AAdvantage or Avios?
 

My wife and I have an upcoming trip to Paris in Business we booked through BA to take advantage of the AARP discount. Our routing is:

FAT-DFW-CDG
CDG-LHR-LAX-FAT

All of the flights are booked as BA code shares but are on AA metal, with the exception of CDG-LHR.

Anyone have any advice on which program to credit these flights to? For background, we have never flown BA but do use Avios to book west coast flights on Alaska and don't fly regularly on AA. Have been United premiers for 10+ years but would be up for a switch. Any chance we'd come within striking distance of elite status with either program with this trip? Just not familiar enough to know, and have noticed several business class incentives recently. Any advice would be appreciated.

Look here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...help-here.html
Freq flyer programs and miles/avios are for the long term
A small quantity of miles/avios in a ffp will probably be on no use and/or expire

You could do AA's Platinum Challenge and come away with AA Plat/Oneworld Sapphire - 100% bonus miles, many other perks. Of course to maintain it you'd have to fly 50K EQM/P on eligible carriers (which includes AS) in the next calendar year.

Read about it here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...-platinum.html

Register for Special One World promotion on AA or BA to get 20000 avios or miles
For trans Atlantic flights

If ticket is booked by BA than you got to register with BA

Would it be possible to sign on for the AA Platinum challenge and receive the oneworld transAtlantic bonus if I booked with BA? That sounds like the ideal for me.

And make sure to fly 4 paid segments on AA/US during the year. (there's some uncertainty about what AA counts as an allowable segment for this requirement, see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...2014-a-15.html

Although the 4-segment rule is not new, until 2014 it was never enforced, thus comes as a surprise to some.

I don't know why not - they're different things entirely. Of course you need to credit your BA flights (if any) to your AAdvantage account, but buying the ticket through BA shouldn't make any difference.

The way the Plat challenge works, you get a 100% mileage bonus on the flight during which you exceed a cumulative total of 10,000 elite qualifying points, and on all successive eligible flights. With your FAT-DFW-CDG-LHR-LAX-FAT itinerary, that milestone would be reached during the LHR-LAX flight, so including cabin bonus miles (50% for first class, 25% for business class) AND the 2015 special bonuses for non-elites which again is different from the special transatlantic bonus, you would probably end up with something like 50K miles in the bank per person by the end of the trip counting the Plat, TATL, class of service, and "special" bonuses. Enough for a FC round trip in the US, or a one way business award to Europe or Asia. Not too shabby.

Awesome! ^ ^ Thanks everybody for the advice.