Thanks for such a prompt response!! really appreciated it as our first leg is only few weeks ahead (end of Sept):S

unfortunately the only BA codes are those: BA5 LHR-NRT BA16 SYD-SIG and BA10 on BKK-LHR. others are listed under QF flight no. And yes the CNS flight is operated by Jetstar.


what about car hire in AUS and TAS through FFP?? we will need to cover those somehow anyway as a part of our trip and maybe it is better to go for QF to save few quid on those (and lose on miles as such)? I read somewhere here that your residency doesn�t necessary mean you should go for the same continent based airline FFP

we are doing island hoping between SI and BKK so not sure how many flight (and what airlines) we have to choose from. Any general suggestions would be greatly appreciated too

btw all my flights were actually booked via trailfinder (travel agent) but appeared under "my booking" on BA website (not sure if it matters)

do you think we can double our points if we opt for household account or do they have to be separate flights?

just realised I may got the answer to one question but already managed to ask seven more..ooopss

Not quite sure I understand what you mean, do you mean you want to try and book your car hire with points/miles? Seeing as you won't have many posted (or any at all) by the time you land, this isn't a good idea. And it is a bad use of points/miles anyway.

Also Tasmania is part of Australia...

You will not really have any OneWorld partner options for island hopping, I would just go with the budget SE Asia carriers like AirAsia.

Err.. No. It will just combine your points. You will each need to be a FF member and put your own numbers down. Household Accounts are for BA only, QF doesn't have anything similar.

Really, your best option is to credit to BA. I have just moved to the UK from Australia and am switching to BA Executive Club as having Qantas FF points is not really any use unless flying on QF metal.

Unless you are thinking of coming back to Australia again and using Qantas points to book domestic airfares, you will end up with about ~32k Qantas points total from your trip combined (16k each). BA you will earn a fair bit more.

I was more thinking whilst booking if we quote QF FFP in TAS we may get better discount than if doing the same with BA Exec

Assuming we go for BA...is it beneficial for us to open household account assuming? just wonder if for example we will move up in BA hierarchy quicker (bronze, silver) if we both put our miles together against one rather than two cards, so we can both access lounges or get better deals on hotels/ car hire? is it too good to be true and there is no way we can achieve that using those flights

You will not get any discount quoting a QFF number for any hire car companies.. Avis and Hertz can credit points to QF and BA as well, although its not many so if you can get a cheaper hire car from someone else thats what I'd do if I was paying out of my own pocket.

Household Accounts only combine avios, not tier points which are used to determine status. So no. There are pros and cons about setting up a HHA, plenty of info on the BA forums. Good news is you can do it down the track when/if you want to combine your avios.

QF nor BA will get you better deals on hotels or car hire fyi, no matter what your status.

I soon will be moving to Australia from the US and am trying to decide on the best FFP for my travels (predominately business related).

(1) What is your home airport? (SFO, SCL, London LHR, HKG, Singapore SIN etc.)
Reply: GLT
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k)
Reply: >50K
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy ? ( First, Business, Economy etc.)
Reply: Economy
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or, class of service?. Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Reply: Can choose airline, but am generally limited to economy, as travel is for work.
(5) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific, Kangaroo, in Asia etc)
Reply: Majority of flights will be Transpacific, as well as, throughout Oceania.
(6) Do you have FFP status of any kind of OW or other airline at present? What is it? (AA Executive Platinum, QF Gold, UA 1K, LAN Comodoro, etc)
Reply: N/A
(7) What is most important to you in a FFP? (upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, extra baggage allowance, good award redemption rates, better award access, free - discounted lounge access, etc.)
Reply: Travel upgrades and lounge access
(8) Preferred Airlines
Reply: I assume this would be QA, given the location.

Thanks for any help!

Will you been doing much travel within Australia or mainly international?
And will more of it be Oceania or Australia-USA?
And by Oceania do you mean within Asia or to actual Oceanic countries? (Pacific island countries).

If mainly domestic travel in Australia, your main choice is between Qantas and Virgin.
If mainly international travel, then you would need to work out what carriers fly to the main destinations you will be going to.

Can I ask what business you are going in to? Gladstone is mainly a mining town..

Welcome to the forum ^

Is the relocation to Aust permanent or temporary ?
If temporary & USA is home American Airlines [AA] is a option
Qantas is QF

No mining in Gladstone. Is a large coal port, some other large processing industries and several large gas terminals being built on Curtis Island, near Gladstone. Is a very industrial town.

Yes I have been there many times.. There is no mining in the town of Gladstone but it is the centre of mining in the region, so I and most people would call it a mining town.

(1) What is your home airport? (SFO, SCL, London LHR, HKG, Singapore SIN etc.)
Reply: SIN
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k)
Reply: 25k-50k (closer to the 25k end)
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy ? ( First, Business, Economy etc.)
Reply: Economy
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or, class of service?. Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Reply: Leisure. I usually choose the lowest price so always fly economy.
(5) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific, Kangaroo, in Asia etc)
Reply: Most often is SIN to Europe, then SIN to US, then SIN to Japan
(6) Do you have FFP status of any kind of OW or other airline at present? What is it? (AA Executive Platinum, QF Gold, UA 1K, LAN Comodoro, etc)
Reply: No
(7) What is most important to you in a FFP? (upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, extra baggage allowance, good award redemption rates, better award access, free - discounted lounge access, etc.)
Reply: good award redemption rates. The rest are not as important.
(8) Preferred Airlines
Reply: No particular preference

I just used up all my miles on Qantas, so I was wondering if I should take the chance to switch to a different OW FFP because of the news that Qantas will no longer be flying SIN-FRA next year (please correct me if I'm wrong!).

Thanks a lot in advance!

I am new to OW. Based at YYZ and usually *A and got CX diamond from Amex. I do occasional AA or BA flight <10k a year. I want to use points for long distance flight to Asia or short haul in US, which is the best program (CX, BA or AA) to credit my occasional flight?(I can top up from SPG or MR transfer)

AA undoubtedly ...

AA is unquestionably better long haul to Asia. Flying short haul to the U.S. is better on BA if you fly non-stop or are flying two short flights. For instance, YYZ-ORD and YYZ-JFK are only 4500 Avios each way. With connections things start to add up as you have to pay for each segment on BA--YYZ-ORD-XXX (w/i 649 miles) will run you 9000 Avios each way.

With only ~10K miles/year I would probably pick BA and use it for my SH flying. Picking AA for a long haul award you might be booking 5+ years in the future (or more for business class) seems pretty speculative in the fast changing world of airline FF programs.

Hi folks. Hoping for some help selecting a oneworld program. Currently a UA flyer but I'm relocating from SFOish to MELish, and *A seems to be fairly useless out of Melbourne (unless you really like going to Bangkok, Singapore and Auckland) so I'll probably be going for oneworld.

Right now I'm an AA platinum thanks to AA's overly-generous status-match offer from earlier but I haven't requalified for next year; not sure whether I'll be soft-landed to gold or not. I've been a QFF member long enough to have a six-digit membership number, but I've never managed to obtain any status and have a mere 575 lifetime status credits. I'd like to have some kind of oneworld sapphire status in the longer term.

Right now I fly ~50,000 miles a year, probably going to continue to do something similar but on a different continent. Let's say three longhaul return trips a year to the US and Europe, plus a bunch of domestic Australian flying, particularly MEL-SYD.

All my own travel is booked in cheapest-available economy, and while I don't know the details of my new employer's travel policy I think my work travel probably will be too . So I don't think Qantas Frequent Flyer is going to make any sense for me since status credit earning is seriously stingy for cheap fares.

AA seems like the obvious choice since it's a mile-based program, but as far as I can figure out from reading the rules it's pretty mysterious and opaque whether you earn miles or not on any given QF flight. Is there a best-practice for maximising your AA miles while flying on QF/CX/BA?

I'm not really familiar with any of the other oneworld programs, but is there one I should be looking at?

Other alternatives include (a) trying to figure out something weird involving flying DJ domestically and crediting to NZ/SQ/DL or (b) saying "bugger it", buying a Qantas Club membership to get most of the benefits of oneworld sapphire, and relaxing.

Welcome to being future MEL resident ^
Is the move permanent or for a defined period of time ?

/ off topic
As a Melbourne resident you need to select an Aussie rules football team to support: this is compulsory
Today is AFL grand final day. Sadly my team is not playing
/on topic

As post 1 what are your expectations / requirements from a FFP ?
Upgrades / lounge access / rewards ?

MEL LAX 1 return = 15842
MEL LHR 1 return = 21006
MEL SYD 20 return = 17560
Total miles 54408

As you have AA status suggest put your QF flights to AA. But some low price fare buckets are non earning to AA [check carefully]. Put these to QF.

For short haul MEL-SYD will take many flights to get QF status. Will you do this every week ? If you are traveling long haul in business or first on OneWorld airlines its a different consideration. Then may be worth trying for QF status. Will you have choice of long haul airline ? The QF EK arrangement may benefit you if the destination is other than LHR.

Do you intend to put miles from credit card spend to a freq flyer program ?

Forget crediting DJ flights to NZ. NZ is a poor freq flyer program

Many business's have discounted QF club membership. Many companies pay for this for depending on your level in pecking order . Possibly same for DJ club access.

Thanks Mwenenzi! Actually I'm from Sydney originally but am a Geelong fan from way back.

I suppose my priorities are the ability to earn/burn miles for trips, and lounge access. Upgrades aren't so important for me. In the US I really enjoy the other perks of status (priority security/checkin/boarding) but now I come to think of it these things don't matter nearly as much in Australia where security, checkin and boarding seem to work more efficiently. Well, maybe not checkin.

I think my new employer does indeed have corporate rates for Qantas Club membership; I found some references to such a thing existing on the internet though not any of the details. I don't think I'd pay full price for Qantas Club membership, but for typical discounted rates I'd definitely do it. Qantas Club membership doesn't give all the perks of oneworld sapphire, but it probably gives enough of 'em to make flying bearable.

After thinking about it a bit more, I think what I might do is to fly Qantas domestically with QF Club membership but stick with *A for international and acquire membership in one of the "easy star gold" programs like Asiana, which requires only 40,000 miles every two years. It seems easier this way, and it'd be nice to have some degree of status whether I'm flying *A or oneworld.