New to... Everything!
 

Hi there! I just moved to London from Seattle with my boyfriend a few months ago, and we have already found ourselves with three round trips across the Atlantic... Without any kind of frequent flyer program... And I'm already feeling guilty about the possible waste of those trips!:(

We are most likely going to make a few trips a year from London to Seattle or Chicago, and flying between those two cities when we are in the U.S. Also, we will probably be flying around Europe for weekends here and there. Which airlines/programs/etc. would you recommend for us? We are completely new to this lifestyle of frequent travelling and don't know where to begin!

Thanks so much for any advice!

A wonderful help back at you and we are so pleased you've joined us on FlyerTalk. As the advice begins to pour in, i might ask a few questions of you:
- what airlines did you fly the three roundtrips on so far?
- did you fly the airlines based on price or because of other reasons such as corp. travel policy, etc?
- did you save your documentation of those flights, such as Boarding Passes? If so, how long ago were the flights?
- and what is it you are hoping to get out of these programs? Are you just interested in collecting miles or do you have some ideas, such as do you want to earn toward upgrades, earn toward coach redemption, earn toward other types of things such as merchandise or you just want to fly for free?

Answers or hints to these types of things will help several of os give you some advice as every potential frequent flyer member is different on what they want.

Again, welcome and I know you are in the right place!

Cheers,
Randy

More details!

-Two of the flights were BA.
-The next one is Virgin.
-We made our BA reservations based on price and because they were direct, and the Virgin trip (which is a one time kind of vacation to the Caribbean) was a compromise between price and total travel time.
-We have documentation on at least two of the three, the oldest being December of 2007.
-Free miles would be ideal, but we were also recently spoiled by an upgrade, so I could see us going that route too.:p
-Also, I'm pretty sure U.K. credit cards are not an option for us right now, as we have little credit here yet! But we would look into U.S. credit cards that would be practical here.

Thanks for the quick response!

and..
 

... although our benevolent sponsor Randy has hit the nail on the head, i may humbly add that class of travel is of some importance when it comes to picking the right ft program, since some are beneficial to premium class travelers in particular (british airways?1?), while others offer some great value to budget travelers as well...

good luck, safe travel and welcome to FT! ;)

It costs nothing to sign up for FF programs. If you use an email program like MS Outlook, just create a contact for each airline and save your FF# in the notes so you keep track of it. They do usually require a boarding pass stub to give you credit after the fact.

Remember that when you fly on a paid flight, even if it is paid by a voucher you earned by volunteering to be bumped, you have a choice of partner airlines miles programs in which you can put your miles. For example, British Airways allows you to put flight miles into American or Alaska Airlines programs, last I looked. So chose the airline in which you want to earn miles, and funnel all of them there.

U.S. airlines often charge considerably less in "fees" on your award ticket than do those in Europe. Also, U.S. airline tend to have many more ways of earning mega miles without actually flying - see my website below.

American Airlines is particularly good at being able to acutally give you an award ticket when and where you want to travel.

Err... The worst rule that I know of...

Transatlantic flights on BA will earn exactly 0 AAdvantage Miles.
Transatlantic flights on AA will earn exactly 0 Executive Club Miles.

I would probably suggest Continental OnePass given the wide range of SkyTeam partners they have as that they have Virgin Atlantic as a partner.

Alternatively, now is a great time to signup for Virgin Flying Club.
http://www.virginatlantic.com/corpor...iew.do?id=5211
Here is an offer that ends TODAY!!
You can enjoy your shiny elite status on your flight to the Caribbean, don't worry about being bumped etc.

AA will often let you book BA flights on AA numbers - They do earn AA miles.

It looks like the link you provided is for an offer that expired 3/15/08. :(