Posting on behalf of a non-FT friend who is currently stuck with a bunch of worthless South African Airways miles! Hoping you folks can point him in the right direction.

Thanks in advanced for the help folks!

edit: nvm

edit: nvm

frequent flyer program (FFP)
 

1. What is most important to you in a frequent flyer program (FFP)?
upgrades, priority services, baggage allowance, good award redemption rates, better award access, lounge access, etc.
>>> Reply:priority services

2. How many miles do you usually fly each year? How many flights/sectors?
less than 25000 miles, 50000+ miles and 20-25 flights, etc.
>>> Reply: less than 25000 miles,

3. What fare class do you usually buy?
first, business, premium economy, economy
>>> Reply:economy

4. Are you able to choose your airlines and/or class of service? Do you travel for work and/or pleasure?
>>> Reply: LUFTHANSA,PLEASURE

5. Which routes do you fly most often?
transatlantic, domestic USA, intra-Asia, etc.
>>> Reply:domestic EUROPE, transatlantic

6. What is your home airport?
>>> Reply: GDN

7. Do you have status in any FFP? What is it? How miles do you have banked in each FFP, if any?
>>> Reply: NONE

8. What are your preferred airlines, if any?
>>> Reply:LUFTHANSA

Maybe Miles and More if you can hit 30 segments on LH group flights. Other than that, most frequent flyer programs that have easier qualification levels do not credit LH discount economy well, in fact many fares earn 0% on LH, and 0-25% on other LH group airlines.

But, what about SAS. They fly to a lot of places from GDN, and you can connect to anywhere. They credit really well to my program Asiana, which you might fly enough for *G. Intra Europe economy even in the cheapest fares on SAS earns 100%, and transatlantic is at least 50%. United transatlantic is also at least 50% in most programs.

I didn't get a response, so I am going to assume that I should sign up for United MileagePlus (no plans to fly United, though), then use any miles earned there to book EVA Air flights to TPE.

Would anyone confirm that this is the best way to do it? Much thanks!

Don't forget that UA gives you RDM based on how much the ticket is. And make sure that the BR class of ticket you get gives you UA EQM. Go to www.wheretocredit.com to check. I was teetering between OZ and SQ. I live in the USA so I will be stuck on UA part of the time. SQ gives 100% of miles flown (except for basic economy) while OZ gives 50% on the cheaper buckets. So I guess I'm moving to SQ KF then.

Actually, UA would be the worst choice as you need to fly them for any real benefit, and 25k won't get much. Look at Asiana, as in 24 months you could get close to the miles needed to achieve *A Gold, and keeping it, with a couple PE BR LAX/SFO-TPE flights in 24 months, one a year, plus a little extra flying. You don't need to fly OZ.

Thank you all so much! I will look into these programs.

Which member program should I use?
 

I live in Istanbul, I'm not a frequent flyer, but I aim to become one.

I plan to fly:

Turkish Airlines program creates too much tax usually so reward tickets don't really make sense. Accumulating miles to get higher status is not easy either.

I have read around the internet that United Airlines program is most advantageous, especially when you're not a U.S. resident. Many others suggest Asiana Airlines because attaining higher status requires much less miles, and you get 2 years to collect those miles instead of the usual 1. A lot of people are fans of Aegean Airlines as well. Their mile requirement for higher status is low as well but they introduced the requirement of 2 Aegean flights for silver and 4 for gold in addition to the mile requirement or you need double the amount of miles. Now 2 flights on Aegean is attainable for someone living in Istanbul, quick flights to Athens in the summer seem cheap as well. Greek islands with Athens layover are a tad expansive and would be overshadowed by sea transportation.

From what I gather, *A silver status is not much use. Gold is the only one that looks useful to me. Attaining *A Gold seem most possible on Asiana (low miles needed and 2 years allowed) followed by Aegean (low miles needed but need to fly Aegean 4 times which is quite burdensome).

So first aim is attempting to gain status. Secondary is reward tickets. Turkish is not good at all with those. Asiana would probably be not much use for me in this regard. United might be useful but I heard there could be extra fees for flights originating outside USA? Not sure about rewards with Aegean. After doing 4 flights with them to get *A Gold status, you wouldn't really need any reward flights to Greece. They fly to Paris etc but doing a layover in Athens to go to Paris just seems off.

What should I do? Thanks

p.s. I signed up to ask this question, I've been reading around here for the last two days. I wanted to pick an anonymous username that was related to cities or airlines etc and this one was available after trying a few others. So now we have a funny situation with this username and looking for any program that is not in accordance with it :D

Update: One other thing that I've learned, and I hope not to regret sharing this with the world as so far it has been a piece of information that is locally known in Turkey but not shared in English, is that you can buy Turkish Airlines *G status in a somewhat complicated way. Turkish has 4 tiers on its program Classic, Classic Plus, Elite, Elite Plus. Both Elite and Elite Plus are *G. And if you have Elite Plus status you can buy 3 Elite giveaways for 40,000 miles. So, naturally, some people cash in on this. It was previously known to me that some people online sold Elite status for 150 to 250 dollars a few years ago. After doing the research in the original posting and posting it yesterday, I recalled this situation and look into it, whether there were people online still doing this. I found and contacted someone and was offered Elite status for the steep price of 1300$. They would probably drop that price by 300 at least but I did not enquire further and told them to have a nice life with their steep price.

Still open to advice.

First of all,well done for doing your homework!
Then, you can redeem your miles for any *A airline, so earning your miles with A3 would allow to redeem wherever you please. A3's customer service is excellent and redeeming is a breeze, unlike TK. Keep however in mind that A3 only allows one connection on award tickets.

Check carefully the status earning on A3, since first you have to earn silver, and then gold.

Where to put low amount of *A miles
 

(1) What is your home airport? DEN
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy? Economy, intl J discount
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 50-75k, but about ~10k on *Alliance carriers a year
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? AS MVPG
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? good award redemption rates for expensive routes or international business class, possibly looking for a program where I can put miles into my account from AMEX or Chase cards to use for expensive routes, but most likely will look for TPAC or TATL J flights
(6) Which routes do you fly most often? DEN-West Coast, or Den-NYC, International
(7) Preferred Airlines? AS, B6
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Primarily pleasure, but for work occasionally, airline dependent on price, but being in DEN, UA is usually the most likely (Y)

As you live in USA point 5 leads to UA
Hard to get miles into an non USA Star Alliance ffp with a USA credit card, but look in credit card forums. May be some

(1) What is your home airport? (SFO, LAX, MCO, etc.)LON
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (C, F, Y, etc.)Either cheapest Y or sometimes cheapest J
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k)150k
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (UA Silver, M&M Senator etc)UA 1K and MM so *A lifetime Gold
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? (Frequent upgrades on travel, priority services when flying the airline, good award redemption rates, free lounge access, etc.)Good award earning and redemption.
(6) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific etc)LON to SFO, LON to HKG, LON to Europe
(7) Preferred AirlinesNone
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?)Trips to USA are for work, others for pleasure.

I find I go well over the 100k miles to earn UA 1K and either hit, or just miss 150K. The two extra GPUs are not much use to me. So I'm looking for another *A airline to which I can credit non-UA flights which will offer decent earn and burn rates. Because I'm already *G, that is of no relevance.