The Citi AAdvantage Platinum card ($95 annual fee, waived the first year) currently has a 75,000-mile sign-up bonus with $3,500 in spend:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...bd437625b4.png

Bonus miles do not earn Loyalty Points, which are what are needed to attain status. But every $1 USD charged to the card earns one Loyalty Point, and at least one redeemable mile. (There are a few bonus categories which earn more redeemable miles.) The card has no foreign-transaction fee. This offer is rumored to be ending mid-April.

Fliar , note that although paid flights on Etihad can earn redeemable miles if credited to AAdvantage, they do not earn AAdvantage Loyalty Points:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...260ae83d54.png

Actually their post originated in another forum where I directed them to here, and in the other forum they were interested in status. Since the itinerary crosses membership years in most programs, QR is one of the few that still have a floating qualification period, it's 12 months from first QPoints. So they need to decide what's priority, lower cost long haul redemption or elite status. But maybe it's possible to get enough LPs in AA's membership year (March to February) to get AA status another way (Canadian resident so Citi card isn't likely an option) but perhaps some other OW tickets.

They do indicate that most flying is YYZ to east Asia. Most CX economy fares don't credit anything to AA, but PE and Business are decent. JL can be quite excellent credited to AA if buying Business, but even discount economy will net something in AA. Unlikely that flying on AA codes is beneficial and going across the Atlantic on normal fares (not RTW), AY is the only one left that still credits on distance but not sure that'll last long. Not sure if AT offers connecting itineraries to Europe or not, but they fly to YUL.

I finally had a chance to check this against QR. It'd be 491 QPoints and about 82,090 Avios. That is QR Gold status (OW Sapphire), you need 600 for QR Platinum (OW Emerald), but the catch is you need 4 segments on QR or 20% of your QPoints earned on QR, you're only at ~13% on this itinerary, so basically you'd need to find a way to get 2 more QR segments and hopefully another 109 QPoints. Maybe if you fly to CAI on QR (revenue ticket)? The down side is that QR economy from YYZ-CAI will only net about 30 QPoints each way, but would get your segments. If you change HEL-JFK to an AA code it doubles your earnings, you go from 30 QPoints on the AY code to 63 QPoints on the AA code and also double the Avios on the segment. That combined with YYZ-CAI and back on QR should get you to within 1-2 flights of Platinum, something you could do on AA segments from home.

Also looks like you could get 3,975 IB tier points for their mid-tier (OW Sapphire), their qualification year is May to April so would work with your itinerary.

With AS your 2024 flights would net about 47,000 EQMs and the total itinerary about 81,000 AS RDMs (Plus Elite bonus once reaching MVP and MVP Gold which I didn't calculate), You'd need to find an additional ~3,000 EQMs for MVP Gold and OW Sapphire.in 2024 since your 2025 flights are after the reset. (January to December qualification period)

The RTW Business Class itinerary booked by felix1224 would easily earn OWS status if credited to Iberia Plus, but would fall well short of OWE. (Iberia Plus does not require any flights on IB to earn status.) If he even wants status, it's not clear whether the incremental benefit from OWS to OWE would be worth much to him. But if he credits to either IB or QR, he's stuck with Avios -- and their carrier surcharges on many routes.

I have not done the calculations, but it would be interesting to see how many AAdvantage Loyalty Points he would earn just from the non-AA-coded/non-BA-coded segments on his RTW itinerary, on the off-chance that the AA- and BA-coded segments would post based on fare and not distance. I'm pretty sure that he would end up with AAdvantage Gold (40,000 LPs) by the end of the trip, but would fall short of AAdvantage Platinum (75,000 LPs).

There are a couple of Canadian credit cards which earn points that can be converted to AAdvantage miles, but I don't know whether such conversions generate any LPs.

I wouldn't even risk it with AAdvantage on this with so much of the bulk of it on AA codes. AS, QR, and IB look much better and good to know no segments required on IB anymore, I couldn't find that info. OW Ruby carries nearly no benefit, so unless they could get to AA Platinum I don't think that would be beneficial despite AAdvantage miles having pretty attractive redemptions in certain regions. They're still likely to get tagged with 5x earnings on the small amount of revenue on the AA and BA segments. The entire base fare of this was only about US$2,500 plus maybe $1000-1500 in YQ, so whatever revenue of that is assigned to the BA and AA segments isn't very many LPs or RDMs on a 5x multiplier.

I agree that if earning oneworld status is important to him, he should credit to Iberia. But if redemption value is more important to him, then I think AAdvantage is the way to go.

absolutely correct and speaking of the status earned on Iberia it would actually work for domestic US Travel since Oro and Platino status on IB is seen as Emerald and Sapphire tier meaning the ability to use Admirals Club and Flagship lounges. My father has done this before on Star Alliance ROP Plus Gold and AA domestic by using his Emerald Status from CX.

thank you all for very interesting and informative discussions over my OTW, I definitely learned quite a bit for potentially maximizing the benefits from this trip and (hopefully) a lot more in the future.

I'm currently leaning towards QR program: as dvs7310 calculated, I'm going to have 82000 Avios and OWS. I should be to find 2 more segments marketed(or operated?) by QR within 12-month period. I will also call QF to see if it's possible to switch that AY marketed HEL-JFK trip to AA. Or there is some other way to do it?

I guess my follow up question would be why AA or IB program would be attractive for my case if they are both revenue based. IB will give me OWS but only less than 20000 Avios, AA will get me OWR and 20k miles unless I have some segments got distance award. Agreed that orphan program(I laughed when I saw this term) is no good and AA program has better redeem ratio, less surcharge and possibly better availability; but 4 times more points in Avios could offset the disadvantages?

This is actually fun, I almost cannot wait to book my next OTW ticket despite I haven't started this one!

IB is certainly a fine recommendation for chasing status, but still not sure how AAdvantage is better than AS Mileage Plan for redemption value in this case, since we have to assume all AA and BA will credit as revenue in AAdvantage.

I just added up the non-AA / BA segments, with cabin bonuses it's 37,000 RDMs & LPs (but some of those are in the 2025 qualification year, we can assume a 40% status bonus on base miles kicks in at some point but would be late in the itinerary). We know that the AA / BA segments won't be more than 20,000 because that's the value of the entire ticket x5, so it might realistically be in the neighborhood of 10,000 RDMs / LPs since just a tad over half of the total flown miles are AA or BA.

If crediting to AS they'd instead be getting 47,000 EQMs on the 2024 portion of the itinerary and ~55,000 RDMs on the 2024 flights, then end up with another 14k EQMs and 25k RDMs on the 2025 flights. In your AA scenario they're just barely squeaking in with AAdvantage Gold (OW Ruby) since the QR flights are after AA's reset (March), with AS they will get MVP Gold and OW Sapphire at 40k. They're getting nearly double the RDMs they'd get with AA. Unfortunately with AS no elite bonus on non-AS flights, where AA does apply it to all OW flights, but I'd rather have OW Sapphire over Ruby any day of the week, especially if the OP is flying economy to Asia frequently.

Normally I'm a big fan of AAdvantage and tend to recommend them a lot, but not on this ticket. Even myself with the 120% EXP bonus (and 11x on revenue) wouldn't buy this ticket with the intention of crediting to AAdvantage.

On the very same day (April 17) that AA is offering YYZ-CDG in Economy for 27K miles and $72, this is what Alaska is offering:


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...f29269726a.png

(On the same date, Alaska is offering YYZ-CDG in Business on BA for just 55K miles -- plus $742!)

There are still decent Alaska redemptions to Asia when award space can be found on Korean.

In the end, one just has to decide what one's priority is: elite status or (relatively) cheap redemptions. Travel on AA from YYZ to Europe, the U.S., and maybe even the Caribbean is likely to cost far fewer AA miles than AS miles. Do a few dummy award searches on both the AA and AS websites for the same itinerary and see for yourself.
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If awards are the objective earn to burn is what matters
Frequent flyer miles/avios/points are not 1 to 1 in value. While many credit cards transfer at the same rate, earning from flying can be very different. As is status bonus, if any. The cost of awards (miles,avios,points) and cash surcharges, if any, can vary a lot. As do the rules for awards.

The Avios ff currency is used by QR, BA, IB, IE & now AY. Subject to t&c's avios can be moved between some (all?) these airline ffp's. [check the rules] Status cannot be moved, but recognised by other OW airlines.

Most of AA's oneworld partners still earn AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points based on distance flown and booking code, not cost. In fact, of the various carriers on your itinerary, only AA and BA would earn based on cost, and it's even possible that those segments would earn based on distance and booking code because this is a RTW ticket. You cannot count on that happening, but it's possible.

As just one example, here's what the AAdvantage earning chart for AY-coded flights looks like:


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...bc29fa9e6d.png

Have you verified that Iberia's new Avios-earning scheme applies to all partner carriers? This page from the Iberia site suggests otherwise:

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...230f556db9.png

Even when crediting AA flights to Iberia, you might earn based on distance and booking code if Iberia cannot "see" the fare attributable to the AA segment(s):


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...fd8fe7ffef.png

Note the "Excepciones" language. I do not know whether Iberia Plus will have access to the fare of each segment of a RTW ticket where IB did not sell the ticket.

As has been pointed out up-thread, you do need to be concerned about the cut-off date for the yearly earnings period on some FFPs, like AA's and IB's.

Good luck!

Any one has experience with Finnair elite status?

I use wheretocredit, it shows up as 110000 tier points and mile for my RTW trip, which will give me Finnair Plus Platinum (OW emerald). I do not think any other OW partner will give me that. Did I understand their rule correctly?

Pro:
1. OWE earned
2. Avois system and I can freely move to BA and IB to book award tickets from TYO to US operated by JAL on 360 days out. 75000 avois + 250 fee.

Con:
Useless milestone (Lounge access and free upgrade if operated by Finnair)


Any thought and advice?

Has the functionality to transfer Avios to Finnair been implemented? I'm always a little nervous about different IT programs talking to one another on the prescribed timeframe until there's proof it actually works.

I know nothing about their program, but did you verify that's how it will credit on the Finnair site? Sometimes wheretocredit is wrong. I also don't know if they require any AY segments or not.

One additional small perk, they are part of the group that gets free MCE seating on AA, plus you'd get domestic lounges which is nice in airports with the AA FL and very nice in JFK if you fly in and out of there often.