New to OW
 

I'm not a regular on OneWorld, so am needing a bit of advice.

I'll be moving to London next month, and taking monthly flights on BA back home to NCL. I am therefore looking at signing up for a FFP to start earning miles, allbeit not very many! Which would you recommend as I'll more than likely be flying in discounted economy.

From BA's website I see that apart from the OW members, I could also earn on BA flights with FFP from Alaska Airlines, America West and SN Brussels... how do any of these compare with the OW options?

Would any of these match my current status... I am just about to get SQ Gold.

Go for Qantas or AA. The mileage earns will be ****e but you'll gain status faster. I wouldn't count on much for monthly flights though.

If your other travel will remain with *A and you only fly discount Y on BA, there isn't much point with the QF scheme.

On discount Y, the QF scheme earns the same base mile as the BA scheme.

There is a big point to the QF scheme. Discount economy flights on BA will earn 10SCs per flight compared with zero on BA. On monthly trips alone, it will not quite reach Silver status since 36 flights (360 SCs) would be needed rather than the 240 which would be earned , but should any other trip(s) elsewhere take place it can be quite easy to get the remaining 120 SCs and get QF Silver status (OW Ruby). Renewals are even easier with only 300Scs needed in future.

There is no chance of getting BA silver on this type of routing.

Dave

However, I'd really question the value of QF Silver. Gold and Platinum seem to be where the real benefits kick in.

Thanks for the advice so far. I suppose you have to look at it two-fold. On the one hand, at least I could potentially earn some form of status using QF in the long run, but on the downside the majority of the benefits would only be of use if I lived in Australia.

On the other side, BA status would be of more benefit being in the UK, but is unlikely to be earned if I only fly discounted economy.

I'm guessing BA wouldn't match my *A status, but would QF or AA?

I disagree. I'm a UK-based QF member and the benefits of status are available to me whenever I fly on any OW carrier. That said, per my earlier point, I doubt you'd identify and real benefit from attaining silver, other than as a route to Gold or Platinum.


You guess correctly, though there has been talk over on the BA board of this beginning to happen Stateside.