Hello,

I pretty much retired my AA membership with an award last year. Now I'm looking to book a trip on IB with a discounted fare: open-jaw OPO-(MAD)-BIO, return BIO-LIS. Maybe I should just forget about getting any miles for this, but I'm interested enough in miles/points to consider it and how I should do it.

AA: When their site says "Earn a minimum of 300 AAdvantage� miles each time you purchase and fly on a published eligible fare ticket on Iberia," is that per segment, per direction, or for the whole ticket? My home airport is MCI (Kansas City) and I pretty much don't have occasion to fly AA unless they happen to have the best and most convenient fare to FCO, a regular trip of mine. Otherwise I'd just as soon keep that program retired, and maybe another OW program would work just as well if I do fly AA.

IB: I won't begin to understand their point program. I figure the points for this trip won't do me any good. Sometimes I research trips to Europe starting at ORD and IB has the best fare; a few years ago they had a bad reputation for transatlantic service; any better now? Join them for convenience in booking this trip, and would they work if I fly AA in the future?

BA: Forget it, if I'm not buying a full or premium fare from them?

Asia Miles: I've been to HK once, and have some dream of returning in my lifetime. Do I understand from their site that only full-fare coach on IB gets miles?

Anything else to consider?

I was thinking of going IAD-BRU this June and Iberia has the best price but a quick check on www.airlinequality.com and finding out that I would only get 25% of the miles in my JAL account and I changed my mind.

QF: Gives 100% miles on all Fares but Discount Economy Statuscredits unless in Y.

Whilst I am no AA expert, whilst you might get a very small amount of redeemable miles, you should get 500 EQPs. Certainly my partner who is an EXP gets 500 EQPs even on the cheapest of BA flights (although obviously earns almost nothing when it comes to redeemable) so I would assume the same would go for IB.

If this is the case, AA still maybe your best bet if status is your aim.

Per segment (one flight number = one segment).


Much better in J, just as bad in Y.

Thanks. Elite qualifying? Not relevant to me. I'm a leisure traveler, and even on airlines where I've gotten multiple Business Class awards, I've never had elite status.

So it looks like Qantas might make sense? It would give me credit for transtlantics on AA or BA?

Certainly!

I use QFF for this purpose; however, be aware that the value of a FF mile is substantially different in the various plans. For most awards, it costs twice as many QFF miles than AAdvantage miles, for example. So earning 50K on AA might be worth more than earning 100K on QF. The actual award costs vary tremendously by type of award (routing, etc.) so this is just an average (2:1); some QF awards are cheaper than the equivalent on AA (about 1% like that, mostly things like one-way that AA doesn't offer, so you have to book round-trip award and throw half of it away), and the worst case that I have found cost 500% more on QF than on AA (and with more restrictive terms, so it was for a worse product!). All 8 of the OW FF plans have such differences, and optimizing earn/burn rates is a complex strategy.

Actually, I have found at times that IB posts EQM/EQP at only 300 for AA, unlike BA.

IME AA reports the EQM/EQP as 300, but actually adds 500 to the Year Total.

I think 500 is the minimum you get as long as it is an earning fare class. This little trick can make even a poor earning fare worthwhile to AA.