I'm a total newbie when it comes to frequent flyer miles and the different programs, so I'm coming here for some help. I've been looking around the web at the different programs and this site (awesome amount of knowledge here, I'm amazed!), but I'm afraid I've suffered something like information overload. It's just too much for me to cope with and I'm beginning to get confused. So would someone here be kind enough to share some words of wisdom with me?

I'm moving to the US (SF bay area) from Denmark (CPH) soon and I'm hoping that somehow my wife and I'll be able to get some miles together to get a free trip "home" to Europe once in a while, perhaps once a year or every other year (that would be a SFO-CPH run, I suppose). We don't fly much (and when we do it's economy) so we'll probably have to do some cc-work, but I'll deal with that later. For now the point is to find the best airline program to go with.

My first instinct was to go with SK (SAS) but their program doesn't impress and from what I can read here on this site, I'm not the only one who isn't impressed by them.

We'd be happy to either get some free economy tickets to Europe or (perhaps more realistically) be able to get some upgrades to business class from economy on our (estimated) yearly trip to Scandinavia.

This year we may be doing a 2-person NYC-SFO roundtrip and possibly a 2-person roundtrip from SFO/OAK to Chicago. And then there's of course my move to the US, which will be a CPH-NYC one way (in case you're wondering, the wife and I will move from NYC to SF area a couple of months later). So we don't fly much, but when we do they tend to be longer flights.

I don't expect that we'll be able to make elite status anywhere, since our trips are probably too infrequent for that, but we'll be happy with less.

FWIW, I have 7200 award points with Icelandair (from my last US trip), but they're cancelling their collaboration with SK and I'm not sure they're worth building on.

Can anyone suggest a good program based on this? If you need more information, don't hesitate to ask.

Sincerely,
Knaldskalle

...who's just made his first post. I hope it didn't break any rules of offend anyone. If it did, it was unintentional and I apologize.

Since you don't fly much, look at credit cards. I'd pick the carrier or alliance most likely to have the award seats you're looking for, then pick an airline & partner. That said, you probably want to get an SPG amex card - you can transfer miles to just about any airline with a 20% bonus (5000 bonus miles for every 20000 transferred).

Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it helps me... I'll explain:

You can't get an American credit card living in Europe - and the American credit cards have all the nice FF programs, as I see it - so I won't be able to get an American credit card before I actually move to the US in a couple of months. And since I have no credit history once I move to the US, I don't know how easy it'll be to obtain one there... (I don't think it's possible to transfer credit between countries). That's why I postponed the whole credit card thing, even though I'm quite interested in the SPG Amex card (since it's so highly recommended by almost everyone here and it truly does look good).

I'm basically starting from scratch and thought that it would be best to pick the best FFP before setting my eyes on any credit cards. Am I wrong in this?

Besides, I'd like to get some miles for my CPH-NYC flight to the US when I move there, and I won't be able to do that if I have to get an American cc first...

So the way I see it, cc's are out of the picture until I'm actually in the US. In the meantime I'm trying to figure out how to best pick up some miles once I actually get there, and that's where I got lost in all the information...

Thanks,
Knaldskalle

There are some threads over at the Amex forum about transferring cards. I believe that if you can get an Amex card now, you should be able to xfer it to a US address and then use that to get the SPG card. I'm really not clear on how this works, but it might be worth asking Amex customer service.

Welcome to FT, Knaldskalle!

Yes, look at CC, and also partner offers (such as shopping, restraurants, car rentals, hotel stays, etc...) - especially since you don't fly much. At one time, I had over 400,000 FF miles with UA - but only about 50,000 miles were from flying! (All the rest were from CC and partner offers, including things like double and triple mileage offers! )

Also remember that when you chose an airline in an alliance, you do not need to just travel on that one airline.

Example is is you sign up with United, they may or may not fly to CPH (I'm not sure). But because they are a part of the Star Alliance, you could for example take UA or LH to FRA, then connect to CPH. Or you can take SQ to AMS and connect to CPH. Or US to Europe and then connect to CPH.

I'm not sure about the other alliances (One World and Sky Team), but I think they are similar.

So it all depends on where you do your (small amount) of flying. Choose the airline that has the flights in that segment, and belongs to the alliance that is best for you. For example, if you fly from OAK-PHL alot, I would choose US or UA over SW - since SW does not fly to Europe and does not belong to an alliance that does.

Also remember, you can choose to apply your FF miles flown on 1 carrier in an alliance to your account in another airline in that same alliance. But you MUST request this before you fly!

For example, you fly on US but you have a UA FFP account. Because both US and UA are members of the Star Alliance, you can request your miles be applied to your UA account. The same with DL, NW or CO - since they're all in the Sky Team alliance, you can apply the mileage from one airline's flight to your other airline's account. But you could not apply the mileage from you DL flight to your UA account - because they are in different alliances!

Thank you for the replies! So I take it I was wrong in focusing on FFP's rather than CCs before making my choice?

I'm currently using a Visa. In Denmark Visa is automatically "co-branded" to the (ubiquitous in Denmark) free debitcard "Dankort", so there's no Visa Gold, Platinum or any other Visa variant available. I've considered getting a MasterCard, but Amex is hardly accepted anywhere and costs around $100/year (for the green one), so I haven't been interested in that. Until now. I'll look into the transferring of cards from one country to the other right away.

Thanks!

Knaldskalle

Hi. The travel you described should earn mileage as follows:
CPH-NYC 3,000
NYC-SFO 2,500
SFO-NYC-SFO 5,000
SFO-ORD-SFO 3,000

So, all told, about 13,000-14,000 miles for each of you in the first year. Most airlines seem to want 40,000 miles USA-Europe in the winter, 60,000 in the summer, so you are short 52,000-54,000 miles for winter tickets for two, 92,000-94,000 miles for summer tickets. In subsequent years, it is even worse, assuming that your flying patterns hold up. So you would need to have a lot of credit card charges to make this work for you the way you want it to. First year would be around $40,000 of charges for winter tickets, $72,000 for summer tickets. That's a lot to put on a credit card.

That's the bad news. The good news is that there are often really cheap fares from SFO-Europe in the January-March period. For example, right now you can fly SFO-London for about $400 (including taxes and fuel surcharges).
So, if you don't have enough credit card charges to make this work every year, you can still go home without having to pay a fortune.

All of the advice you have gotten so far appears good, and I would still do that. Check out the alliances, see what works best for you. But unless you're spending a ton of money on credit cards, you might want to plan that first trip home in the winter, and watch the Mileage Run forum here on Flyertalk for decent fares from SFO to Europe.

Thanks gemac!

I kind of figured that getting a free trip once every one-two years was too optimistic, but what about upgrades? I've been unable to "penetrate" the system of upgrades (on top of the different programs and credit card systems...), so will it be realistic to imagine getting upgrades from economy class to business class with 15-20,000 miles accrued?

I know my wife would be really pleased if we could get a trip to Europe on business class having only "paid" for economy.

Thanks for your help,
Knaldskalle

That will get you upgraded one-way domestically. A more typical international upgrade would be 30,000 miles each way, though you can often reduce this if you purchase an expensive (i.e. full-fare) Coach ticket.

SQ doesnt fly EWR-AMS any more (since SIN-EWR became nonstop). Only SQ flight between US and europe is JFK-FRA, which may still be helpful for the OP.

Hi, Knaldskalle!

I'm in a (vaguely) similar situation, having moved across the world from my family.

I would suggest that, even though you don't fly much from Denmark at present, you are likely to fly much more once you have moved! Part of the cost of moving overseas (I'm sure you are realising it is not a cheap process) is setting aside money to buy airfares to return home from time to time. And you need of course to set aside money, at least psychologically, to pay for an occasional emergency air fare (I don't want to be too pessimistic, but realistic). You will want to explore your new home, too -- everyone in the US flies quite a lot it seems -- and you may even choose to pop over this way for a holiday.

This means that you will surely accumulate some miles from flying. And it is likely to mean that you will become quite used to the costs of flying and factor it into your budgets much more readily

I would go for upgrades rather than free economy flights. Firstly they tend to be more easily available, and more flexible. You may well find that you want to travel at peak holiday seasons (Xmas etc), when economy award tickets are hard to find.

Secondly, remember that when you use miles for an upgrade, you still earn miles on the original economy fare that you paid. So you can still be accumulating miles towards next year's upgrade! With free economy flights, you won't (at least in my programme) earn miles on the flight, and you will miss out on quite a few thousand.

Thirdly, an upgrade is so much more enjoyable, in my book! You get treated like any other premium class customer, rather than as the lowest of the low on a 'free' Y ticket.

The thing you need to look at, and I'm afraid I don't know these details, is what class of economy ticket you have to buy in order to process the upgrade (i.e. do you have to buy a full fare economy ticket $$$$). I know that BA is quite restrictive about this, but you'll have to look into whether UA, LH, SAS do the same.

And when you are used to flying, and doing lots of it, don't forget to look at RTW tickets as a nice way of flying home and also getting a holiday, and also earning miles and status!

Good luck with the move.

I didn't realize that the EWR-AMS flights on SQ had been discontinued.

My bad! I meant to say WN, not SW!

[QUOTE=the_traveler]I didn't realize that the EWR-AMS flights on SQ had been discontinued.


We miss them dearly, those Singapore girls flying westward from AMS

I am also new and am not sure what "SPG amex card" stands for...specifically the "SPG"

Perhaps someone could enlighten me.

Thanks

Starwood Preferred Guest - see http://www.spg.com and also the Starwood and American Express forums here on Flyertalk.