BA or AA?
 

I live in the US and travel mostly within North America and occasionally to Asia. I have a DEL – HKG – YYZ itinerary booked on CX. I used to credit my One World miles to my BA account, but with the recent changes to the BA program, is it advisable to go for AA now?

Some CX fare classes don't earn AA miles, so probably you should research the AA program (plenty of information on the AA board) to see how you'd do given your flying patterns.

I'm flying business, so should earn enough tier points to be bronze on BA with this trip, but no status on AA. But I was reading redemption on BA for North America have been devalued so was trying to weigh benefits of BA bronze vs. greater bang for the miles on AA.

We don't yet have a thread here at the Oneworld board where one can compare/contrast various member FFPs, so in the interim I'd encourage members to research the various plans in contention using the resources available on FT, in particular the various airline-specific forums.

One thing to note, however, is that BA is quite stringent on enforcing the rule that each status tier requires four BA-metal flights, which might be an issue with your travel pattern.

The new BA Bronze level only requires two BA flights (including BA codeshare flights).

Is there a way to figure out if CX 694 & CX 828 have a code share with BA/AA?

What is your full routing?

JFK – SIN – DEL all on SQ crediting UA

DEL – HKG – YYZ all on CX (deciding which program to credit)

YYZ – LGA on AC crediting UA

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"but with the recent changes to the BA program, is it advisable to go for AA now?"

It really depends on what routes you typically redeem for. For short-haul redemptions within North America (including to BDA and the Caribbean), the new BAEC redemption scheme is better than AA's.

http://www.airlineroute.net periodically publishes a list of all codeshares, worldwide. I believe the last update was in August 2011.

Another useful website for this purpose is http://info.flightmapper.net.

While it's probably not a definitive source, I rely on the oneworld timetable --- PC Desktop version is available here or here ---- which I find very often lists the same flights over and over again if they have alternative codeshare flight numbers.

Per this source neither CX 694 nor CX 828 appear to be codeshared with any other OW airline....

Thanks! This is really helpful.

If you plan on doing a lot of travel within North America [slight simplification] and want free lounge access, you'll be wanting to get to BA Silver (oneworld Sapphire), as AA's equivalent level (Platinum) doesn't have lounge privileges on such journeys. But as Gardyloo mentions, this will require you to have four BA flights (either BA flight number or BA metal will do).

This can easily be accomplished without having to qualify for BA Silver (and probably less expensively).
You can buy an AC membership or get Platinum Amex, which for me more than pays for itself easily with its benefits ($450 annual membership) - YMMV

True. I was predicating my recommendation on the fact that the OP already intends on flying enough to get status.