*A or Skyteam? I'm based in Sofia, BG
 

Hi,
I've been reading your forum for a while. I'm flying a lot, but I have a lot of difficulties with the FF programs.

I'm based in Sofia, Bulgaria (Eastern Europe).

I have the following accounts:
*A: Turkish airlines, 7,465 miles
SkyTeam: KLM/AirFrance, 11,320 miles
Oneworld: no miles
Emirates, 7,750 miles

Which program should I stick to?

Some people here are saying that I should stick with *A. and that FlyingBlue is generally not very good.

With in mind, what is your opinion on Turkish Miles and Smiles?

Also generally I have difficulties finding hotels and car rentals that are partners with either *A or SkyTeam. Do I have to search for partners of a specific airline (like KLM or Turkish)?

Also what tools are generally useful? I have the FlyerTalk app obviously, I have mileBlaster for mile status (very ugly and slow but it works, don't pay the $5 for paid version, doesn't give anything more).

I have apps for *A and oneworld but they generally suck.

I'll continue reading.

Best Regards,
raz0r

Based on your location, I would go with *A. They have much better network in that part of the world, and European-based airlines that are *A have better programs than ST. Turkish is great. Aegean has great features as well, such as low thresholds for achieving Star Silver and Star Gold.

Okay, i have a major issue finding hotels that add points to my Turkish Airlines ff account

Do I search for Miles&smiles partner hotels (which are some turkish hotels)?

Or do I search for *A partner hotels? I cannot find a list of such hotels? If such thing even exists.

There are partner hotels on the *A website but very very limited amount of cities. There are no hotels for Dubai for examples.

With car rentals it entirely different. Turkish is partnering with sixt, avis, budget, europcar, hertz, national, ...

The list of hotel chain partners is here:

http://www.turkishairlines.com/en-us...s/accomodation

What's your hotel stay pattern like? You may find it more useful to join a hotel loyalty program and accumulate hotel points to be used for hotel stay awards rather than more FF miles.

For Europe, outside of a KL/AF stronghold city, I'd pretty much always pick *A for my flying.

So the popular hotels are
Best Western, Kempinski, Hilton, Radisson, Moevenpick.
The others seem small.

so hotels and car rentals give you fixed 500 miles and that's it. Which is not nice.

How many hotel stays/nights do you do per year? If it's more than, say, 10 nights per year, then there's a pretty good chance that you'd be better off earning hotel points and forgetting about the 500 miles per stay.

The only one in your list that I know well is Hilton - although I understand that Kempinski and Movenpick are both quite good. I'd try to see if one of those chains can cover most or all of your hotel stay activity and then focus on doing all of your business with it. (Radisson is part of the larger Club Carlson program that contains several hotel brands. Hilton is part of the larger HHonors program that includes Doubletree, Conrad, and others.) There are active forums here for both Carlson and HHonors - and you may also want to look at Starwood and Marriott while you're at it and see how well they map to your travels.

Most people here are every bit as active in at least one hotel program as they are in their preferred FFP. After all, if you redeem a flight award somewhere interesting, why not redeem an award for a nice hotel while you're at it? :)

its generally much better to accumulate points/miles in the program that is run by vendor, unless they have some sort of promotion that makes sense.
500 points from hertz rental will probably make very little difference in your Air miles. Keep in mind that those miles are not elite qualifying.
But two-three rentals may get you a day or two free with this agency, which is a better value.

No offense, but 30k miles in your frequent flyer accounts (accumulated over >1 year?) is not nothing, but also does not necessarily suggest "a lot" of flying.
In Europe, a lot of point-to-point travel is now done on low cost airlines (WizzAir has a presence in Bulgaria).
As much as I hate travelling on airlines like WizzAir; the price difference between low cost and legacy carriers in Europe is so large now that it does not make sense for most people I know to tailor their intra-European travel plans on their frequent flyer program membership (and vice versa).
If you know you will be flying KLM twice a month anyway, join Skyteam. If you will be flying Lufthansa that often, join *A. Otherwise just buy the cheapest ticket you can find and use the Euros saved to buy a day access card for an airport lounge once in a while.

That's what I think.

Why not OZ?

There's definitely something to be said for just going the LCC route if you aren't a mid-to-high tier elite flier.

OP, how many total segments/miles would you say you'll fly per year? Is the travel primarily business or personal?

If you hold no elite status, your experience will be far superior on an airline that doesn't emphasize status to the degree that most alliance carriers do. Even if the non-alliance carrier *has* elite tiers (and most do), my experience has been that they don't punish the non-elites as harshly from a basic customer service perspective as the major alliance carriers do. This has been my experience flying non-alliance airlines in Europe, North America, and to a lesser extent Asia. It's more egalitarian...the gap in perks and treatment between the first-time flier and the top elite is much narrower than on, say, LH or UA. If I was in this camp, I'd pick the LCC every time - even if it was a mix of LCC's and I never really amassed much in the way of award power.

If you're a low-tier elite flier (a Star Alliance Silver level), then the service levels start to become more even. I'd probably lean towards the alliance carrier although I'd take a hard look at whether or not I'm paying higher airfares on most of my trips vs. a stable, reliable non-alliance competitor.

If you can reach Star Gold or higher, then the alliance route starts to look a lot better...although I'd still want to know what (if anything) I'm really paying for the privilege.