Miles & More vs MileagePlus and others
 

(1) What is your home airport? IAD / BWI
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Economy
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 25k-50k
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? M&M Silver
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Lounge access, good award redemption, priority services
(6) Which routes do you fly most often? US-Europe (2-3x/year); US-Asia (1-2x year); some travel to South America and Africa
(7) Preferred Airlines: Swiss, Lufthansa
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?) Travel for work; can choose airline but not class of service

I am new to FF schemes - previously, flew several different alliances, but primarily *Alliance. Formerly based in Europe, currently out of the US. This year, started banking miles with Lufthansa Miles&More and just hit 35k miles/Frequent Traveller status (* Alliance Silver) within last six months of travel. I'll be traveling roundtrip JFK-NRT in December, and that's it for this calendar year.
Once I got Silver, I started investigating and it seemed like MileagePlus would be a better option to qualify for * Alliance Gold, but with the changes announced this week - would MileagePlus, Aegean, Turkish or Asiana be the better option?

I did a bit more reading and looks like I can transfer KrisFlyer points into velocity?

Yes. At a ratio of 1.55 to 1. Was a better transfer ratio (1.35) some time ago.
Some VA ffp folk transfer to SQ Krisflyer for more award options

why not?

you log onto your 480-Plus-Points UA account and use those points to upgrade someone else (yourown ticket accrualing to another FF) ?

It's too risky as if you log in to your booking when your MileagePlus account is open ( logged in ), during booking the flight, viewing it via manage my booking, or checking-in on a web browser or the app; the system would auto-assign the MileagePlus number to the traveler matching the name of the traveler.

If you want to use them and credit miles to another FFP, you need to be super-cautious when using the UA website.

Hi all..
1) What is your home airport? Currently LON but moving to ORD in a few months but will live in AUS or SFO
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? whatever i can get my hands on. But 80% is in J
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? usually 30-70k but will not be able to travel for 1 year due to visa restrictions when i move over
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? BA GOLD. DL platinum
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? mileage earnings and benefits with airlines
(6) Which routes do you fly most often Currently mainly TATL but always worldwide
(7) Preferred Airlines Oneworld
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Pleasure

Although i use oneworld mainly i feel coming over to the US will change my flying habits, i have a flight with UA in P in the next few weeks and as its a hub in ORD looking at UA for FF purposes as will be in ORD for 6 months. Any insights welcome. I should also mention i have done UAstatus match a few years ago but didnt use it as OW came up with a matching fare.. so statusmatch with UA is out.

TIA
:)

Bolding the sentence that I am replying to: I have done this countless times - buying discounted economy tickets and doing an airport upgrade to business on AI, and never have I been credited the status miles / award miles for business and always for the class that I had originally purchased. I am very surprised that you were credited for the upgraded class - I guess they fixed a loophole.

Thanks - went for Aegean as the redemptions seem good value, esp in Asia.

(1) What is your home airport? IAD
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy? Y for domestic, J and F for international (all leisure, I usually just buy whenever there's a good deal)
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 25k-50k
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? AS MVP Gold, AA Platinum
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Priority services, free lounge access, good award redemption availability and rates
(6) Which routes do you fly most often? International
(7) Preferred Airlines Oneworld
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Pleasure

Hello. I'm looking to join *A program which will have easiest qualification criteria. My main program is OW, but would like to attain a status with *A program for when I do travel with them. TIA!

Relocating to Auckland
 

Hi all. Thanks for your advice on moving to a new alliance.

(1) What is your home airport? (AKL)
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (Some business, some premium economy)
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (65/70k)
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (Delta SkyMiles Gold)
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? (Priority services when flying the airline, free lounge access, friendly toward kids, etc.)
(6) Which routes do you fly most often (Domestic New Zealand, Transpacific)
(7) Preferred Airlines (Air New Zealand)
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Both, and can choose airlines)


Am currently based in Amsterdam and fly around 70k miles a year on KLM and Delta. Relocating to Auckland in January. Will be flying business class roundtrip to Europe once a year alone, twice a year to the east coast of the US in premium economy with wife and toddler, three times monthly in economy between Auckland and Wellington on ANZ for work. Have already booked the three of us on individual business class tickets AMS>SIN>AKL on Singapore Air.

Relocating to Auckland
 

How long will you be living in NZ? A few months/years or for ever? This will be important

Compared to other ffp's, including the downgrading of USA ffp's, you will find the Air NZ ffp is poor and bad for earn to burn.
Some low cost Air NZ fares can earn nothing to ffp's other than Air NZ Airpoints. UA ffp may be a small limited exception.

And there are limited Skyteam airlines with international flights to/from NZ.
Maintaining DL (Skyteam) status will be a challenge. But the DL ff miles do not expire, unlike many other ffp's
Any ff miles with other ffp's?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Airport
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_Airport
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellin...tional_Airport

You will get lounge access by class of service(business), mid/top level status or paid Koru lounge/club membership (if flying AirNZ).
Does/can your employer pay for Air NZ Koru club membership?
All domestic flights in NZ are economy. Business class is not offered by any airline.
For your ~45 minute commuter runs AK WLG you have the option of NZ or JQ. JQ has limited service and credits ff points(miles) but no SC's to the QF ffp. In AU JQ flights without a bundle, earn nothing, but in NZ all JQ flights earn a few QF points.

Getting to USA, Virgin Australia VA is a DL (non alliance) ff partner. So you could fly AKL-SYD(VA) and then SYD-LAX(DL)

SQ is also a VA partner (and 20% part owner). With SQ & VA ff miles can be moved from 1 ffp to the other ffp, albeit at a poor 1:1.55 rate. (Was 1:1.35)

Thanks for the detailed response, Mwenenzi We'll be in Auckland for a few years at least.

I've done a bit of research and was going to go United until the recent updates to their tier qualifications. Looked into ANZ and agree that their program is generally pretty poor. I've since gotten a little more creative and am considering KrisFlyer and Aegean. As I'll be buying a seat for my toddler, I like Aegean's pooling. And our long-haul flights as a family would also qualify my wife for at least silver.

In NZ many people get extra NZ airpoints from credit card spend (as is now the with many frequent flyer(spender) programs)

VA (SQ partner) also has family pooling.

Aegean status has an own airline flight requirement OR collect double the tier miles
https://en.aegeanair.com/milesandbon...rogram/silver/
Just need to crunch the numbers.

Be mindful of expiry Miles/Points that Do and Don't Expire. Click to open the wiki.
Same ffp's have a hard expiry. including SQ Krisflyer

Where to credit SQ flights?
 

(1) What is your home airport? (SFO, LAX, MCO, etc.) LHR
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? (C, F, Y, etc.) Generally Y, sometimes J
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? (<25K, 25k-50k, >50k) Less than 25k most years
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? (UA Silver, M&M Senator etc) BA Silver
(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.)
Priority services like seat selection and lounge access
(6) Which routes do you fly most often (US Domestic, Transpacific etc)
Intra Europe, mostly to scandinavia with the odd long haul trip
(7) Preferred Airlines
Any
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? (Can you chooose your airlines, class of service?)
Leisure traveller

Morning,
We travel to Australia every 18 months or so, and like to try and rack up points / status if we can. Would normally choose Qatar from Scandinavia where a J return gets us straight to Oneworld Sapphire, but this year prices weren’t great, so we’re doing SQ ARN-CPH(SK operated)-SIN-MEL

Where would we be best off crediting? I have Eurobonus as I got to Scandinavia a reasonable amount, but by my calculations the trip will net 35000 ish basic points so not enough for status in star alliance. Are there any other programs that would serve better? Redemptions are always good but I’m more bothered about lounge etc. Happy to do some mileage runs / qualifying flights in Europe to add it up.

Hi all,

2 adults and 2 kids flying BHX FRA EWR SJU / SJU EWR BRU BHX all in P.

Tickets are all on UA stock, operating carriers are LH LH UA / UA UA SN. None of us has status or miles in any *A programme.

I had considered crediting the miles to EI to get them over to BA (our principal family miles stash) but the kids can’t join that so those potential miles would be wasted. But am I missing something - is there a *A option where kids can earn plus we can pool miles, or a quick route to status? Being a *A noob I’d hate to make a rookie mistake.

Thanks, all...