Hello,

First post here - however I hope to be posting more as I have just booked a RTW ticket with OneWorld (roughly London - NA - SA, Asia - London). My trip starts in mid December and I am quite excited.

One question, is there a consensus on which milage program to choose to receive miles/points? I have used BA Exec Club so far but found them to be quite stingy (25%). From what I've looked into AA seems quite good (100% on most flights?).

Here is some more info and I'm hoping someone can help me out.

All tickets are on L class.
I am flying with various airlines, main ones being Cathay, AA, BA, Lan, Iberia.
Total trip is just over 35k milies or so, and I hope to be a Oneworld Ruby member at the end of it.

Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks

Ross

Welcome to FT, and read the FAQ sticky - there's a table that shows yield on L class tix to different FFPs depending on the airline flown. It really has to do with your specific routing for the RTW, and more to do with the rest of your travel patterns, taking your country of residence into account.

Depending on which carriers, you might be able to qualify for AA Platinum if you complete the Plat challenge (10K qualifying points - not miles - in 3 months.) See the AA board for details. That would give you double mileage in the AA plan from that point forward.

Hi, thanks for much for your response. I would have replied sooner myself but had forgotten my password

The AA Platinum sounds like something I could do, thanks for the suggestion. I have narrowed it down to AA and Cathay.

One question about the FAQ sticky- it says on there that BA miles count for 0 under the AAAdvantage, can someone confirm if this is true? When I spoke to a AA rep they said it would be 100%?

Thanks again

You cannot earn miles for transatlantic BA flights between the US and UK on AAdvantage and vice-versa. The BA transatlantic flights to and from Canada do earn miles.

Thank you satish.

For non UK-US transatlantic flights, say LON-HKG with BA, would it be 25% miles, 100% Q points with the AAdvantage?

Edit - for an L class ticket, thanks!

25% miles, 25% Q points. Note that starting January 2007, only AA flights will count towards the AA Platinum challenge.

25% and 25%, gotcha - I had misread the table.

And is that All flights from Jan 1 onwards or if you start the challenge after Jan 2007? I would start in Dec but most of my flights would be in Jan/Feb. Also, I assume this same policy is for the Gold challenge as well?

Sorry for all the stupid questions. I appreciate everyone's help!

They're not stupid; however there is a reasonably adequate search function that can also be employed. Regarding the challenge and AA earning issues, the AA board is arguably a better place than the Oneworld board for those questions.

That said, the start date for the challenge is what matters; having the challenge period overlap the end of the calendar year has no bearing on your status if successful. Whether you sign up for the challenge in late 2006 or early 2007, if you qualify your status will last until the end of February 2008, at which point you'd fall to Gold until the following February. Of course if you earn 50K points/miles during Calendar 2007, your Plat status will last until Feb. 2009. The Plat bonus kicks in with the flight on which you cross the 10,000 Q-point threshold, so it would be a good thing to make sure that one is a biggie, rather than having the flight before that one be the biggie, if you get my meaning.

thanks again Gardyloo for the clarification. And you are right, the search and AA board is the place to look, tho it still seems a bit overwhelming the amount of info on these forums!

One thing to watch for on your booking in addition to the restriction on transatlantic flights earning AA miles is the heavily restricted earning of CX flights for AAdvantage as well as the low percentage accrual rates on BA and Iberia.

For example, "L" fares on CX do not earn mileage on AA. Only "Y", "B" and "H" earn miles in AAdvantage. You may want to split your mileage programs. For example, when it is AA eligible send it to AA at 100% on AA and LAN and 30% on Iberia. For CX Asiamiles, "L" earns 100% for itself and 50% on BA. Of course, the BA segments then won't earn you Q-points for the challenge, but the CX segments are not applicable as is, and only CX will give you 100% for "L" on CX.

Have a good time 'round the world!