bhomburg

The only program that combines generous expiration policies (account activity keeps all points alive) with family pooling option is BAEC. Join them, set up a household account to pool your avios, and just make sure you'll have some account activity in any three-year period to keep the points from expiring. https://www.britishairways.com/en-ch...e-whole-family

AFAIK, all other programs who offer point pooling have fixed expiration policies around three years ,so not really attractive for infrequent travellers.

bhomburg

It does. And flying Qatar is a sound decision as far as product quality goes. The Qsuites are a very good product, the Doha transit experience is comparable to the one in Dubai, the lounges are nice. It should be easy to attain status as well. One word of caution: QR has unbundled their cheapest business class fares and traditional perks like seat selection at booking and lounge access are only available at extra cost. See here for details: Also, the cheapest "P" fares don't earn as well in AAdvantage as the more expensive ones, but better than in QR's own program and in ASMP. In AAdvantage they earn 25% less (125% of miles flown instead of 150%), in QRPC they earn 50% less (75% of miles flown), same as in ASMP.
I`d choose between either AAdvantage or Mileage Plan (Alaska), yes, with a nod towards AAdvantage if you intend to fly the cheapest fares on Qatar.
Won't help you now, but until 2021 Alaska and Emirates had a partnership and you could have credited all those EK flights to AS and used them for rewards with no surcharges...
If you wanted to maximize earning, seeing you're a family of 5 also look into programs offering point pooling (Qatar, BAEC, Royal Air Maroc.)
All oneworld programs offer opportunities for award flights without scamcharges because some member airlines don't charge any, while some (BA being the most egregious here, IB has them too but they're not as high) do. Booking an AA award with BAEC avios will not incur hefty cash surcharges in addition to the Avios because AA doesn't charge these - same as the same award redeemed with AAdvantage miles.
If you plan on using your points for domestic itineraries on AA, be aware that you will not get lounge access, neither by virtue of class of service (a few premium transcontinental flights excluded) nor by virtue of AAdvantage status. If you have oneworld status on any non-US oneworld airline , you will get lounge access on domestic itineraries.

tnsl6212

thank you so much for the detailed answer. It looked like AA points were going to be the best currency for us booking award tickets out of Riyadh, but I’ll look into the BA family pooling. The benefit of pooling might sway the decision. Thanks again!

guv1976

That is true for AA flights wholly within the Americas (North and South, including Hawaii and the Caribbean). It is not true for trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific travel on AA booked with Avios.

HawaiiO

Hi

I have some CX flights coming up and dont want to lose the miles
Mostly fly Skyteam Korean air or Star Singapore air

Thinking to bank the miles in an OW airline but not sure which
1. Alaska
- Able to extend in 24 months with minimal spend like on a mall or something
- Good miles deposit for CX flights
- Hard to get good redemption nowadays...no more cheap JL flights

2. Cathay
- Able to extend in 18 months with online mall spending?
- Able to redeem CX flights easily
- Website is weird...keeps showing flights available but unable to find flights when clicked on it
- Is flight redemption easily available for non CX flights?
- Redemption miles seems to be quite high

3. American Airlines
- Able to extend miles easily?
- Seems to have tons of flight availability for redemption, even has JL F
- Website works well
- Redemption miles seems ok

What do you think?
I used to have Alaska for the JL redemption but that seems to be really expensive now and lack of availability
Cathay website seems wonky and redemption miles is high
AA seems quite decent but im not in usa so will that matter?

Thank you!

Questions
For members asking for information, to help people to assist you, can you please provide:
(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
Redemption availability for Biz/First
No fixed expiration, doubt I will collect enough to redeem in 3 years

(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
< 25k

(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
Business or Premium economy
:
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
For pleasure mostly

(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
Asia regional
Asia to Europe

(6) What is your home airport?
ICN

(7) Do you have FFP status of any kind in OW or other airline? What is it? Do you have any miles banked in a FFP?
None in OW but have some miles in Skyteam and Star

(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
KE and SQ mostly

Mwenenzi

What fare booking class? Some low cost CX fares can be nil earning to some ffp's
https://www.wheretocredit.com/cathay-pacific-airways
Check carefully.

Beware of expiry
Miles/Points that Do and Don't Expire
Check carefully.

pikarakiraowo

(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, good award redemption rates, better award access, free - discounted lounge access

(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
20-30 flights
Reply:
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
Economy and business
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Yes I can choose, travel for pleasure
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
Asia Routes like Japan South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Bangkok and CX
(6) What is your home airport?
HKG
Reply:
(7) Do you have FFP status of any kind in OW or other airline? What is it? Do you have any miles banked in a FFP?
CX Silver
Reply:
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
CX and JAL
I am thinking of choosing a program that offers lifetime status, would BA be a good choose for me? Thanks!

dvs7310

Do you fly BA at least 4 segments a year? They have minimum flight requirements on their own flights (or IB) to earn any status level, also make sure you're aware of the recent redemption hit BA has imposed on CX and JL flights. (devaluation). As of now QR (which is also Avios and you can freely transfer between the programs) still has the same flights at the old rates, but that may or may not last.

In OW, BA, QR, JL, and AS all have own flight requirements to earn status (there may be more but those are ones I know for certain).

For where you live and where you fly, you might consider AA, their redemptions intra-Asia are pretty good, but there's a big caveat. JL and CX are particularly stingy with partner award availability and MH isn't much better. Another huge caveat is most CX economy fares don't earn anything in AA, and a lot of MH as well. They do however have a lifetime status, but frankly it's not as good as BA's if you can earn Lifetime Gold with them. AA has no lifetime EXP or PPro option sadly.

For your travel patterns it sounds like CX is actually a pretty good program for you, but I'm not familiar with their lifetime program, if they have one at all. CX has good intra-Asia redemption rates on their own flights and tons of availability that partner programs don't have.

Mwenenzi

QF also, but some eligible (=most expensive) Jetstar flights do count.

Upgrades (free or with ff miles/avios/points or SWU instrument) on other airlines, other than you than the airline of your ffp are very uncommon.A few exceptions AA-BA AA-AS with heavy t&c's. Basically only a chance of getting an upgrade on your airline.

Your lifetime or the airlines lifetime or the life of the current rules of the ffp?
At 20 flights per year will take decades.

dvs7310

In fairness I did make UA 1K one year on I think only 24 segments for the whole year. (that's segments, not trips) My Aunt who was could only get to UA Platinum as a domestic road warrior got a good laugh at that, but that's of course when distance on UA metal still mattered and I was nearly 100% long haul that year.

memanny

Newb here. I am in the process of hammering out a RTW itinerary in J. I am trying to figure out how to ticket and what FFP to use to gain max miles.

(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
good redemption rates, better award access, free - discounted lounge access

(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
Will fly RTW with approx 41K miles
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
business
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Travel for pleasure
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
Usually domestic US, Europe, Australia. Will visit Asia and Europe on RTW itinerary.
(6) What is your home airport?
DEN:
(7) Do you have FFP status of any kind in OW or other airline? What is it? Do you have any miles banked in a FFP?
None
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
Usually fly AA or BA. So far on RTW itinerary will be using JAL, CX, QF, QR, BA, AA, IB.

guv1976

What are your intended award redemptions? Route? Class of service? Because redemption rates (and carrier surcharges) can vary widely from one FFP to the next -- for the very same award flights -- just focusing on the program that will earn the most miles for your upcoming trip is a little short-sighted. For example, BAEC charges for each award flight flown; by contrast, AAdvantage redemptions include connections when necessary.

Status on AA will not get you lounge access, except when flying internationally. Status on foreign-based FFPs will get you longe access, even when flying domestically within the U.S.

memanny

Wow...these are great questions. I did not even think of all this.

My award redemption would be US-Australia and US-Europe or beyond. The sample of destinations beyond Europe or at periphery of Europe would be IST, CAI, DXB, DEL. Would prefer J.

Lounge access would be very preferable domestically as well but it won't be a first priority as i live in DEN which is Star Alliance city. From what i have heard the Admirals lounge has paid food and drink options and there are no AS lounges at my airport. Wish i lived in a city with Flagship lounges.

Let me know if there are any more questions or if i am leaving anything out. THanks.

guv1976

Finding low-cost, intercontinental award redemptions is going to be challenging; not impossible, but challenging. If you redeem AA miles for travel on BA, you will pay a fixed redemption rate of 57.5K miles in J for North America to Europe, but you will be hit with hefty surcharges. By contrast, if you redeem AA miles for travel on AA, you will often be charged more miles, but will be charged just a pittance in cash. Of course, not all of your intended destinations are served by AA, so you will be dependent on there being partner award availability in J when you want to travel.

​​​​​​My suggestion is to go to aa.com (or the AA app), and do an award search for some trips you might make in the future. (No log-in is required.) This will give you some idea of what to expect if you were to accumulate AA miles instead of, say, BA Avios.

Good luck!

dvs7310

One thing I'd add to this for the OP's benefit and understanding of the various programs. Being located in the US, you're already at a huge disadvantage for any of the big 5 North American based FF programs. They're all essentially credit card programs and there is a HUGE glut of unused miles in North America from the giant sign up bonuses and regular spend on the cards. Miles are actually a lot harder to come by most of the rest of the world and giant sign up bonuses are the exception than the norm. Therefore you have the supply vs. demand issue of AA, UA, DL all charging ridiculous amounts of miles for their own flights overseas. You really want to redeem on partners since those are at a fixed cost (in terms of miles) however being based in North America you're also severely disadvantaged because, well, so does everyone else who has miles and knows anything about the program, so partner awards to / from North America are snapped up quickly on release and many partners don't release more inventory until close in (dates near your travel date). Living overseas and using a North American FF program makes a huge difference because I'm always redeeming on partners and there's not nearly as much competition for the award space since I almost never redeem to / from North America.

There's another approach if you'll earn most miles from your DONEx or similar premium cabin tickets. You can credit everything to an overseas program that has decent awards to places you like to go. (and you'd also get domestic lounge access in the US with status in a foreign program). Many airlines give a lot more seats to their own frequent flyer program than they do partners. I see availability all the time on CX intra-Asia that's unavailable to OW partners, and still at CX's base (saver) rate. Having said that I don't think CX MPC is the best place to credit a DONEx. QR is quite similar, they have a lot of availability on their own flights but often QSuite flights are at 2x of saver rate. (Still a lot better than AA on their own flights generally). Those aren't the only two examples but you really have to compare award charts and see if it makes sense to you. It doesn't do you any good to have a million miles in any program if you're unable to use them for anything enjoyable. Also pay attention to non-Alliance partners, for example QR has Rwandair which is great for hopping around Africa. AA has TN and FJ, which are not only good for getting to the South Pacific but also can be used for connecting fights to Australia and New Zealand.

A further thought as well, both AA and AS typically credit very advantageously on a DONEx, even if they aren't great to get out of North America directly on a redemption. Accumulate a bunch of miles in one of them, then buy a cheapish (revenue) ticket to a region you're interested in and use the miles to hop around. A lot of regions aren't cheap to hop around if you want business class. AA redemptions intra-Asia are really good and fairly easy to find, inside Australia or trans-Tasman as well. (though those shorter intra-Australia flights like the East Coast are far better ticketing with BA Avios than AA miles since BA is distance based) Intra-Middle East or Asia to Middle East is great with AA miles and you also have EY as a non-alliance partner for those. Intra-Europe rates are good and readily available, but I don't really say they are high value since the Eurobiz experience isn't great. AS has a lot of work to do on their OneWorld awards so it's hard to say how it'll eventually look but some awards on their current non-Alliance partners are really great and not terribly difficult to score with planning, only problem with crediting to AS is you need a lot of AS metal segments to earn status, you'd probably need to hop around the west coast a bit to maintain it, AA has no such segment requirement and if you can get to EXP status you'd be earning just as many miles on a DONEx as you would with AS (this assumes that BA and IB will continue crediting to AA as distance based on DONEx, which is also still unknown, otherwise you'd have to use AY or QR for all your long haul DONEx flights between Europe and North America.