temple

Hi all,

Was wondering if anybody could summarize the advantages/disadvantages of collecting AA vs Qantas points while travelling on AA within the US?

My wife is a dual US/Australian citizen. We live in San Francisco, and she will soon begin regular domestic travel for business purposes using AA.

She's a big fan of Qantas and the ultimate goal would be to eventually earn enough miles to use for premium class travel between SFO and Sydney - preferably on Qantas.

Thx!

DownUnderFlyer

If your travels are mainly on AA and you are US based, there is no question that the AA program will be far better for you than QF. And you can still redeem those AA miles for a nice trip down under.

Mwenenzi

Look at post 330 here and the linked threads in post 3. QF have high cash awards surcharges.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onewo...help-here.html
You can fly QF and credit to AAdvantage
AA business class travel between LAX and Sydney is considered by some/many to be better than QF.
Living in USA you can get AA miles from credit cards and other non flying activities.

wanderingkev

X 2 If she is to be a regular traveler in the US status is very important to get some level of humane treatment and access to someone on a phone line within a reasonable time frame when things go wrong.I think there is also a better opportunity to use points especially heading south or east. I have been a member of a number of mileage programs over the years and in the QF for 20.Without doubt for me the QF program is the worst in terms of using points
for anything outside of Australia,I stopped flying with them last year as to date other than upgrades when I have traveled in Australia I have been unable to use the points when I wanted to book anything international including hotels !

MikeFromTokyo

Definitely AA as others have said. And you can still redeem AA miles for those QF award tickets you want.

Mwenenzi

And for far less ff miles and less cash co-pay. The only difference is that with QF award flights can be available (but not always are) from 355 days out vs 330 days out with AA ff miles.

shuuy

I like AA - the SWU's if you hit EXP are very handy. The redemption rates for awards is much better than QF. However, the new introduction of EQD for status is pretty crap. Essentially a J ticket on QF is credited as 15-20% of the miles in dollars. So you might spend $8k on a J ticket SYD-LAX but only get "credit" for ~$1k of it (and you need $12k to make EXP + 100k miles). No thanks

If you fly QF, on AA the EQD (the $ amount that they now base status on) is pretty poor.

So how I prioritise
1. Get to Platinum One, first and foremost
2. After that, credit to AA whenever possible
3. Book on AA to go to the US (instead of flying QF, SQ, or CX)
4. Look for point awards using AA points on QF metal
5. Then if I can't find them, call up platinum one to try and force it

Dave Noble

If you buy a business class ticket r/t on Qantas for SYD-LAX , the earning would be 25% of 7488 miles each way

.25*2*7488 = 3,744

not anything like ~$1000

Of course - Book an $8k ticket on QF using the AA codeshare and earn a base of 40,000 miles and 8,000 EQDs. If holding status, the award mile earning would climb to a total of 56,000 as a gold member , 64,000 as a platinum member and 75,000 as an Executive Platinum member