Read a RTW trip report today and the guy was creditting his miles to IB's program and it made me wonder how the OW Emerald crowd are split up across the alliance.

My guesses are AA EXPs and BA Golds make up a fair chunk with QF Plats not far behind. Am aware that CX Diamonds are a pretty exclusive crowd along with those in AY, EI and IB.

I've been told that EI, AY and IB have fewer than 100 Emeralds each (rather doubt it for IB, but their plan is sufficiently quirky to discourage membership except for those living in MAD or BCN). LA is also quite low (probably under 1000). CX Diamond numbers were disclosed but I don't know if that is proprietary, however it is in the thousands. QF, BA and AA are in the tens of thousands (approaching 100K on the high end). So yes, there is roughly 3 orders of magnitude difference in number of Emeralds by OW airline. Sometimes this shows up in staff attitude, particularly at smaller airports where they may see one Emerald a month and think it is a VIP.

Fewer than 100 at some airlines Didn't think it'd be that low! If there are just a few hundred Emeralds at IB I wonder how many members there are of their invitation level, Club Fiesta

The "invitation level" is typically given for political/commercial reasons, and often to people who never fly on airlines (they use private jets). Most airlines have several thousand "invitation level" members, of which varying numbers actually fly the airline (probably BA and QF are the most active). Almost every long-haul QF flight that I've been on has at least one CL.

Can't believe <100 Emeralds for AY. Probably more from Nokia alone.

Unless they don't care about FF miles.

This makes me want to visit HEL and flash my EXP card... I'll be as big of a celebrity as Conan O'Brien

I doubt it too but it can't be many either. IME, with a lot of IB flights, two EXPs travelling in the same PNR causes a minor stir... and plenty of op-ups. Same situation with AA gets us nada de nada. So, the less IB Emeralds, the merrier for us.

Nah, HEL gate dragons see plenty of those from all of the consultants visiting Nokia.

They can fly SAS as well.

Unfortunately EXP seems to have a certain reputation (at least with AY and IB) and gets ignored a bit, while QF Platinum has more clout (more than BA Premier, rather perversely -- don't ask how I know this). Mostly a case of rarity, plus AY staff know of some marketing ventures with QF, so they react to seing QF Emeralds. In any case several times I've had trouble making some simple booking changes, and EXP was getting me nowhere, but flashing QF Plat brought a quick call for a supervisor and things suddenly became a lot smoother. Part of the strange world of Oneworld. But it is certainly true that many flights will have a single Emerald on the plane (vs. other routes, such as QF SYD-LAX, that has dozens of Emeralds on every flight).

I was at the AY lounge in ARN 3 months ago, and they have a separate "Platinum" (AY's Emerald level) section in this lounge which is accesed with a code. This was quite late in the evening with only one BA A319 and one AY EMB-170 left to depart that day. I saw AT LEAST 10 different people go into the Platinum Lounge (and I can't imagine that most of them were BA Golds), so I have to seriously doubt that AY has fewer than 100 Emeralds.

We were checking in for HEL-LHR in June, and at HEL there is a separate Emerald check in counter. The AY checkins that morning were horrendous - snaking lines etc.. The Emerald checkin had at least 10 pax/families in it - and most seemed Finnish.

But I don't think its fair to assume that your country of residence determines which airline you have your FF program with. hop over to the QF board and have a look at how many QF flyers are AAExp

Sure but FTers are hardly representative of all FFP members, or even of just elites (thankfully since less competition for the best benefits).

Very true, but for people who are at emerald status they would probably spend even a small amount of time working out what program will best suit there needs. I am not familiar with AY's program but I would assume if there are so few it has some disadvantage to it that makes people move over to BA/AA