I am actually surprised on how you can make Platinum by $855 PQD...

How??

I spent $3,314, but only got $855 PQD because a lot of the partner flights were booked on partner airlines so ineligible for PQD.

• LAS-SFO-ZRH-MAD and back on UA & LX (14,226 PQM, paid $415, booked on LX site - got $42 PQD)
• LAS-SFO-NRT and LAX-LAS on UA, CAN-NRT-OKA-HND-LAX on NH (17,317 PQM, paid $812, got $52 PQD)
• LAS-SFO on UA, SFO-AKL-WLG, AKL-LAX on NZ (14,020 PQM, paid $498, got $280 PQD)
• LAS-LAX-NRT, NRT-DEN-LAS on UA, NRT-KUL-NRT on NH (19,084 PQM, paid $469, got $350 PQD)
• HND-CTS-NRT on NH (1,535 PQM, paid $197, zero PQD - booked on ANA website)
• LAS-IAD-LAS on UA and IAD-ADD-CPT-ADD-IAD on ET (24,990 PQM, paid $923, booked on ET site - got $130 PQD)

That explains why.

I asked this because I want to lower my PQD even further (mine was $3,578 last year as 1K).

Hi there,
Bit of background, Im BA Silver and regularly fly to the US (SFO) and normally I can get a BA flight but they've recently become really expensive that they are almost always more expensive than *A. I used be to *A with BMI but all my points/status went to BA when they bought BMI out.

I have a ton of miles on BA and about 60k on Asiana but Im thinking of using someone else (like united) to offer me more flexibility on burning the miles, Any comments?

(1) What is your home airport? LHR
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Transatlantic Business (company bulk tickets) , Europe Economy
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 30-50k
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? BA Silver and Asiana Gold, Not flown *A for 2yrs, Marriott Titanium gives me UA Silver
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Earn/Burn ratios and secondly lounge access
(6) Which routes do you fly most often Transatlantic 2x/yr, European 10-20times
(7) Preferred Airlines BA,UA
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? business primarily


Im currently thinking of moving to UA as the earn burn rations appear better than OZ (UA give me approx 20k miles whereas OZ only 10k). OZ need 80k for a TransA Biz seat, whereas UA appear to be "in flux" at the moment..

Am i still better off with Asiana?

Any thoughts? thanks

Best A* FF for sharing
 

A Couple of family members are travelling soon from London to Sydney on A* (Lufthansa, Swiss, Singapore) in business class. They’ll rack up some miles but nothing huge.

I live in Australia and can convert MR points to Thai, New Zealand or Singapore FF schemes.

Would any of these programmes allow us to pool all our points together, similar to the BA household account?

I will hold on for now.

It is unknown how UA dynamic award will look like. But it is presumed to harm those targeting long-haul business (as a countermeasure against Chase.

FWIW - what you have now is perfect. When you get the right staffs, you can get E+ and lounge access. So yes - I won't fully commit to UA at this moment.

Also - going with UA may create a negative impact to you. Because you have Premier Silver for no obligation, by attempting to earn Premier Gold, you forfeit your Silver benefit practically.

Having the pooling feature is good. But a generous expiration date policy is better, as it can keep the miles practically lifetime.

(1) What is your home airport? IAH, AUS
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Economy, occasionally Premium Economy/Business for long-haul international
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 25-30k on average, varies from 10k-50k for specific years
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? None
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Checked baggage when flying economy, upgrades to business if possible, lounges
(6) Which routes do you fly most often US Domestic, US-Europe/India, US-Southeast Asia/Australia/New Zealand (less common than the others)
(7) Preferred Airlines Not exactly preferred but I usually take United for domestic, Lufthansa for transatlantic
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Pleasure, vacations and visiting family/friends who are all over the world

I have been a member of United MileagePlus for about 9 years now, but just emptied my mileage balance redeeming award tickets. Just as I started more regularly hitting 25k miles flown in a year they added the PQD spending requirement which I usually don't hit. So before I start earning miles again on revenue flights I wanted to check if there's a better option for me in terms of being able to get Star Alliance status. I am also worried about United switching to the dynamic award pricing as I rely on using my miles for long-haul international during peak period travel (mainly when I visit family in India during school holidays)

inputfail Welcome to FT
A recent thread that may be of interest--->https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/sas-...am-credit.html

FF miles are not equal to earn or burn, but many credit cards transfer to different ffp's at the same rate.
Same ffp's have carrier imposed surcharges (=100% airline profit) for awards
Almost all frequent flyer programs are morphing into frequent spender programs.

The grass in not always greener on the other side

Thanks for the link! So basically you're saying to consider earning status and redeeming miles for awards separately? I have stuck with UA MileagePlus for this long because they don't pass on carrier surcharges for partner flights. Are you recommending that it's not worth it to switch then? It does seem that the airlines don't especially care much about economy fliers with their FF programs nowadays, encouraging premium tickets and credit card sign ups. It makes sense, I was just hoping to hold out for a little bit longer with the old school notion of earning status from long flights because of my flying habits :(

Earning ff status always goes alongside earning ff miles.
And yes airlines seem to consider low budget economy flyers of little value.
FFP's are good profit centres for airline. They make a lot of $$$ selling ff miles to credit cards, hotels, rental car business, airlines, etc. Who then award (bribe) their customers with ff miles.

No. 25K is bare minimum. Some programs require more.

A FFP is simply not designed for your travel pattern.

Check Asiana , Turkish or Aegean if you can credit to their programs

(1) What is your home airport? DPS
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Economy & Business (flights longer than 4 hrs)
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 25-35k
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? TK *G
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Redeeming my saved miles
(6) Which routes do you fly most often: DPS to multiple other cities in Asia (SIN, NRT, BOM, etc)
(7) Preferred Airlines: SQ, TG
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Work

I'm a *G with TK for 8 years I believe. Moved a few years ago to Asia. TK is a pain in the *ss redeeming miles for flights (need to visit local offices) so I'm looking for another *A to start saving my miles there and get a *G soon again. Which *A in Asia should I get, which ones are easy (online) to redeem miles for flights and also upgrades online on other *A flights from partner airlines?
Have still another 100k miles on TK to redeem and it's hard to buy anything online in their system or upgrade other partners...
Or are there any people here who want some miles in exchange for miles on another *A??

Hello,

I currently have TK silver after being downgraded after a status match. I'm heading to Australia for Christmas and am struggling to get a good deal on OW, but *A is throwing up some good fares. At the moment I'm looking at the routing below in J:
Lufthansa: Milan > Frankfurt > Seoul
Asiana: Seoul > Syndey
ANA: Sydney > Tokyo
Swiss: Tokyo > Zurich > Milan

Where am I best to credit to to get as close as possible to *A Gold?

(1) What is your home airport? (SFO, LAX, MCO, etc.) LHR
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (C, F, Y, etc.) Y short haul and J when a good deal is on long haul
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k) <25k at the moment
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (UA Silver, M&M Senator etc) BA silver - expiring March '20
(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.) Lounge access
(6) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific etc) Europe short haul and 1 or 2 long haul which could be anywhere
(7) Preferred Airlines On *A, not bothered
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?) Just leisure now