What's the best way to "do" lax to paris, france repeatedly -- and be smartest about miles and points at the same time? I'm new to all this.

Welcome to FT!, yonally

Very hard question to provide a general answer

-- how frequently each year do you plan to do LAX-CDG??

-- what class/cabin will you be paying for ?? -- Economy/Business/First

-- what would you want to do with the miles??

-- where else with you be flying??

-- do you want to link a credit card??

Best way? Private jet.
Second best? AF L'espace Premiere.

As WineCountryUA said, we need more info.
BTW, welcome to FT.

Well, i will be going 3 - 7 times per year, and i've always gone air france or tahiti nui coach because it's non stop and cheap. But i always get the sense i'm not maximizing. My 1k ua friend tells me af is a bad program for upgrades and rewards, and i should switch to ua as they are the most generous with perks. I think i believe that but i have to
take 3 flights and take 15 hours 1 way if i do that from my home in santa barbara with ua. Af is 1 flight and only 10 hours. I've mainly gone to south america and europe but i
will go anywhere i can that makes sense and is fun. I want to use miles for upgrades and free flights. Bottom line: I think i'm torn between convenience and maybe a not so good program. Willing to use any credit card that makes most sense. Any comments on flying blue?

Private jet does not do anything for "miles and points". The OP *did* mention that. ;-)

Disclaimer up front: Not trying to be an AApologist, just giving my experience. Most US flagged carriers will give you similar results.

Anyway, This sounds like the struggle I had a little over a year ago.

I had two trips from Europe to CAE in DEC 08 and thought I would fly maybe 3 more TATLs in 2009. One to SAT, one to CAE and a wildcard. The SAT trip would be on AA and who knew about the wildcard.

I wanted to maximize my experience.

The convenient thing to do would have been fly my DEC 08 trips on US FRA-CLT or DL FRA-ATL, but as I read through this board I realized that a long term vision is often the best. Since I knew at least 1 09 TATL would be on AA, I decided they would all be with AA. So all of my flights to the southeast of the US wound up going FRA-DFW-XXX.

That gave me miles, upgrades, lounges, bonus miles. I wound up flying much more than I ever thought I would and also did a MR and went from having 30K miles in my account to 275,000.

The point is I went a little out of my way and I had a much better travel experience and am now looking forward to flying RTW with my DW in J on an award ticket, something I never had even heard about before FT. A bit of inconvenience has helped me out alot.

Take a look at what domestic *A and OW carriers can do for you and who cares if you have to fly a couple of hours out of the way. When doing a TATL your day is pretty much shot anyway, might as well get something out of it!

You have learned well, grasshopper! ^

Very helpful gamecock. Thanks!

You live in SBA.

SBA is presently served by:

Horizon (QX) which is Alaska's (AS) "commuter carrier"
American Eagle
United Express
USAirways Express
Delta Connection

I would presume that apart from your international travel, you would prefer to fly from SBA, and not LAX.

You travel to France (CDG) 3 to 7 times a year. You do this from LAX because there are non-stop flights. These flights are available on Air Tahiti Nui (TN) and on Air France (AF).

TN has no partners as far as I understand things; their partnership with AA is only for redemption (Use AA miles on TN). I am not sure what happened to their partnership with Northwest now that NW is a part of Delta. TN's own program has no partners.

AF carries one warning for you if you travel in coach/economy on their 777's: Very soon these will be converted from 9-across seating to 10-across seating. So if you thought the seats were narrow before...
Citation: http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Air..._777-300_C.php

AF's program is Flying Blue and has both Delta and Alaska/Horizon as partners

P.S. If you work in the Oil business, consider joining Flying Blue Petroleum

Any other carrier will require a change of planes to get to France, BUT there is the possibility now of flying SBA to CDG via Salt Lake City on Delta/Delta Connection. The only other possible code-share I can see being possible is AS/QX to Seattle and then AF to CDG from there.

Delta Skymiles has Alaska/Horizon and also all the SkyTeam Airlines as partners

Alaska Mileage Plan has DL *and* AA as partners, along with AF, British Airways, KLM, LAN Chile and others:
http://www.alaskaair.com/as/mileagep...rs_Airline.asp

You might want to seriously look at the AS program since it is really broad, but your status on AS will not necessarily translate to upgrades, etc. on AF.

You do not say what class you will travel in, and this is really an important piece of info as above with the AF 777's. Also, are you actually going to Paris, or is another part of France your actual destination?

Welcome to FT! This can be alot of fun and can be very rewarding. My two free tickets on the Air France Concorde and numerous flights at the front of the plane are/were just some of the wonderful experiences I have had while playing these games.

personally I'd take Am Eagle between SBA and LAX, connect at JFK on outbound and ORD returning (all AA).

the upgrades are fairly easy to come by on AA, esp. once you reach top tier (EXP) and get 8 SWU's annually.

Interesting, the AE flights are on Saabs and UAX is CRJ, plus the flight is only 30 minutes at best. But the UAX has flights to DEN on a CRJ700 with FC, .

But if he takes the LAX-IAD-CDG he can get 2 777 with international config which makes for a nice ride, plus UA has E+ something AA does not offer.