Points from Alitalia
 

Hi
Travelling tommorow to LCA, on the Alitalia error!
I live in YYZ and am wondering who it the best to collect points on. I think that the choices are Alitalia, NW, Delta. I am thinking that it really does not make a difference, and was going to collect on Alitalia. I think I can redeem on any one.

Anyone have any ideas or thoughts.? Need to enroll today.

Thanks FT!

I think this question has been asked a number of times in the YYZ-LCA thread in the mileage run forum.

North American choices are: CO, DL, NW, and AM if you include Mexico. Otherwise you could use any of the SkyTeam airlines' programs.

Probably depends on where else you often fly, whether you're looking for upgrades etc in the future.

If you are traveling most often in Canada and USA I'd probably go with either DL or CO. NW is the easiest to redeem and the easiest to find other ways to earn bonus miles, but is the most financially and labor-relations shaky of them all. You're right that you can redeem on all of them regardless of which program you earn in, but it's easier to redeem when the airline actually operates flights you want. I doubt you can redeem AZ points for DL/NW/CO flights online on AZ's website, at least not as easily as you can redeem for CO, DL, NW flights on the websites of those airlines.

I'd only go with a non-N.Amer. program if you expect to fly them a lot, or if you don't expect to need Canada/US potential upgrades once you hit 1st level elite status (25,000 miles). Elite on CO gets free space-available upgrades on CO and NW, elite on NW gets them on NW and CO (plus on-request via coupons on Alaska), elite on DL gets them on Delta. Elite on AZ wouldn't get you upgrades on any of the North American Skyteam airlines.

Of course I'm doing a similar thing by booking my oneworld travel to LANPass instead of AAdvantage, but that's because of some specific AAdvantage rules against earning miles on upcoming intra-Argentina LAN flights, so I decided to book all my oneworld travel on AA or others to LAN this year. I won't fly them enough to be even low-level elite anyhow, so the upgrade loss doesn't matter. If you have some similar reason for using Alitalia for all your Skyteam miles, then it may make sense. Otherwise pick one of the local guys.