Best OW programme for irregular flyer / transfer miles between OW programmes
 

HI.
Which oneworld programme is the best for a rather not so frequent flyer? I will do quite a lot of flights on IB, mainly to the canarias, some BA continental and fewer intercont. I'm not goinh for status miles, because I will never gain that many points.
Which would be the best programme to chose? BA Exec would have the plus that I can exchange Tesco points for miles, which would prolly make more than flying :D
but then again I would mostly be flying economy and not high fares, rather the cheapest cheapskate fares.

As of now I've got a QF account with some miles on it from IB flights which were, I think, fully accredited even though Economy and very cheap fare. Can I transfer those points to BA or vice versa?

Nice Regards, Jonas.

BA discount econ. fares won't get you much credit on any FFP. AA is probably the best -- you can use an AA Citibank credit card (in the UK as well as the USA) to keep your miles topped up.

http://www.citibank.co.uk/personal/cards/aa_benifit.htm

Iberia discount economy earns 30% miles on AA -- mean, but a bit better than BA's 25%...

Thanks! The Citibank offer sounds really good, but I wouldn't have the Tesco thing then, which gives me 2.4 miles for every £ spent... (for every 250 Clubcard points you get 600 miles).

Maybe I should stick with Qantas if BA and AA are so crap on Iberia... as far as I can remember I got full miles for my latest Iberia trip DUS-MAD-SPC------TFN-MAD-DUS and return which was slightly more than 4000 miles and with the cheapest Iberia Ticket you could get (around £170 p.P. return !!!). How many miles would I get for flying cheapest economy on BA with the Qantas FF scheme? Haven't done so since I got the card.

Also, is booking award flights more miles-consuming via Qantas than with the BA Exec for example? I booked some domestic flights down under, but that's long ago and I remember they were quite cheap, dunno how it looks like with European awards.

Last question (sorry :D ): What about the transferring bit? Is it possible to transfer the miles?

Cheerio,
Jonas.

Welcome to Flyer Talk jonasfischer :)

Check out Web Flyer's mileage converter tool. There are some limited options, but in general there is a very significant devaluation.

AFAIK, AA is the only OW airline you can transfer miles out of. If you want to transfer miles into a OW airline (from hotel programs, for example), then there are lots of possibilities, but which specific ones are available may depend on where you're based as well as which programs you have points in.

How many years do you anticipate traveling on OW and earning miles, and how many total miles do you think you'll earn? The reason I ask is that AA is the only OW airline where you can earn status through cumulative miles (but you need to accumulate a lot). 1 million total lifetime AA miles from any and all sources gives you Lifetime Gold status, 2 million gives you Lifetime Platinum status (OW Sapphire).

Also, at some OW airlines (incl AA and BA) your miles never expire as long as you have yearly activity (which can be either earning through partners such as credit card, hotel, rental car, etc, or redeeming), but others especially in the Pacific your miles expire after a few years with no way to avoid that, so you better be burning them almost as fast as you earn them.

Personally, I would keep using the QF account. QF credits full base miles on all IB discount economy fares, but no status bonus. Not your concern. For short award trips on BA and AA in economy, the number of miles needed is not a big premium if you can book online. And so far, QF has not announced any mile expiration policies as long as you fly once every 2 or 3 years.

Let's get the terminology correct - IB *PAYS* QF full base miles on all discount economy fares - it is IB (NOT QF) which decides who gets what on what fares on various programs. It is IB which pays the $$$$ (or whatever) to the program (which the passenger gets, via points).

So it is not QF that is the good guy (and other programs the villains) but IB deciding who they wish to lureon to their flights.

You don't even need to fly, you just need point activity - this can even be a family transfer.

Dave

More likely that IB pays a set amount (in EUR) and this happens to equate to 30% AA points and 100% QF points. A classic arbitrage opportunity (rate is unchanged from when the USD was high, and AUD was low, years ago).