best FF program for MEM?
 

(1) What is your home airport? MEM
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? cheapest available, via Travelocity, etc.
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 15-25K
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? None
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? top priority: Good award redemption rates; next priority: upgrades
(6) Which routes do you fly most often? US Domestic
(7) Preferred Airlines
None
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?)
Half work, half pleasure

Thanks for any suggestions!

which *A FF scheme
 

I am now using Miles and More from LH and CSA OK Plus. I think LH has pretty hard elite status conditions and pretty bad earnings.

(1) What is your home airport?
VIE, BTS
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ?
cheapest available
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year?
25-45k
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present?
None
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP?
Good mile earnings and redemptions (for this OK Plus is much better than M&M). Possible upgrades.
(6) Which routes do you fly most often? European Union
(7) Preferred Airlines
None
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?)
Half work, half pleasure, but for work I buy my tickets and can choose everything.

I am starting to think, that LH M&M is not the best option for me. OK+ has worse availability and VIE is mainly *A domain anyway.

I've been thinking recently about joining a *A program due to the fact that, especially in Europe, I'll no doubt be flying here and there from time to time. To be honest, however, I'm not all that much of a frequent flyer at present, but do hope that to change!

1) What is your home airport? (MEL)
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (Economy)
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (<20K)
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (No, only Bronze QFF)
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? (free lounge access, good award redemption rates, Frequent upgrades on travel)
(6) Which routes do you fly most often (Australia domestic, hope to travel to NZ possibly a few times a year from 2012+)
(7) Preferred Airlines (Emirates, Singapore, European carriers, AirNZ)
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (pleasure)

While I'm more likely to be using AirNZ more often than other *A airlines, I mainly want to join this group because of the large amount of European airlines linked with *A. So, what would you suggest. Should I join a European airline or AirNZ?

Which *A FFP for me?
 

I'm considering a career move that would have me and my family flying back and forth between the Southeastern US and Southeast Asia. Our most common airports would be ATL and BHM on the US side and SIN and CGK on the SE Asia side.

Where should we bank our miles for *A flights? It doesn't necessarily have to be an American based carrier though that would be a plus due to the credit card sign up bonuses.

2 questions:
- Would you be travelling paid Y or C (or F)?
- What would you be wanting to get out of the status you'll earn (lounge access; upgrades; or access to redemption awards to burn the miles (and within redemption are you willing to pay to travel premium classes or you just want a Y seat for little cost?)

The easy answer to your question is usually join the FFP of the airline you'll use the most (guess UA?)

however:
If you fly paid C or F (or even Y with US carriers) you can consider bmi DC while they are still around (at least 2011 is secure).
- low Gold threshold at 38000 miles (2 Y returns would requalify for gold)
- lounge access even in the US (if 2 are Gold in the family that can put 4 of you in the longe)
- low redemption amounts needed, however with fuel surcharges which tend to pile up vs what you can get on US carriers.
- family account, good if you have kids to manage their miles in as a single bucket.

GBM

We would definitely be using paid Y tickets. Given the fact that the flights are so long, the most important thing we're looking for is upgrades. Lounge access would be nice too. And when we use the miles to redeem flights we'll be redeeming C (maybe F) tickets.

The problem with selecting the airline that I fly most is there's not really an airline I fly most. In the past I've flown DL, SQ, MH, and CX. I've never flown the same airline twice, and I would have very little control over which airline we would fly with.

Best Star Alliance program for Indian resident
 

Hi guys - appreciate if you could help me, i'm a bit of a weird flyer... and because I've just moved to India about a year ago, with a new travel schedule, I'm kind of starting from scratch!

(1) What is your home airport? DEL (Delhi)
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Business Class, class D
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? actual flying: 3 RT to the US each year, plus a little more travel around, so around 50,000 miles per year, i think?
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? Right now no status on non-Indian airlines (none are yet part of any alliance)
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? 1) Lounge access, 2) Upgrades on travel, 3) Priority service
(6) Which routes do you fly most often? Usually India-US and back. I like star alliance because between Swiss & LH, I can have a 1-connection anywhere, and there's direct on CO for NYC.
(7) Preferred Airlines: outside of Indian airlines, LH, LX i suppose
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?) Mix, but I can usually choose by airlines, usually fly business

So if you can't control which airline you fly, how is attaining status (and planning your travel accordingly) that will allow you upgrades anything close to remotely possible? You're basically at the mercy of the luck of the draw, right?

For that matter, upgrades that are useful for longhaul are only going to show up if you fly a LOT within *A- 100,000 miles (and a lot of deep-discount Y fares by non-US carriers like LH or SQ won't help with those as much as UA's will- often those deep discount fares on a non-US carrier only credit at 50%, or even 0%). Do you project that you will be doing that much flying?

I'd probably be looking at programs that were most favorable in terms of mileage accumulation (credit card, RDM bonuses) first and foremost, because that's really the only thing you're likely to get out of the deal if you have no ability to preferentially choose a carrier to maximize status- large piles of miles that you can redeem to fly in something other than Y. That probably means that your choices are US and CO/UA, realistically. (The problem with BMI DC is that if it's assimilated into the LH Borg collective after 2011... well, LH M&M would be a terrible program for you. High award costs, fuel surcharges, high mileage thresholds to gain status unless you fly a lot, not much love for deep discount Y. The only upside I can think of to M&M is that if you were willing to pay a significant mileage premium, you'd have access to SQ award inventory nobody else in *A has, outside of SQ KF members, which would be handy flying out of SIN/CGK.)

Yeah, I guess I do need a program that favors accumulation. Looks like I need to choose between US, CO, and UA.

If your concern is INTL upgrades, US is out since they don't fly to Asia, *A upgrade program requires Y/B fare which you might as well paid for discount Z ticket. CO is merging with UA so basically down to UA.

Your choice seems pretty simple to me :D

Seriously, sign up both CO and UA, then sign up each of their credit card and get their sign up bonus. At the end of the year, both programs will merge so you get twice the sign up bonus.

One redeeming quality with US is they have some ridiculous miles purchase promotions which you can purchase enough miles for a biz award ticket for < $2000. Don't know how long this party will last though.

Since you'll be flying in Y until you have the upgrades, having status on UA offers the additional benefit of E+ when you fly on UA metal. You cannot get the free bump to E+ even if you are Star Gold on any other airline.

All the more reason to focus your *A miles on UA.

(1) What is your home airport? LHR, PEK or YYZ -- I go to school in LHR, family is in YYZ, bf in PEK!
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? discounted Y
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 30-60k
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? *A silver
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? good award redemption rates, lounge access, maybe upgrades
(6) Which routes do you fly most often LHR-PEK, or LHR - HKG, HKG/PEK - yyz, YYZ-LHR
(7) Preferred Airlines -- none right now
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? for pleasure...

In this case you can't strategize too much. The best strategy would be (1) become familiar with all three major alliances, (2) join one airline in each alliance, and (3) credit your miles to this airline whenever you fly.

For example, let us say you are flying CX. You look it up and find that it is a member of OneWorld alliance. You have previously selected AA as your frequent flyer program in OneWorld. So you give your AA ff number to CX.

That's some great advice. I was thinking banking with AA for OneWorld since they allow lifetime status, DL for SkyTeam since I have about 50K banked with them already, and maybe UA/CO for *A.