Thank you very much! Looks like I'll be going with AA, I checked TAM's point per flight system and it looks like its really bad when compared to a miles per miles flown system, Lanpass KMs also looks to be pretty bad when compared to AA.

As for mileage runs I am still doing lots of research and I'll probably do it only 6-9 months from now or so(after the rates go down from the World Cup), I still need to check if OW is better than *A for me, and even though the majority of my travel is domestic I'd expect to do mileage runs mostly on international flights anyway.

Just a word of caution: When you actually use AA metal to anywhere in the world from your home airport you have to connect in the US. The US does not allow transits but makes all incoming passengers pass through immigrations and customs. Assuming you're a Brazilian citizen, you'll need a $160 visum and have to endure the long lines at immigration...
I only started to use AA from Europe to South America via the US after I got Global Entry/PreCheck and could get around the horrendous lines. Your tolerance may be higher (I'm not that young anymore, and my backpacking days are pretty much history), but MIA immigration lines at 6am when all the SouthAmerica flights arrive is definitely not a pretty place to be.

You're right, that 160 USD and needing visa for transfer is really going to be a problem for me, I am currently in the process of arranging an italian passport but that could still take years, so for now its unlikely I'll benefit from this, combined with the fact that I need to take an hour flight to Rio just to get the US Visa.

And I am sorry to bother again with this but some new information just came up, and I actually managed to scramble around my bank rewards website to realize I can credit miles to the following FFPs in oneworld: Iberia, TAM and LAN(options outside of OW include Aeromexico, Gol, Azul, TAP and Delta). Considering that this bank rewards could be my main source of points(family doesn't use them and I could get about 100k-150k miles a year with it), could it be better to get one of those 3 instead of AAdvantage?

Absolutely. 100k plus in points are pretty huge and would be way too big an earning option to forgo - that's a trip to Europe per year!
Just check which program gives you better options for what you want to do with it, IB plus or LANpass/TAM fideltiy (whatever program will prevail post-merger).

Well, I have little knowledge of FFPs fees for award tickets, and I see a lot of details FTers discuss about them(for instance getting award tickets with BA on OW flights from other carriers seems like what most do), so I guess thats what I need to figure out now, is there anywhere on Flyertalk that compares fees/points between programs?(e.g. would I pay less fees for a RTW ticket with TAM or IB).

Between TAM and LAN I guess there's little difference, I'd guess its better to pick TAM for the domestic factor(despite many locals bashing the Fidelidade program, but then again, we bash everything corporate), even if Lanpass prevails post-merger, the points would easily convert.

1) What is most important to you in a FFP?

seat booking, free lounge access

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

25000-50000 miles, 12-24 segments

(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?

cheapest

(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?

Slight influence, Work

(5) Which routes do you fly most often?

intra-Europe, Europe - Asia, Europe - US

(6) What is your home airport?

PRG, VIE

(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?

Aegean Air, SA*G + Lufthansa, SA*S

No significant amount of miles.

(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?

BA



Thanks for any advice.

Oneworld virgin needs help!
 

I'm relocating from Asia to Europe/Latin America so could really use some advice on which OW program to bank my miles in. Currently *G/PPS on SQ. Thanks!

1) What is most important to you in a FFP?

Miles earnt and ease of redemption

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

60000-80000 miles, 24+ segments. Mainly flights to Europe/Latin Am and home trips to Singapore

(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?

Airlines yes. Business for flights 4+ hours. I'll redeem mostly for Europe-Asia pleasure

(5) Which routes do you fly most often?

Europe - Latin America, Europe - Asia

(6) What is your home airport?

Amsterdam (sometimes Singapore)

(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. *G in Star Alliance / SQ

Small amount of miles in Qantas, Malaysian

(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?

SQ , Emirates. I go for good in-flight service and comfy seats

hey guys,

seems like I'll travel with some Oneworld Airline soon, so I need some good program...

(1) 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: Lounge, Upgrades
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
(<25000, 25000-50000, >50000 miles - <25, 25-50, >50 flights?)
Reply: >50.000, > 50 flights
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
(First, Business, Premium economy, Economy, cheapest)
Reply: Economy
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Reply: Work, no choice as will booked by guys who don't fly and so have no clue about the stuff...
(5) Which routes do you fly most often?
(US Domestic, Transpacific, Kangaroo, in Asia etc)
Reply: Global
(6) What is your home airport?
(SFO, SCL, London LHR, HKG, Singapore SIN etc.)
Reply: HAM
(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?
(AA Executive Platinum, QF Gold, UA 1K, LAN Comodoro, etc)
Reply: Working on *A Gold at Aegean
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
Reply: none as I can't choose...

Thank you

Paxi

Well... there's not much choice of OW airlines flying out of HAM to a variety of 'global' destinations: it's either AB or BA/IB.
As for lounge access - OW is very straightforward here: Lounge access is available from the OW sapphire tier onwards which generally needs 50k status miles (or 600 TPs on BA, which is roughly equivalent) annually to attain no matter the program.

As you said that upgrades are important to you - keep in mind that upgrade instruments generally are limited to the issuing program's metal flights.
Of these two, only BA is a truly global airline while AB only has a few longhaul destinations in North America which get serviced with their own metal. For everything else, they rely on codeshares with either EY or OW partners, and these cannot be upgraded with AB instruments.
Should you primarily fly to North or Central America, AA would be another good option to go with. They charge co-pays (USD 700 return) for mileage upgrades, though.
While IB shares much of their program rules with BA, there's one major difference between the two: You can only upgrade full-fare (Y,B,H) IB tickets with Avios, which severely limits the usefulness of it for upgrades.

Also, keep in mind the points expiration policies - as you cannot choose airlines and have no way of predicting which one you'll end up on on work trips, I'd stay away from programs with fixed expiration policies and go with a more generous one. Here, BA with its any-activity-in-36-months policy handily wins.

Taken all this, I'd go with BA.

Thank you for the feedback... Then I'll go with BA... :)

New York to Sydney
 

I'm overwhelmed by the amount of info regarding FF programs :confused:, so I've decided to just ask and hope to get pointed in the right direction.

My goal is simple: I take an annual return trip from New York to Sydney, and am looking for the best FF program to bank my miles in so I can get the best deal I can for this route. This also involves signing up for credit card offers and other means of collecting miles (shopping, whatever), but I need to know which program to join first :rolleyes:. I'm currently with QFF but I live in New York so I can't really build up my miles when not flying.

(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
Good award redemption rate for my specific route, and travel upgrades if possible

(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
<25000, 2 flights (there and back)

(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
Cheapest

(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Travel for pleasure. I've only been flying Qantas but may consider changing if there are cheaper options (but Qantas seems to offer the cheapest price for my route)

(5) Which routes do you fly most often?
New York to Sydney and back

(6) What is your home airport?
JFK

(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?
QFF Bronze, currently just shy of 40k miles

(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
Qantas
__________

Only 1 choice: AA. Look at post 330. You will get AA miles on QF flights. But check if an eligible earning booking class. Some cheap fares were not, but with a change to booking class earning last year most (all?) are.

AS is an option as QF, AA & DL are partners: http://www.alaskaair.com/content/mil...ePlan-partners

Other airlines to Australia (from LAX) are
- United (Star Alliance)
- Virgin Australia (DL & VA are ff partners)
- Delta (DL & VA are ff partners)
- Air NZ (via AKL) (Star Alliance)
- Hawaiian (AA ff partner)
- Fiji Airways (AA ff partner)
and many via Asia or the Middle East

You will need to careful about QF points expiry. 18 months without eligible activity they expire. Use them if you can. Can be keep alive by several non flying ways including hotel, rental car, asking QF for a new ff card(1000 points) or when in Australia signing up to www.everydayrewards.com.au and then spending $31 on food or booze

Thanks for the info!

I checked the route I usually book and the booking classes are O and Q. So if I credited the miles to AA then I'd get 25% of the miles? NY to Sydney is ~10k miles, so I'd get 2500 miles. Doesn't seem worth it, right?

Alaska Air's Mileage Plan seems to look better with 1 mile = 1pt. NY to Sydney is 42.5k miles + $40, compared to Qantas' 64k miles. But it looks like they only have 1 credit card with an annual fee, so it's not as easy to earn miles through spending compared to AA. (one of my goals was to rack up points with credit card signup bonuses/spending)

Not sure my conclusions are correct though. Where do you think I should go from here? Are there better options with the Star Alliance?

And QF points expiry is not a problem, I use my everyday rewards every time I go back. ^

AMS doesn't get much love from OW; I hope you don't hate LHR as you'll need go through there a lot....

I'd go with AA. AAdvantage miles are easy to earn and redeem on a vast array of partners. And they do have a very good TATL premium cabin product on their new 777-300 - the seats in J/F are arguably the best hard product out there for these routes right now. They fly those from LHR to their hubs in MIA and DFW from where it's easy to connect to their large South American network.
With your flight pattern you'll easily make top tier EXP (66,667 miles in a premium cabin will get you there) which will get you OW Emerald status (alliance-wide F lounge access!) and earn 8 systemwide upgrades annually which you can use to upgrade Europe-LatAm flights to F.
Only drawback: In order to use AA metal from Europe to South America you'd need to connect in the US which makes for longer flights and the dubious pleasure of US immigration which can be a real hassle without Global Entry (by all means, get that!).
If you want to avoid connecting in the US and prefer direct Europe-SouthAmerica flights, IB has new A330s and newly reconfigured A346s with a very comfortable 'business plus' cabin product (lie-flat, 1-2-1 staggered layout with all-aisle access) via MAD. Credited to AA, all business fares earn full mileage plus COS bonus.

Redeem those miles for premium cabin flights to Asia on CX, QR and MH (or BA if you don't mind paying heavy surcharges). Availability is good across those partners, and quality is on par with * offerings.

Doing this flight once a year, there's no need to worry about QF points expiry. The QF points expiration counter is reset by any activity once every 18 months only, and one flight within 12 months will keep all points safe from expiring as long as rules don't change.

The two cheapest QF booking classes earn only 25 % with AA, and the six fare classes one and two steps up the fare price ladder earn a still meager 50%. QF economy fares earning more than 50% on AA get horrendously expensive. I've flown in business on MH for less money than QF wanted for a "H" coded economy ticket that was far away from being full fare!
I don't think QF offers an affiliated cc in the US. AFAIK their relationship with Amex is limited to Australia. Check Amex if they allow MR points transfer to QFF for US-based members, though.

I would switch to AA only if you'd be willing (and able) to play the credit card game in the US. The miles generated by AA (and US! US miles will become AA miles at one point as the merger progresses, and in the meantime applying for US cards just doubles the opportunity for sign-on boni. US cards don't have a spend requirement, either) cc activity more than make up for the lower earning on AA on one flight a year. If you do not want or can not do that, stick with QFF.