I recetly found out that I will be traveling from LA to Jakarta every other month for the next two years for work. What airline or team should I sign-up for that has the best frequent flyer program?

HylaRadio, welcome to FT.

Before we can start answering your question, you need to give us some more information.
What class of service will you fly (first class, business class or economy)?
If flying economy, will it be full fare or discounted?
And what do you want from a frequent flyer program?
Do you want easy upgrades, award or something else?
There isn't one best program out there.
One program that's best for me isn't necessarily good for someone else.

One more question:

Will you actually be given the discretion to choose your own flights or will your company/client choose for you?

If you can't choose your own flights, then it's just a matter of choosing the best three FF programs for you to pool your flying in whenever flying the three major alliances.

Much depends on your travel budget.

Assuming they want you to fly economy, I would lobby fairly aggressively for Y+ on BR (often only ~$200 more than discounted Y, and well worth it).

If you are clear to fly business, then CX would be my top pick. That having been said, it's worth pointing out that US-Asia business fares range widely between airlines these days, and CX is usually among the most expensive. KE, CI, and BR tend to be much more reasonable, perhaps even more so if you start your trips in CGK.

MH looks good too:

http://www.farecompare.com/fare-disp...estination=JKT

To answer some of your questions I will get to choose the airline, sometimes the client will pay and sometimes I will pay. I will be buying economy class tixs so I'm hoping to pick a programme/airline that is the easiest when it comes to upgrades.

Then, my recommendation for BR stands (since it sounds like Y+ will be an option for you, even if you might have to dip into your own pocket on occasion). That product is leaps and bounds ahead of basic Y products (and much less expensive than its counterparts on JL and NH).

HylaRadio,

Here's the quick and easy primer on possible ways to upgrade into business class from coach:
1. Use miles. Note, however, that most airlines offer a very restrictive (=expensive) set of fares that you can upgrade from using miles. Often a discount business class ticket is not too much more expensive. Northwest/Delta is one of these airlines.

2. Use cash co-pay + miles. These airlines allow you to upgrade using miles from a wider range of fares, but you have to pay a cash surcharge along with the miles. The surcharge will be somewhere in the area of $300-400 per direction, so $600-800 per round trip. American Airlines is one of these airlines.

3. Earn elite status on an airline that gives out System-Wide Upgrades as an elite benefit. Various levels of elite status/benefits are usually given out based on how many miles you've flown in a year, typically 25,000, 50,000, and 100,000. Some of the airlines, usually at the higher levels, will give out system wide upgrades as one of the elite benefits. United is one of these airlines.

That being said, I would look at Eva (BR) and see what their ways to upgrade are like. If you can fly some flights in E+ and earn the miles/ability to upgrade on others, you'll be more comfortable all the time.

Unfortunately, neither AA nor UA work for Jakarta. Those upgrades can you as far as NRT or HKG/SIN in UA's case, but then it's to the back of the bus for you. What's more, IME split fare tickets usually end up in the same ballpark as BR E+ before you even start to think about upgrade currency (including copays).

Welcome to FT. I would recommend you explore EVA (BR) as suggested by other posters. Their economy deluxe product is excellent for longhaul travel at a good price. I'm not so sure about their FF program, you can check their website for details.

I've taken several trips on EVA, back when my discounted trips earned mileage on CO. Correction to my previous post: The CO OnePass program now offers miles for fares booked in C, Y & K classes, no more mileage accrual on J, M, Q, S, T, L, B, V, U, X, Z classes.

Transit to Jakarta is through Taipei. If you have a Diners Club credit card you have access to the EVA lounge, where you can spend layovers in more comfort. You can take a shower, etc., to me this is worth the annual card fee.

As previously mentioned, the cost difference between economy and deluxe economy on EVA is minimal, but the inflight comfort is absolutely worth the differential. There are numerous consolidators who provide good fares on EVA. I've used Borneo International in SFO several times for EVA tickets.

Thanks all for your help, the info has been very useful!!

I just did a cursory check and it looks like there is a forced overnight in Taipei, from 10:35PM to 9:00AM. China Airlines and Cathay Pacific seem to have the shortest travel time.

Only if you fly BR11 to TPE:

BR0011 LAX 15:50 TPE 22:35+1
BR0015 LAX 22:45 TPE 05:30+2
BR0001 LAX 23:25 TPE 06:10+2

I'm not sure a long layover in TPE is a bad thing. It allows the traveler to sleep in a real bed and take a shower, then hit the ground running at the final destination.

If you have a chance to provide a bit more info, it could help generate more useful feedback. More specifically: What other travel might you be doin and what would you do with the miles you accrue? Use them simply to upgrade yourself on these Jakarta flights, or instead use them for other trips, such as vacation? If the former, then if Eva's (BR) program offers upgrades for a reasonable number of miles, that might well be your best bet. If the latter, then United (UA) might be worth considering.

I do think you've gotten good advice here regarding BR, but I wouldn't rule out UA since it gets you as far as Singapore, just a one-hour hop from Jakarta. Its economy plus (E+) seats are not as good as Eva's premium economy, in that they offer 2-4 inches less legroom and no personal video screens; but they still give you extra legroom and (once you reach Premier status/25K miles) E+ is free. Once you reach its Premier Executive status (50K miles), you then have free access to exit row in Y, which is even better legroom. And once you reach 100K miles, you have 1K status, which includes six systemwide upgrades per year. Getting back to my opening paragraph, UA gives far more mileage redemption options than BR, by virtue of its own network and its membership in the Star Alliance, which includes myriad other airlines that fly to Asia, Europe, etc. Finally, if you do any domestic travel you could accrue miles if UA is your program and benefit from the perks of UA status (such as free domestic upgrades, though they're not guaranteed and will only become likely once you hit 1K).

Having said that, some caveats re United:

1. On-board service might be less consistent and generally poorer than BR, particularly in economy class.
2. Using those systemwide upgrades is not guaranteed. That is, even if you have them, the upgrades don't necessarily clear at time of ticketing and they're not even guaranteed to clear by the time you fly (though more often than not they do so).
3. You'd have a forced overnight in Singapore both ways, since the UA flights into Singapore arrive late at night and the departing ones leave early in the morning. It's not so bad if you book an inexpensive overnight room in the airport hotel, which is in the airport itself so you don't have to go through Immigration. Still, it makes for a considerably longer trip.

One other thought: Again, Eva might make the most sense for you, particularly if you can spring for its premium economy seats. But if you want to simply fly regular economy for the cheapest option possible, my impression is that Cathay Pacific (CX) has the best seats. They all have personal video screens and are "shell-type" seats--that is, they are all encased in their own shells, which means the person in front of you doesn't recline back into you; instead, the seat slides forward a bit to offer some recline. CX offers the additional advantage of just a one-stop, non-overnight connection through Hong Kong. Plus it's generally a better airline than UA and probably better than BR, though I haven't flown the latter.

Of course, a lot of this depends on which airline offers the cheapest economy seats--my guess would be Eva, though I'm not sure. And you might want to check out how many miles each program requires to upgrade. If in fact cashing in miles for other trips is a priority for you, UA might offer the best bet. As previously stated, it offers far more options than Eva; and I'm pretty sure it requires fewer miles for award travel than does CX.

For further info on each of these airlines, you might want to post at their specific FT forums.

Now...if you're going to be in Jakarta so often, you might want to explore which hotel program to concentrate on to accumulate points...but that's a separate discussion. Happy trails!

I think your best options are UA and CX, depending on your tolerance for transfers vs desire for FF benefits.

Best benefits would be UA. You would route through Narita or Hong Kong to Singapore, then take final 1 hour flight on SQ (also Star Alliance, so you get EQM on UA). You would need to overnight in Singapore as pointed out above, but could still arrive in Jkt in time for work in the morning. Economy tickets on UA should be reasonable to charge to your client, and the benefits would be as follows-

- E+ seats are a big improvement over regular economy (though not as good as BR E+).
- West Coast to SIN is 8K miles each way, so you should be Premier after 1 1/2 round trips, and Premier Exec after 3 round trips, or 6 months. After that, you can use the lounge, get double miles.
- 6 round trips in your first year should get you to 1K status, and the systemwide upgrades, so you should be able to fly business class your second year using the system wide upgrades.

The benefit of going CX would be one less transfer- non-stop to Hong Kong, then second leg to Jakarta. Miles are worth about the same, and I find that CX is particularly generous with free upgrades to business class, once you get to Gold status. However, there is no equivilent to the system wide upgrades that you get with 1K status on United, so that is a much better benefit.

BR E+ is the best economy product, but their FF program is not as good, and again, you don't get the upgrades you get with 1K...

Finally, being US based, it's probably easier to accumulate other miles on UA (credit cards, domestic flights), so that's another plus for that program.

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