Where to credit Etihad miles?
 

Hi there,

Im flying a DOJ on Eithad for the total of 13k miles. I don't have status anywhere, as I'm not flying that much generally, but I do have 7k in AAdvantage. Now i'm wondering what I should do with the Etihad miles. The non-frequent-flyer sort of hates the fact that I can't really properly use it. Either I put it into a qualifying program where these miles actually could help me towards a status, but I don't really think I'm gonna be able to actually get a status by the end of the year, so I might just post it into AA, despite it only collecting award miles?

Nam

Well, since you already have an AA account, it is better to put your Ethihad miles in there. With 5k more AA miles you can redeem for a RT Savers within North America. I see that your location is Berlin, you can also use it on Air Berlin and British Airways. You can look at the OW award chart here: http://www.aa.com/i18n/disclaimers/f...ward-chart.jsp at the bottom click on the OW award chart link.

AA sounds like the best bet, although you can also put Etihad flights into your ANA account, if you prefer *A miles or think you might need a Japanese domestic redemption at some point soon...

It sounds like if you're not earning enough for status anywhere then you're also not earning enough for a big redemption on a regular basis, so if that's the case I wouldn't put the miles anywhere with a fixed expiration date. NH as another poster suggested is a 3 year fixed expiration, don't ever earn enough to cash in... then you're out of luck. I think most European and Asian programs are like this. North American programs generally keep rolling the expiry forward with any kind of earning or redemption activity. It's a no brainer I think for someone who will take some time to build up to a decent award redemption.

I agree, that with a limited number of flight movements it makes more sense to concentrate on AA.
Other possible programs for credit are Air Berlin and SriLankan, possibly now Jet Airways, but definitely NOT British Airways.
Since you're located in Berlin I would seriously take a closer look at ABs Top Bonus, since (unlike on AA) the flights on Etihad will also earn you status mileage on Top Bonus and with the distance you will travel on EY bring you close to ABs silver status (you will probably have some local flights on AB to get you there?).