Help - drowning in miles!
 

Hi there,

This seems to be the right forum for this post; apologies if not, feel free to let me know or move it ;-). I need some help, and it's to do with a number of different programs, so not really relevant to any specific mileage forum! Here is my situation.

I am based in London, UK, and I have been collecting various miles for quite a while now, without any specific targeting or redemption. I just give the relevant card over and fly, without really counting. And see, that's really what my problem is.

I am a roving consultant. My work takes me all over the place, and it might be six months of twice weekly flights to Edinburgh or Sweden, or maybe four weeks in Sydney Australia or two months in Austin Texas. But I also go through phases of six months driving sixty miles each way, or taking a train to somewhere that aeroplanes don't go. So my "tier points" for various mileage accounts are sporadic at best!

I went through a phase where I got BMI Gold membership for a while, which was nice - got to use the lounges etc - but that went away when I stopped traveling that route (of course). Most irritating of all is the BA executive club - last year I got 590 points and missed silver! I am reasonably good with Hilton - gold member, and about 10 nights off becoming diamond. Marriott, on the other hand, managed to lose all of my points at the end of last year, and since I had no physical proof of them I had to start from scratch (and their customer service was no help at all, despite many calls and letters).

My current points stand as follows:

BA Exec Club: 48804 (Blue, 0 tier points, household account)
BMI Diamond Club: 92950 (blue, 4867 status miles)
AirMiles: 9421 (www.airmiles.co.uk)
Marriott: 19514 (Base membership)
Priority Club: 31089 (Base membership)
Hilton Honors: 201369 (Gold)

My travel patterns are usually on economy tickets (my company mandates taking the cheapest ticket when traveling on business). I flew to the states recently on American, and got no miles at all (I didn't realise until it was too late). It doesn't seem to make sense for me to collect BA miles, since they seem to be based on rewarding folk who travel in business most of the time.

What I want is to find an airline frequent flier scheme which will allow me to progress in the tiers easily, so that I get lounge access when flying. Ideally one that will reward me even when I take a cheapo flight. In fact, ideally two, one that is One World, and one that is Star Alliance, so that I can take whichever family has the cheapest flight.

What do folk suggest I do?

Cheers,

-simon

The AAdvantage program is, IMHO, the best. The challenges to gold and plat make for easy ways of getting free perks, and the wide variety of carriers makes it an earn-everywhere program. Considering that you fly BA alot, you are able to earn miles on AA by flying BA. Just check the fare code before you book, and make sure it earns miles. Most AA transatlantic's earn miles, even deep discount. I've flown many times for fares under $400 RT and recieved my 13,000 miles. I believe the only fare codes not allowed for transatlantic are Q and O.

United is probably the best in the Star Alliance. They offer a huge bonus upfront (3,000), miles for graduating college (if you have kids) and other nice perks. I can refer you to United Mileage Plus if you'd like, and you'll recieve 3,000 bonus miles if I do so, and I get a small bonus. PM me if you're interested.

Hope this info helps.

Simon:

Here's a good link for converting from one plan to another http://www.webflyer.com/programs/mil...rter/index.php

And you really need to visit that NW corner of Montana you love again!

FYI, Sidney, MT is actually in NE Montana.

So right you are! But the NW is sooooo much better......winter and summer!

Yes, it most certainly is, as long as you don't run into the Unabomber.

Kidding, I love the area, go there often.

Not an answer to your question, but here are two tips:

1. Periodically do a printout from the web page of each program, showing your account info/points. And, in particular, do that at the end of Dec. each year.

2. Always keep your boarding passes. If you still have the AA BP's you can fax them in and get credit. Even if you don't have them, if you have the ticket number and flight numbers, you may be able to get the credit. Login to the website, from the side menu choose AAdvantage/Request Mileage Credit.

Of course excluding Transatlantic.No AA miles flying BA transatlantic, no BA miles flying AA transatlantic.

My suggestions mirror many above, with some slight modifications.

1. Get an AAdvantage number.
2. Get a United MileagePlus number.
3. Pick ONE hotel chain and get a number.

For all your OneWorld flights, present your AA card. For all your Star Alliance flights, present your MileagePlus card. For all your stays in the ONE hotel chain you pick, present that card. For all stays in other hotel chains, present the airline card of your choice, probably the one that you have flown on least recently (they almost all allow crediting directly to airline programs)

This seems like the best plan for a non-neurotic frequent traveler, who wants the most perks with the least effort. When it comes time for some vacation travel, hopefully you will have enough in one of the airline programs and your chosen hotel program to stay. If you're short on hotel points, transfer some out of the other airline program (usually easy enough, with little to no penalty). Vice-versa, if you're short airline points, either transfer some from your hotel program or try to find a trading partner here in Coupon Connection (which, unfortunately, you'll have to wait at least 90 days and 90 posts before you'll have access to).

Best of luck!

Ideas on Hotels
 

I would stick to Intercont hotel or Hilton. My current preference is Intercont. If you can wangle it through work purchase their ambassador status which will give gold and other up-grade advantages within Intercont hotels. Pick-up their visa for an extra 10k point and with your stays you'll very quickly make platinum. There are codes at the start of the forum for stay 5 nights and get an extra 10k.

For your uk travel they have a wide range hotels even very local with the HI express. I made plat in 8 months which extends the ambassador up-grade benefits across all of the brands.

If you have an Emirates skywards number check out the skywards forum and the post on Hilton H Gold. I'm silver with Skywards and the link worked giving me gold.

Cheers

Not quite sure about BA BMI and Virgin, but I think you can only get lounge access if you fly in Business or First (which you don't) or buying a club membership, or being a LH Senator will get you in. Most memberships cost around $300-$400 US so that might be a solution if you travel enough and want to take showers, snack, drink, etc.

I pay for my AC membership every year ($250 at my status level), and there's not a month that goes by where I'm not thanking myself for doing it. I'll tell you, the free cheese and crackers can save you a bunch of money if your always buying those $10 sandwiches in the terminals. Of course there's no replacing a good sit-down meal.:p

CF

Ok, will sign up for AAdvantage. Considering the most important thing for me is status, will all non AA flights be counted towards status? Including towards the challenge?
Bah, I signed up to them last night :-( I assume it's too late to do this now? Also, the same questions apply - do flights on other *A partners count towards United elite status?

Many thanks for the replies!

-simon

Thanks for this. I will be doing printouts every year from now on! Regarding boarding passes, unfortunately my company demands that I send them the originals in order to claim any expenses, so the only way I can ever get miles is by specifying an FF number when I book and check in. Since I specified BAEC (of course), I got nothing.

Cheers,

-simon

Hi there,

I must say I'm not a big fan of holiday inn express - they're about fourth or fifth on my list ;-) I'm sure my work won't pay for me to have any special priority status :-(

I'm Hilton Gold already, earned the hard way, have been for years, so I don't need to use Emirates (although I've flown Emirates to Australia and thoroughly recommend them). It's quite depressing how easy it is to get Hilton gold at the moment. My company got a special "deal" from them where everyone who stayed for four nights or four stays automatically got gold - and this after I did it properly! It was quite depressing to watch. Never mind, hopefully I should make Diamond this year!

Cheers,

-simon

This sounds sensible. I didn't realise that I can just present a FF number to a hotel. Thanks for that!

-simon

Dunno much about AA, so I can't help you there. You can open multiple United MP accounts (but you can't merge them). Just ignore the one you just created and go ahead with the referral. I'll give it to roadtripmap, since he offered first ;)

RE *A and elite status: Yes and no. It depends on who the partner is and what fare code. Some airlines, like ANA, give full RDM (redeemable miles) but only 25% or 50% EQM (elite qualifying miles), and then only on certain fare classes. Air Canada, on the other hand, I believe gives full 100% RDM and EQM, but their miles don't count toward earning free upgrade certs. The list goes on and on. Generally, I'd say for a UK-based flyer, United would be your best *A choice since you can get almost anywhere on their metal (and therefore earn the most status/RDM/free upgrades) for often the cheapest ticket. Plus United has the best community here on FT :cool:

Flights on AA, its oneWorld partners (note: not all its partners) and Alaska Airlines count toward status, including the Challenges.

One exception that may affect you is BA flights to/from the U.S., which earn no AA miles for reasons discussed at great length in other threads. This can be avoided by either flying AA across the pond or flying BA to Canada or another North American destination.

Also, some deep-discount partner economy fares earn fractional, occasionally zero, AA credit. (BA's fares earn 25 percent credit. The full list, by airline and specific fare classes, is on aa.com.) This can sometimes be avoided by booking the same flight under an AA code-share number, in which case AA mileage-earning rules apply, but that may involve a higher fare and can sometimes be done only in conjunction with an AA flight from the U.S. to wherever that flight departs.

No, the Challenges now work differently. Only EQP earned on AA-coded flights work nowadays. This changed about four months ago. For qualifying for / retaining status the normal way, what you say is still correct.

I'm on a Krisflyer program. The miles earned on other star alliance partners do count toward the elite status. Once u are on the elite status, u can only get the extra 50% of the miles flew on SQ flights. On all other flights, u will just get the actual miles flew.

Welcome SimonsMiles

I see in your profile you are based in London, England. So it could be a smart move (i.e. a not too silly one) to consider European FFPs, just to maximize the benefits. In my opinion AA has a great FFP, but if you are not in the US you can not really use a few benefits like the upgrades.

My 2c could be to have a card each for OW, *S and ST. Which ones ?

OW
I could start BA but the TP trick is quite annoying and the BA/AA transatlatic problem is quite irritating. I could say, use the BA to reach a nice number where you can have a nice flight (e.g. 50K is UK to Hawaii R/T in Economy) and then switch to a common program... i.e. a program where you can place ALL the OW flights, for example the Finnair one, where yes, you can place all AA and all BA and all other OW flights. By the way are you aware of TESCO to BA point conversion ?

*A
No way, stay with the BMI Diamond Club (BD). Read a bit more about it in the proper forum and it's really a good program, always in my opinion... o/w at 50%, biz only 50% more, first at 100% more, cash and mile (^ ^ ). Try LHR-HKG with NZ in business and let me know. And go on with the DC credit card.

ST
Be calm, be seated, fasten your seatbelt... go for Alitalia Millemiglia. The reason is the minimum number of miles, 1200 ! Quite easy and very soon they could be wiped out or merged one to one in the M&M of Lufthansa or in the ST FB of AF/KL.

Hotels
Stay with Hilton Honors and go for Diamond. Diamond brute force... you always get a room, even for award... only exception only if the property just burned to ground. And with the double dip you can get 1000 BD miles per night (max 3000). It's a booster.
With 30K PC points you can have a wonderful 1 night stay at an IC... try Le Grand in Paris, perfect for a weekend. And be aware of the many promotion PC runs, like a lot of 10K bonuses and double points/miles. And to be sure just do the on-line survey on its main web page... 250 bonus miles. Marriott Reward is great also but you need to be at least Gold to start having real benefits & savings, their travel package award can be soo good, 235K MR points for e.g. 120K AA miles and 7 nights at any category 1-5 property. By the way are you aware of Marriott Reward to TESCO to BA point conversion ?

Be aware of any rule of deletion (usually after 3 years of idle time)

:D Enjoy :D

For oneworld, if you occasionally will be flying AA transatlantic and other times flying BA, neither of their programs is going to work out for you all that well. You'll have to dilute the miles regardless of which one you fly.

Assuming you don't care about getting upgrades, just about making all your RDMs qualify, you might even consider choosing to join one of the other OW programs such as LAN (LA) or Qantas (QF). Then your transatlantics would count to the same program regardless of whether you flew AA or BA. Or even a non-OW program like Alaska Air (AS), where both AA and BA earn miles. AS has a number of partners including some airlines not in any alliance and some Skyteam airlines like KL, DL, CO, NW. Not all of their partners earn status EQMs (BA does not, AA does) but it would be a single bucket for all your non-*A flying.

Drowning?
 

Drowning in miles? Seems barely a puddle. :D

(Well, somebody had to say it. Surprised no one beat me to it.)

Only half true. You earn AA miles on BA flights in Europe, and he can just fly to the USA on AA metal and will earn AA miles. I've flown to Europe 6 times and have recieved all my miles.

Yes, you can still sign up under my referral if you would like. You will just have to provide an alternate address when you sign up, which you can change back later on. PM me with your email address and I will refer you.

You can build elite status on United by flying with the Star Alliance partners. These being Air Canada, US Airways, and the like. BA and AA flights will not build any status on United. Also, with AAdvantage, you cannot fly to the USA on BA and recieve miles, but you recieve miles on BA in Europe. Just check the booking codes and choose the schedule that offers miles - many do not. All the info can be found on the AA website. ALso, there is a 10% off coupon ex-UK in the AA Coupon Wiki here on Flyertalk - it can be used for 10% off any flight from the UK to the USA on AA metal. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Did I say anything different?!? Please re-read my post.Europe is not transatlantic US-EU-US.

Since you already have several hotel program memberships, you could change the options in the ones you do not use enough to get hotel awards / status to give miles to the airline program of your choice instead.

One thing to consider is that if you have a program that just needs a few more points or miles to "top up" to a desired award or status threshhold, you may want to change the award options in your hotel program memberships to make that "top up".

Note that being a hotel program member with 0 hotel points can give you little perks when you check in, though not always. E.g. I got free breakfast coupons at a Hilton once. Also, being walked due to hotel overbooking may be a bit less likely for hotel program members than non-members.

In the future, check online to see you got credit for the flights before submitting them, and if you haven't rec'd credit, make photocopies.

In my opinion, the original poster is not drowning in miles.

The question asks about lounge access. Some responses addressed this.

Regarding the question that this person's travel patterns frequently change, perhaps Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan might be suitable if the goal is simply to collect miles in one program.

Alaska's program allows credits on flights of British Airways, Air France, KLM, American, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Lan Chile, Northwest, Continental, Hawaiian, and probably some other small airlines. Some of these airlines are competitors and wouldn't give credit on their own ff programs (such as American, a oneworld carrier, doesn't give credit for flights on KLM, a Skyteam carrier.)

It's all about redeeming those miles and AA is the best
 

Traveled to LHR, Madrid and Seville this Christmas and last using regular miles. Traveled to St Thomas Presidents week last year and Christmas 3 years ago using regular miles. Name one other airline that would let you fly using ordinary miles during peak travel periods.

If you have a friend/contact in your accounts payable department, you may be able to get copies of your expense reports and the associated ticket numbers. I've had to do that after missing credit on a couple of flights.

Folks, thanks for all of your help on this. This is a very useful forum ;-)

Yes, I am drowning in miles. Did you know that it's possible to drown in three inches of water? I don't have to have lots and lots of them - I just need to have more than I am capable of handling to be "out of my depth", as it were...

I am very unlikely to ever fly BA across the pond (and indeed the last time I did was on such a cheap ticket it got me something like 1500 miles LHR-AUS-LHR). My company travel agent seems to get preferential rates from American. So perhaps I'll sign up for AA before my next flight to the US that doesn't have *A routing. Can AA upgrades be used transatlantic or not?

I just spent 7100 of the air miles to get a Virgin Atlantic flight for my wife to come with me to Vegas in April. Off to a conference, so work is paying for my flight - and Virgin have the only direct route from London. It's a shame, as I don't get BMI status miles for virgin, but at least there'll be 10480 destinations miles out of it. I will be stopping collecting air miles; the general consensus seems that they are not worth it.

I will stick with BMI DC for now regarding *A. Thanks for the offer of sign up to united, but having looked at the sticky on the BMI forum it actually looks like it's one of the better places to collect miles (and after the virgin flight I'll have enough to drive to Poland, drop the kids at the mother in law, and take the wife first class to Japan - we've always wanted to visit the orient).

I'm going to stick with collecting Hilton points (looking at existing bookings I will be Diamond within a month), and have changed my collection status to earn miles for BMI. I've also converted to variable miles per stay, since I was getting fixed miles and most of my stays are four or five days (which in the UK spends far more than the fixed mileage!). All other hotels I'll just sign up to get FF miles instead. The one place I'm thinking of making an exception is Marriott, since it's useful to have an alternative to Hilton. Perhaps when I hit Diamond I might write to Marriott and ask them to give me silver or gold status, rather than going out of my way to stay in Hiltons as I do sometimes. It can't hurt to ask!

Volvic, thanks most of all for your post - it was great. But thanks everyone - this has been really helpful!

-simon