(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
Upgrades.
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
2-3 Flights NYC-Athens (Greece) through London, 1-2 NYC-SFO/LAX, a few short-haul domestic.
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
Premium Econ/Business
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Yes. Pleasure, some work.
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
Mostly between NYC and London or Athens.
(6) What is your home airport?
JFK/EWR
(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?
I am Silver with BA and qualify every year (pre-changes this year). I have about 80k miles left.
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
BA

Although BA really devastated the sweet spot of the program (upgrading from WT+ to CW using Avios, plus lowering Avios earning on WT+ fares by 25%) now with drastically raising the number of Avios required - if upgrades are your priority, and you prefer to go through LHR buying premium economy for those ATH flights, it's still best to stay with BA. Get the BA credit card and use the Avios earned with it to offset the increased redemption cost.
As long as you don't buy economy fares, especially on long-haul travel, you will still qualify for Silver.
The alternative would be AAdvantage. While you can upgrade BA WT+ flights with AAdvantage miles, the value proposition is very low: AA requires the BA premium economy ticket to be in "W" fare class in order to be eligible for upgrading. That's full-fare if bought on BA ticket stock, and usually more expensive than a discounted business ticket.

If you switched to AA, it would make more sense to just buy economy on the US flight via PHL and use miles and co-pay to upgrade to business going to ATH. However, that would preclude you from earning Platinum /oneworld sapphire status as you'd be missing out on the extra EQP the WT+ ticket on BA earns. You will not qualify on miles with the amount of flying you stated.

(1) What is your home town airport?
JFK/LGA

(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class?
Reply: 30-40K. Mostly economy

(3) What types of fares do you usually buy ? ( First, Business, Economy etc.)
Reply: Mostly economy, occasionally Premium Economy

(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or, class of service?. Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Reply: I can choose the airline and my travel is mostly work related.

(5) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific, Kangaroo, in Asia etc)
Reply: Domestic. 4 times a year JFK-LHR

(6) Do you have FFP status of any kind of OW or other airline at present? What is it?
Reply: AA Gold

(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: Upgrade availability; good award redemption rates (mostly used for US-Europe)

(8) Preferred Airlines
Reply: DL and AA

Question, I have been earning miles with AA but started traveling BA and wonder for 3 trips in WTP if I should get Avios and Tier points or continue with AA.? I have AA credit cards and just received Chase Sapphire Preferred

You would earn 180 TP's for a return JFK-LHR in WTP. Three of those would get you BA Bronze, not quite enough for BA Silver (oneworld Sapphire) which would provide lounge access. It would earn you just over 30k EQP if credited to AA which would get you close to AA Platinum. If you travel on AA domestically in economy AA status is probably more beneficial than BA Bronze.

However 4x WTP JFK-LHR would get you either to BA Silver or AA Plat, so it comes back to what to do with the status you have.

(Note you could challenge up to Plat on AA with one WTP round trip, hence earning double spendable miles from then on.)

Avios are okay for US domestic economy awards, depending on distance, whereas AA miles are better for TATL redemptions. Avios are good for upgrading from WT+ to Club; however with AA miles/metal you could buy cheap economy seats and upgrade to business with miles and co-pay and probably end up in about the same place out of pocket, given the need to buy WT+ with BA in the first place (no economy - business direct upgrades, only one class of service.) Also no BA fuel fines on award tickets using AA metal.

Given the devaluation of Avios I'd probably stay with AA, look at challenging up to Platinum, and go from there.

Is this 3 return trips? You need 4 BA segments for BA status.
Having miles/points/avios in multiple ffp's is usually not a good idea. You end up with small balances that you can never use. And expiry must be watched.

What do you use your AA miles for?
FFP's are for the long term, and not a few trips

Not a good value anymore. Post-devaluation (April '15) the price more than doubled, Europe to the West Coast on peak dates now costs 30k Avios one way :td:

True, but the poster is flying JFK-LHR so it would be 20,000, right? Versus AA, 25K + $350 copay to go from economy to biz. Like I say, it's in the numbers.

Leaving Qatar soon, starting a new job in the UK.

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?
(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: I prefer to use miles for free flights. Lounge access is nice.
(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: No idea how much I'll be flying
(3) What types of fares do you usually buy?
(First, Business, Premium economy, Economy, cheapest)
Reply: Private flight selection priority: best connection followed by cheapest flight, any airline. Business: might be business class or priority. Note: this will in most cases be Etihad!
(4) Can you choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
Reply: Private: any. Business: most flights will be to Abu Dhabi, thus Etihad.
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
(US Domestic, Transpacific, Kangaroo, in Asia etc)
Reply: private: most likely within Europe. Business: Middle East
(6) What is your home airport?
(SFO, SCL, London LHR, HKG, Singapore SIN etc.)
Reply: Manchester, possibly Liverpool
(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: Qatar Airways Gold, will be downgraded to silver in October
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
Reply: no preference

Thus: Etihad no connected to Oneworld. Not sure if I'll at least be able to at least maintain Oneworld Ruby. British Airways doesn't seem to give status miles for most economy flights.

Two more economy flights with Qatar Airways planned: to SE Asia return and oneway to UK. Ignore miles, dump in QR even though I won't gain anything from that or are there better options? Someone mentioned AirBerlin as it's connected with Etihad and Oneworld. Would that be an option for award tickets from UK and possibly lounge access?

:confused::confused::confused::confused:
You seem unaware of the fundamentals of ffp's.
Airline ffp's have partners for awards and earning.
The airline you fly and the airline ffp you credit those miles/points/avios to do does not need to be the same
Awards are not free. Most (to all) have real taxes and some to many have cash to large cash co payments.


What is attraction of Air Berlin and/or Etihad? :confused:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...programme.html

Yes, I know there are no free flights, and I know that I can credit points to other airlines and not only to the one I'm flying.

There's no attraction of Air Berlin or Etihad. Etihad will be work related flights and I cannot chose a different airline. Air Berlin seems to be the only airline to which I could credit Etihad and Oneworld points. If that makes sense I don't know because I don't know with which airline I'll be flying privately in the future.

No. As posted in the other thread Etihad is also a ff partner of AA.
There is no such thing as "Oneworld points"
Every ffp has its own currency. (BA/IB both use avios)
Each ffp has very different rules

(1) What is most important to you in a FFP?
good award redemption rates.
Reply:
(2) How many miles do you usually fly each year & in what class? How many flights/sectors?
30,000,<25

Reply:
(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: yes i can
(5) Which routes and airlines do you fly most often?
(US Domestic, Transpacific, Kangaroo, in Asia etc)
Reply: California to hk, us domestic
(6) What is your home airport?
(SFO, SCL, London LHR, HKG, Singapore SIN etc.)
Reply: SFO
(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 gold, 70k aa miles
106k avios
24k united

Reply:
(8) Preferred Airlines? Most common Airlines flown on?
Reply: AA , Southwest

You may as well stick with AA & UA. Nothing will be better
Are the BA avios from frequent spending (credit card) or frequent flying?
BA are a ff partner of AA, so you can get AA miles for (most) BA flights.
Also AS (Alaska) is a ff partner of AA, BA & DL

Be careful about the expiry of the AA, UA & BA miles/avios

Thanks Mwenzi!

The BA avios are from credit cards. I am just concerned with AA because I cannot earn points on Cathay discounted flights. I have a 25% transfer to BA avios so may end up opening an Asia Miles account.