Iberia - where to stick miles....
 

All,

Tried to search, but didn't come up with anything coherent, so I try to ask...not sure if this is the right place, if not, mods please feel free to move the thread.

Due to bad planning, I am finding myself on an Iberia flight next week, intra-european Y. Bad planning since I have exclusively been feeding my flights into SAS Eurobonus (when *A) and AF/FlyingBlue (when SkyWorld) and pretty much nowhere else -- I do not fly enough to maintain meaningful status on three alliances at once.

The question, obviously, is where to stick the Iberia-miles? Neither SK/EB nor FlyingBlue/AF have, according to their www-sites, milage-earning-opportunities from Iberia.

I could simply forfeit earning miles since, well, it's a short flight and won't yield much.....but as FTer, it just seems "plain wrong" to not earn miles on a flight, and I am not sure if forfeiting earning miles would not cause my FT account to be revoked ;)

So, I could open an Iberia, or any oneworld, ff account, and stick the miles there. The question is, then, which? Preferably, it should be one where:

• miles do not expire, or expire only after very very long time;
• miles are easily transferable to something else, say, a hotel chain (any major would do);

Any suggestions as to what is the most advantageous?

Discount economy on IB often earns 30% -- so this really is not a lot of miles. Unless some minimum kicks in, you are fretting over about 100-200 miles.

AA is probably the best, but changed mileage expiration last year to be 18 months (but any activity resets it, not just flying). Lots of plans are moving to 18 mo expiration (used to be 3 years).

You might want to check the AS plan as a place to park orphaned miles. While not useful for IB, AS does partner with parts of Skyteam and OW (and often at better rates than the native plans). So if you don't need Skyteam status, this might be a great way to turn NW miles into BA awards, etc.