HELP: How Should I Credit Oneworld Flights?
 

I'm a generally StarAlliance flyer, but it looks like I will be taking a few OneWorld flights for the foreseeable future. I have a Cathay Pacific flight booked in paid business class and will have a few more, coming up, but not enough to make status on Cathay or AA. (At least not more than Silver...)

But, for example, StarAlliance has Aegean Airlines, which only requires 12,000 miles for silver and 24,000 for Gold. Those numbers are do-able.

How would you recommend I credit my Cathay miles in this case? Should I credit to their Asia miles program? Or would something else be better?

Thank you for any guidance you can provide!

(I've also considered a status match on AA... but haven't decided that yet.)

Look and ask here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...help-here.html
AA do not do status matches

AA usually does semi-match/challenges for UA 1Ks.

AA challenges (Gold, Platinum) require flights using AA, BA, IB, AY, JL, QF or US flight numbers. CX is notably missing.

Depending on your domestic travels, you might also look at Alaska Airlines, which partners with most Oneworld and several Skyteam airlines. AS' program and redemption options are quite good.

Edited to add - Given your apparent travel patterns, I might suggest you look at Oneworld's Circle Pacific fares ex-HKG. For the time being, a business class 22,000 mile DCIR22 (e.g. HKG-DFW-SYD-HKG) is US$5K and a 26,000 mile DCIR26 (e.g. HKG-ORD-TPA-LAX-SYD-BKK-HKG) is around $1000 more. Depending on your travel frequency, might be a good deal.

Thanks for the advice. I'll check into that Circle Pacific thing. I do almost no domestic flying at all (the segments you see are mostly international connections) and am based in FL. I wonder if AK would be helpful in that case?

Regarding CX: I was only thinking that if I do an Executive Platinum challenge, then I should also credit the CX miles to AA because even though they don't count for the challenge, they would count for renewal the following year.

What class of service do you typically use on longhauls? Most CX discount economy fares don't earn AA miles, and JL miles in discounted economy only earn fractional miles.

As far as I know, AA doesn't offer EXP challenges most of the time. They had a brief period earlier this year when United elites were offered EXP challenges, but I believe that had been discontinued with no repeats planned. With the merger of the US and AA FFPs looming, AA is going to find itself with a hell of a lot of top tier elites pretty soon. Have you been offered an EXP challenge by AA?

The CX flights would be intra-Asia business class. For long haul flights, I (usually) buy an upgradeable economy tx and upgrade it with an instrument.

I'd recently seen UA 1Ks switching to AA EXP, but I don't know if it is still happening. I guess I'd have to call and check. It seemed like they were doing this for quite a long time though.

I suppose I will just credit this flight to AsiaMiles. It appears that there are multiple ways to earn them...

According to this, they were still doing it with at least some people as of November. Is seems the match--to at least Platinum--is wide open. But absent an EXP match, I'll probably stick with UA. I expect AA's current (and substantial) advantages won't last long.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...idated-12.html