may not be AS but IMO is the best "low tier" program

Does this apply on carriers other than AS? I usually am only flying the TPACs and the occasional China domestic flight and even rarer domestic US flight.

If you're qualifying on partner airlines (not AS metal), the tiers are the same as most other airlines (25k/50k).

The bonus miles for MVP/MVPG will post, though, so you'll get 50%/100% bonuses even on your TPAC flights.

For you, the main benefit of AS status would be the ability to accrue more miles on your NW/DL/AA transpacs. Additionally, you might actually be able to use these miles for reasonable redemptions.

BTW, I just flew DL in Y PDX-NRT-PVG and was pleasantly surprised. Even the 763 on the PDX-NRT leg was tolerable. My only beef with it was that my seat (reclining exit row aisle) couldn't have been any closer to the mid cabin lavs. I armed myself with a bunch of drink coupons, but it turned out that the FAs didn't want them. Also, the NW lounges in NRT have showers now, the lack of which was one of my pet peeves from the days that I used to spend a lot of time on NW.

So is AS status also recognized across all/most of its partners?

I don't think AS elite status translates into any kind of alliance-wide elite stauts.

I think out of Asia I'd probably want to find my easiest path to Star Gold if I could. I'm not 100% sure what that is...maybe UA if you are eligible to obtain one of the credit cards that includes EQM, thus nudging a Silver level of flying up to Gold.

BD might be an option....


In 2010, I'm going to be migrating back towards OW because my flight patterns are going to align with AA, so I'm going to have to re-learn the whole OW universe. I've been pretty Star-centric (and mostly happy with it, occasional Starnet filter aside) for the past few years.

Not most, unfortunately--very few. Actually, just one: DL.

International upgrades (except for perhaps the odd op-up, since you're [just barely] ahead of the non-status folk on the plane) are never going to happen on DL with AS status, but you should be able to select premium seats (exit rows, bulkheads, etc) and have some sort of priority in irrops situations.

Great airline and good program, but probably not a super fit for someone in your situation (where you could possibly get and have use for elite status on an airline you're actually flying).

Gold on many airlines is a sweet deal. *G provides lounge access on all flights except for domestic US, and NW/DL golds with non-US addresses get lounge access whenever they want it (even if not flying a partner airline; this data is 5 years old, so I'm not sure how the new DL is handling things).

The DL partnership is pretty tight. AA, not so much IME.

As I've mentioned up thread, the primary rationale for going with AS is the ability to earn more miles.

TMK, there aren't any programs out there that deliver more at the low tier level, but you should definitely research some of the Asia based options.

I have a naive suggestion. If I were in OP shoes, my focus would be to choose a carrier for my long haul TAPC trips based on schedule and cost. Schedule means routing w.r.t. # of stops, departure/arrival timing etc. I'd then decide which FFP I should credit the mileage earnings to.

My thinking is that (1) as a lower level elite, the benefits are limited anyway (except if you are tall and traveling in coach then E+ is a meaningful benefit from UA); (2) OP's goal is to accumulate miles over long term, however the best rewarding FFP today could devalue by the time OP has sufficient miles for a meaningful redemption. Now if OP could get to mid-tier (or willing to MR for it), then *A gold is a very sweet spot...

Deltame, good suggestion... unfortunately I am pretty much stuck at the low end of the low tier :/

I think I may just stick with DL on the ST front and UA on the *A side to keep things simple - I already have a number of miles on each which I can continue to earn and burn to redeem awards.

subjective decision
 

I really like my Miles & More status. If you look first level status card Frequent Traveller aka silver.
What I really like is that you have lounge access already if you fly with those Miles & More companies, like LH, OS, LX etc, here I do not mean parthers.
Of course this is excellent benefit when you are living Europe. Other excellent benefits are that miles do not expire and executive bonus which means that you get additional miles on certain airlines. And not to forget that card is valid for two years.
Main thing in my opinion is to compare and then to stick to one card per alliance.