Based in Korea. How useful is Kris Flyer vs Asia Miles?
 

Will be spending more time in Korea in the future. Currently using Kris Flyer and Asia Miles. If you had to pick between the two, which of these programs would be more useful for travel throughout Asia, Europe and to the US from Seoul?

I tried looking at redemption options on SQ website. Was met with flight unavailable in red pretty much all the time. Must be me not knowing what to enter? Asia Miles looked ok to Europe and US. But I don't know if this is a rip off with partner airlines or not.

I need to use my card points and these two airline programs are transfer partners. Prefer this than redeeming for shopping vouchers.

Thanks

Are there any other transfer partners? Neither are particularly good programs, and SQ just went through the 2nd devaluation in as many years. KE Skypass is much better, for example. But if you have a spouse/ traveling companion, Asia Miles has good companion awards, and also some value can be had out of the distance-based multi-carrier awards for very long distances.

Hi, unfortunately not. These are the only two transfer mile partners. The only other way I can use my rewards points is with the bank's retail partners.

I have miles in both and need to use my remaining balance hence my question on which of the two programs to transfer out to.

How many hundred thousands are we talking about? If more than 300k and you have a spouse/ traveling companion, I'd transfer to Asia Miles and get a super long multi-carrier award or companion awards respectively. If 200k or less, I'd transfer to SQ and blow it on Suites just for the experience. Not much value to be had in Krisflyer these days, other than *A awards to Africa, or from Africa to South America in Business.

I dont recommend sq.
sq keeps devaluing miles and worse...their premium class awards are really really hard to come by.

im no longer putting miles into sq for those two reasons.

With devalution being popular for both KF and AM, would one be better than the other out of Korea?

My thinking is at least Asiana Airlines is a member of Star Alliance - means I can use KF miles?

Whereas for AM use, I would have less options as I won't be able to use either Asiana or Korean Airlines?

If you want to judge what star alliance availablity is like out of Korea, look at United Mileage Plus for seats, then call SQ and ask, to check if the seats are available (and whether correlated with what UA can see). . SQ's online availability tool for partner awards is OK, but I suspect that it still may be missing things, so calling still makes sense.

Subject to availablility, out of Korea, you can of course use Asiana with KF miles. Also towards Europe you could use connecting flights on the likes of CA, LH, LO and TK. TG might even be a possiblity, it seems borderline for backtracking or not. Towards US of course there is NH, UA and AC.