Traveloguy - oooo, low blow. I hope millionmiler took it in the jest it was intended!

millionmiler, I have no problems substantiaiting an annual fee for access/good booze, but charging $300+ as a one-off 'admin' fee to join is an outright rort in my view. Ditto for Qantas charging Australians to join their frequent flyer program (which it conveniently doesn't bother to do with overseas residents).

@djc0: Telstra are still seen as a monopoly.

Ahhh, Australia... land of monopoly.

Basic economics:
QF sells their club membership for a high price and restricts access = High contribution margin.
UA sells their club membership for less money and allows a lot of usage = low contribution margin.

You do this thousands or millions of times and you have money airline making more money than the other.

djc0 - have you considered opening both a QF account and keeping your UA MP account?

you can more easily credit miles/points on domestic OZ flights when flying on QF, lump in points from your Australian credit card, and you should have enough to book award flights within australia. It's notoriously difficult to book international award flights on QF, plus they charge a bunch of surcharges on award tickets that UA doesn't charge.

If you do open an AA account to credit QF miles into, be aware that not all (esp not the lowest fare) fare classes in QF can be credited to AA.

You can then fly *A to/from Europe and to/from the US. I will grant that the soft business class product on UA is significantly inferior to QF. However, it's much much easier getting upgrades on UA than on QF. So if you have status, miles, SWU's on UA, you can pretty easily get your upgrade to business class when flying oz-LAX or oz-SYD.

Umm.. In both examples you gave, both carriers made money from the membership albeit at a lower rate.

There are other things to take into consideration; for example QCs provide free drinks and snacks whilst UA lounges domestically charge for alcoolic drinks (iirc) and do not provide food.

Given that UA charges for drinks, by allowing more people in they have the opportunity to make more money out of the person by selling them items. If there is minimal free offerings in the lounge , it doesn't make much difference cost running wise to let people in

The post I replied to was arguing that allowing all in was causing them to loose (sic) money , not that one model would be more profitable

Dave

The RCC, whilst admittedly not the best of the lot, offers snacks and now free wireless. I can go without the beer or bourbon while waiting for my flight.

Also, non-alcoholic drinks are free of course.

In light of the recent changes to QFF, you might want to stick with UA and fly DJ domestically.

[mod hat]

You've posed a question that cuts across various FF programs. Since you're looking at OW as one option - perhaps the QF FF or AA Advantage as one of the OW options, I'm going to move this thread to the OW forum, and make reference to the question you asked in the other airline forums - being NZ, AC and bmi.

BMI FFP loyalty for someone based in Australia?

Moving to Australia, where to shift my loyalty?

Picking AC solely for *G potential?

Many of the posters in OW and *A have status in both, so hopefully you'll have a good balance of answers there.

[/mod hat]

While agree with you that it is normally the best way to hold status with the airline you fly most, I can't recommend SQ KF unless you plan to become a PPS member. SQs earn/burn ration is nothing to write home about. If you are looking for an alternative to UA MP I'd suggest to have a close look at BD DC and M&M.

What changes were negative?
QFF have "enhanced" their programme, it is just at an unbelievable redemption rate!
There have been no cutbacks in current offerings or status earning. QFF works for me, however I do not redeem my points for flights and I can acheive a high status tier when I could not on other programmes.