trying to understand oneworld
 

WARNING- Extreme easily confused newbie here!

I travel to Perth approximately every two years and do very little flying before then.

I flew to Perth December 26th from BWI and returned Feb 3rd.
I flew on AA in the US to LAX and then on QF to/from and within Australia.
All miles were credited to my AAdvantage account which had a fat balance of 0 on it. Does this mean I am automatically a member of the oneworld alliance?
Are the miles on my AAdvantage account now considered oneworld miles?

In reading the other forums about MRs it seems that one needs a goal / reason for doing the MR's. Some people would like discounted travel, others would like upgrades / lounge access.

If it is my goal to either earn discounted travel for my biannual trip to Perth or to earn upgrades / lounge access am I on the right track?


Thanks,
-Giles

It's the airlines that are the members of the OW alliance. You have mileage accounts in AA (and QF?)

With enough miles/points in either account you can obtain award tickets for domestic or foreign travel. You must follow the rules and use the miles within each FF account; they cannot be commingled for award travel. If your award travel is to destinations served by OW member airlines other than the one whose miles you're using, that can be arranged. Look at the earning/spending guidelines in the respective mileage program(me) rules on the airlines' websites. There are also specific oneworld mileage based awards in which the amount of miles traveled governs the miles consumed from your account. These award rules are also listed (or linked) from the AA or QF mileage plan websites.

If your flying is as infrequent at you say, then obtaining or retaining elite status with any FF plan is going to be difficult. AA makes allowances for "challenges" to higher status (see the stickey threads on the American board) but if you do not follow up the challenge with a fair amount of travel in subsequent months/year, then you will lose the status sooner or later.

Also, if your long-haul travel occurs at the end/beginning of the year, that's an issue with some plans that reset the "clock" for elite status at year end.

You should do some research on both ther AA and QF boards here at Flyer Talk to get familiar with the lingo and rules - it can be quite rewarding. And lastly, welcome to FT if you haven't been welcomed already.

Thanks for the reply and the kind welcome!

Yes I do I have mileage accounts in AA and QF.

If I understand OW correctly it is a way to accumulate miles on an OW member carrier when flying a different OW member carrier? And that once those miles have been posted to that particular carrier they cant be transferred to other member carriers?or can they?


My travel is infrequent because I wasnt actively pursuing FF rewards. So if it meant flying more frequently to obtain / maintain some sort of reward status then I would. Or is my "goal" travel not frequent enough to warrant MR's? (ie- the expense of the runs would outweigh the expense of paying for the cost of the goal trip).


Thanks again!
-Giles

Hi Giles, and welcome to the OneWorld forum

Your understanding is correct. Once you have made the decision as to where to credit your flights, you can't decide at a later date you'd rather have those miles in a different program.

If you are only flying once every two years, I wouldn't consider flying for status. Just use your travel budget to travel when and where you need to go.

The good news is that BWI-PER should earn you roughly 23K miles RT. It only takes 25K on AA to get a free domestic coach ticket. As long as you have activity in your account every three years, your miles won't expire. You can easily bump your mileage balance by getting an AAdvantage credit card. There are enrollment bonuses, plus you get 1 mile per dollar spent. Thus, you could easily earn one free domestic coach ticket for every paid ticket to Perth - not bad!

People do MRs and accumulate miles/points for various reasons. Some do year-end MRs so that they have enough miles/points to obtain or retain elite status - status that they want in order to make upgrading easier, or have lounge access (on overseas flights) or to be able to select exit row seats in these days of diminished creature comforts in coach, etc.

Others do MRs when the cost of the mileage accrued in the run is less than the equivalent value of the miles when spent on award travel. A classic example of this would be someone with 75,000 miles in his/her account going on a marathon MR or series of MRs in order to get to 90,000 miles - good for a business class trip to Europe, say. The cost to accumulate those miles might be between one and two cents per mile. When exchanged for a round trip in business to, say Paris, with a published fare of, say, $5000, the value of those miles is way, way higher than a penny or two each. Read the trip reports posted by Seat 2A on the "Trip Report" board to see both how he accumulates miles through structured insanity, in order to spend them on fabulous first class vacations around the world. In his case he gets an excellent return on the MR investment. Others would go bananas traveling as much as he does to get the rewards. Different strokes.

If you love leisure flying and traveling, then spending the money and time to accumulate miles and/or status is a way to indulge your tastes without real suffering. If you travel for work, status and mileage is something that is important to you to prevent discomfort as you go. Different motives, same means.

That is correct. However, you should be aware of the gimme and the gotcha.

The gimme is that you can use AA miles for QF awards and vice versa, as well as use either kind for awards on other OW partners - or on long flights that involve multiple OW partners. Specifics are in the "Using Miles," "Awards" or some such section of each partner's Web site. Check the site of the airline(s) whose miles you would use.

The gotcha is that some airlines only award fractional credit for miles flown with partners in discount economy class. Again, specifics are on each airline's site. In your case, a cheap Qantas ticket would earn only a fraction of the AA miles that an equally cheap AA ticket on the same airplane (they codeshare many US-Oz flights) would earn.

Another gotcha that many people unfortunately only learn about after the fact is that BA trans-Atlantic flights to/from the US don't earn AA miles. That could affect you if you get seriously bitten by the mileage bug and decide to go to Australia the long way round! (It can be cheaper that way, too - but you may have to check that routing in two parts because some sites won't think of it themselves.)