Which is the best Program for Economy Class travel
 

Hello,
I will be flying intercontinental in Economy class (Q) on BA very soon. I usually travel for leisure in Economy with maybe one or two intercontinental trips and around ten roundtrips within Europe. My question is: Do you have any idea about which FF program I should use?
Thanks in advance,
CoolGR

Depends on what you are after. Award flights, status, lounge access? I normally would stick to the airline you actually fly the most. Q class only gives you 25% of actual miles flown at BA, AA and QF so it will be difficult to get to any meaningful level of miles for an award ticket.
The other issue to consider is credit cards. For many of us miles / points come more from Credit Cards than from flying. So again depending on what other earning options you have you might chose your program accordingly.
Be aware that BA and QF (and maybe other OW programs) require you to fly at least 4 flights with them per year to keep status.

I am not so much after status, since I am living in Germany and am not too often travelling to UK. Thus, the stuff I am looking for is the most miles from discounted economy class travel on oneworld carriers, especially BA (probably). I don't think I will get a BA credit card.
Currently I am thinking the Finnair program looks quite ok, but what do you guys and girls suggest?
Thanks!

I am in a similar situation - so I looked up the Finnair program and that looked quite good to me but perhaps I am missing something. Previously a friend had extolled a lot on the LAN Chile scheme (but that was a few years ago).
Right now I don't want award flights because I can fly for free (expat. package for holidays, and paid business trips). I don't care about lounge access, and I won't be earning on a credit card.
I would like to accumulate points/miles for a rainy day or, better still, to get preferential seating/upgrades, or at least some non-flight award so that I don't feel I am missing out.
For me the BA Exec Club was poor because you don't keep the miles when you transfer between certain countries (e.g. in my case Japan to China) and I believe my children were not eligible for accounts. I also fly as little as possible so don't accumulate that fast so expiry periods are important. However, BA is the One World airline I am most often flying on.

I expect to be relocated somewhere else next year (no idea where) but also expect a long-term interest in flying between China and the UK and if doing that on my own budget might be looking at cheaper indirect flights. Helsinki seems like a reasonably good route to take.

So looking at Finnair: the plus points seem to be 5 year point lifetime, acceptance of children 2-17 years, efficient website.

Looking further ahead - I am going to prefer to fly on new generation planes which maintain a higher cabin pressure. That is going to mean the Boeing 787 or (I hope) the A350 - I see Finnair are an early customer of the latter.

The major problems with AY in China are the lack of Premium Economy cabins (ex-China biz class is not a bargain anymore and Y pitch was decreased in the new AB340's) and the lack of dedicated lounges.

I'd suggest looking at Cathay's MPC as well and status match with AY after they improve on these matters and the HEL re-development is finished in late 2009. At the moment AY is all about cost cutting, unfortunately.

Finnair often has the problem of not crediting flights or crediting them very late. Maybe IT has changed in the last few months but that was an issue a while ago. All major FF programs should accept Children AFAIK. The issue is more with Children under two years of age.

AA is good for earning miles on hotel and car hire programs, and gives lifetime status at 1m miles and 2m miles, which may be attractive if you are young and/or yo plan to travel a lot. Also they are far more generous when it comes to mileage redemption than BA.

AA's program is useless though on tatl BA flights. I would look at CX Asia Miles. Pretty useful for some out of alliance flights in Asia also.

If you do little OW flying, then it is better to go for a programme in which points do not expire (eg: aa or ba) rather than one in which they do (eg: Finnair).

AA points and miles do expire.

Not if you have activity at least once per 18 months. Activity can come from anywhere, not just flights. You can purchase a $5 magazine subscription every year and a half to keep it active if you have to.

But AA (and BA) miles can be kept from expiring by any partner earning activity. And there are countless ways to do it: credit a hotel stay, credit a car rental (car hire), transfer miles in from some other program, buy something on their shopping mall, if you're in the US or Canada dine at a participating restaurant for AA (BA recently dropped its Executive Club Dining program), etc, etc.

As opposed to Finnair, which cannot be kept from expiring in any manner. Thus if you don't earn enough miles to burn them before the expiration period (5 years?) then it's useless.