I have been reading the boards all day (and the relevant FF programme websites) but I am still unsure as to what programme(s) I should sign up to/use for our upcoming RTW trip, in order to get higher status as soon as possible. All flights are in business class so we have lounge access which means I am not even sure if it is worth chasing higher status. Whatever benefits/miles we accumulate we will use for a trip next year and don't mind where.

If anyone has the time to answer this I would really appreciate it. I have honestly tried to figure this out but now my head hurts

Our (2 pax) itinerary is as follows (with only the first flight confirmed so could change airline for any of the others if needed and available on that route);

BA LHR to YVR August
CX YVR to JFK September
AA JFK to BDA
AA BDA to MIA
AA MIA to PHX
AA PHX to DFW
AA DFW to HNL end November
QF HNL to SYD
QF SYD to AKL
QF AKL to MEL December
QF MEL to BNE
QF BNE to PER
QF PER to NRT March
CX NRT to HKG
CX HKG to SIN
QF SIN to LHR

Any help would be welcome.

kkv

Well this is obviously One World alliance. Are you transferring in miles to use as a redemption, or paying for this ticket or what?

If you are paying for your ticket my suggestion is to look for the cheapest price, which will vary based on your starting point. For example it is cheaper to start your award in Asia when purchasing as opposed to the US. Generally.

Sorry if I did not make this clear in my op; the ticket is already bought and paid for. Just looking for FF programme advice really.

Post your question on AA forum, and give more detailed information regarding the Fare Codes of each segment that is not AA. (not all fare codes earn full miles, some dont even earn miles in some programs such as CX and BA)

You have lots of QF segments with some of them longhaul - it is important to know the fare codes to find out if you even earn miles or 50% or 100%.

You will likely get good advices there.

Yeap I agree with Happy comment, most likely all your trip will earn miles since they are in booked in business class. So narrow it down to three CX, QF and AA and check which one you would earn the most with and maybe can maintain the status with easier and validity of your miles.
What an option is let one of your party sign up for the best program and the other for the second best, That way you have two different ff program in the same alliance. Unless you have plans to combine the ff miles together.
What is also important which program has more awards available and lesser tax.

Good luck and it looks like an amazing Itinerary

Happy travels!

ba has a household account making it possible to "pool" the mi's for awards....

aa has the platinum challenge which would get you double rdm quickly & status thru feb 2012, then gold for the next year.....

i guess you would get the 1st elite level on any of the 3 from the trip, but check closely....

good luck...

edit to add....what ff scheme[s] are you in/what have you earned so far this year".....ba & aa each require 4 segments for status iirc....

what flying will y'all do next year?...

Ooops, I missed the business class part.

Yeah, you will earn miles on all the segments. I think clacko has come up a great suggestion in signing up different program for each of you.

While BA has household account, BA also has hideous fuel surcharge on its own flights.

AA has the lowest "cost" both in mileage level and real $ to redeem award tickets.

I would rebook with as much AA flight number if possible (some of the flight you are booked on might also be sold as AA) do a PLT challenge and get 100% miles after that.
Also If you can change your first flight to an AA flight AA will issue the ticket and you will save around 1,000 (fuel). Although I am not sure this is possible as BA (?) already ticket.

With 41,874 miles in J you can probably earn elite status with this trip on most any airline. So, part of the answer depends on what travel pattern you expect for 2011. What airline will you fly the most, for example? Some benefits of status apply when you fly on any airlines in the alliance, but others are only for that airline's own customers. That, in turn, usually depends on where you're based: is that in the UK, as the LHR start and end of your trip and the spelling "programme" suggest, or somewhere else?

The other part of the equation relates to earning miles for that trip next year to somewhere. On AA, you'd each earn about 58,644 redeemable miles for this trip: base mileage, 1.25 multiplier for business class (another 10,468 miles), and a 25 percent Gold bonus after you pass 16,667 flown miles (6,301 miles). That will get you from Europe to Africa or the Middle East in first class, to anywhere else in the world except the South Pacific* in business class. You can do a similar calculation for the other OW programs using information on their Web sites and then decide. (This calculation is based on Great Circle Mapper distances. It may be slightly low, as it doesn't reflect minimum mileage credit or AA's practice of awarding the Gold bonus for the entire flight in which you qualify.)

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*If you really want to go there, you could probably add a segment to your RTW or take a short trip in Europe to reach 60,000 miles.

You might want to do a gold or a gold upgraded to platinum challenge to maximize your miles.

It seems OP starts his trip from UK, which already has cheaper fare than any asia location. Right?

That's an excellent idea if you want to use your miles to go to the South Pacific region. The earlier and/or greater bonus would put you over 60K with no need for an additional trip (and probably less expensively than any sufficiently long trip). If you don't think you'll want to go there, since you're already in business class I don't think the added benefits of earlier/higher status are worth the cost of a Challenge.

(Of course, if you pick a different program, this AA-specific option is irrelevant.)

Thank you all for the very useful advice and information.

The AA programme is definitely the best bet for us, given that we like to visit the USA and would probably use our FF miles for trips there in the next couple of years.

Given that we are based in the UK, I still can't work out whether it would be useful to do a challenge or not. Would there be a worthwile benefit?

I have just done a quick calculation and I think if we did a challenge we would be Platinum after the PHX-DfW flight, giving us 100% extra redeemable miles for all flights after that, a total of around 30,000 extra miles each for the cost of the challenge.

Does that look right?