what is the best alternate mileage program?
 

if i'm gonna do this 1w rtw ticket, i want to make sure it pays. so, other than qualifying on aa & ba, where should i go? i have already joined ei, la, & ib? any thoughts?

I think Asiamiles would be the most useful program. LAN Chile might be another good one. Need to pay for QF and I understand the award levels are rather costly (even if you account that you will earn kilometres). EI TAB seems to be too close to BA EC UK/Global to be of any use. Don't IB's is any good. Not sure about AY.

What do you mean by "too close to be of any use"?

Also, if you are doing to challenge in C or F (especially F) you should look seriously at QFs program. Sure it'll cost you about US$45 but for elite status, a C fare is 2 times more valuable and F 3 times more valuable than Economy. If you get status you don't need to pay that account service fee either.

This is kind of like a 200% and 300% status bonus which is unrivaled in 1W (and similar to LH). This is how my father qualifies so easily for QF Gold - flying Business class at the amount he does means he gets the Tier Credits by the bucketload.

One major negatvie for using it for this promotion - QF are only giving up to 100,000 points even though a point is roughly a km. Lan Chile is instead doing the km/mile conversion and giving 160,000 kms. If I do end up flying off for this promotion, QF will be getting a stern email asking for that to be changed http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Going to be awfully difficult accumulating points unless you pay full/premium fares where it is good.. BTW, EI is offering 20,000 points for this bonus.

I use 80k (business class trans-Atlantic as a benchmark). If you fly AA, say, LON-NYC, you'd get about 7k miles per round trip bonus aside. To get the reward in AAdvantage, you'd need just over 11 round trips, even on the lowest fare.

On EI, you get 200 TAB points Shannon/DUB-JFK on EI + 50 TAB points for flying from the U.K. on a promo ticket. A EI business class trans-Atlantic ticket is 16,000 points so you need to make 32 round trip to earn the reward. If you flew EI's Premier business class, you;ll earn thar reward in just under 5 trips (4.84). On AA, you'd need over 8 trips to earn the same trip.

[This message has been edited by terenz (edited 06-10-2000).]

In terms of tier bonuses for flying C or F, AY Plus is like the QF program, you always get 200% for C and 300% for F, regardless your booking class (except First on US domestic, where you get 200%). This even if AY does not offer F service itself at all.

Also, their sixcontinent challenge bonus is 160.000 points,logically equivalent of the 100K offered in miles based programs (AY Plus is based on km's).

AY Plus has quite some restrictions for points accumulation if you fly economy (especially with BA) but if you fly a lot in C or F, it is quite a good alternative. For details, check www.finnair.com

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To be complete, QF does give you the 300% on US Domestic F. An added element of course with the QF program is everything is regions. Sometimes this works sometimes it doesn't. Classic example - I got 8 TC for a flight from YVR->YYJ whilst I would have gotten the same for YVR->MIA.

However, its good to hear that AY has their head switched on with the conversion.

However, I still haven't worked out which program to make my third for the RTW (I could get a fourth but at detriment to getting OW Ruby in QF). I'm leaning towards BA simply because I see myself living in the UK in a few years and therefore likely travelling BA in the future quite a bit.

What sort of bonuses do the OW carriers have going that may be useful for this promotion (and therefore for me working out who to use as #3)?