20K miles per year can possibly get you Aegean Star Gold...if you buy qualifying fare classes of tickets.

However, your goal is a ticket from Brisbane to NZ. With this in mind, perhaps you should investigate Air new Zealand's program....I dont know much about it....study that program to see how many miles your trip will get you; and if you can reach your goal.

NZ's program absolutely sucks. Don't waste your time looking at it.

SFO
 

(1) What is your home airport? SFO
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? economy
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 25K
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? I have joined many many frequent flier programs but no major status with any of them...I am spread too thin from bargain hunting!! (LAN, EVA, AA, United, etc.)
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? (award redemption rates
(6) Which routes do you fly most often? Domestic and International about 2x per year
(7) Preferred Airlines-I usually go with the cheapest fare I can find internationally but domestically usually American or Southwest
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Pleasure

I would also love some info on credit cards that earn miles toward either the Star Alliance or Oneworld as a way of working toward free flights since I do not travel regularly for business. No annual fees would be preferable.

I get most of my miles through shopping as I don't travel for business. Most miles come from opening new credit cards. I book hotels usually thru Hotwire. I think there might be more favorable credit cards that I should leverage.

1) ORD is my home airport
2) economy fares
3) fly <25k per year but credit cards miles >60K
4) Lifetime Gold on AAdvantage
5) award redemption rate (can never use my miles on AA, hate the high taxes on routing thru LHR, and few European partners)
6) domestic
7) none
8) pleasure

My wife and I are about to start travelling a lot more. Currently we live in the US and are on BA and UA and haven't leveled up in either because we haven't flown much just occasionally back to the UK on the cheapest tickets possible

We are moving back to the UK and I figured a fresh start on BMI would have been perfect but it seems that would be a bad idea having read all about the buyover on this forum (unless I'm mistaken).

Here are some details.

(1) What is your home airport? ABZ
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? I am not familiar with the fare types, we buy the cheapest possible tickets available usually.
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? Probably 25-50K Occasionally more than 50K.
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? No.
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Primarily we are looking for lounge access, priority checkin, perks with baggage and upgrades
(6) Which routes do you fly most often? European (UK domestic) and a few international per year.
(7) Preferred Airlines Not sure right now, probably BMI, Lufthansa and United
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? I'm a travelling speaker for churches so I typically fly whatever is cheapest although I would be able to make sure I fly *A usually.

My biggest concern with going with one of the "easy elite status" programs is that because I'm going to be flying economy will I ever earn enough miles?

Asiana seemed the best as I'm confident we could hit 40K a year and it lasts 2 years and then renewal seems pretty easy. But I couldn't make head nor tails out of their chart for earning because I don't overly understand what type of ticket I usually get. I assume it's the cheapest and therefore almost all airlines seem to be 0% maybe 50% and that way I'll never hit 40K.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Again I'm not that fussed about spending miles although I'm sure I will... more bothered about quality of travelling.

::Edit::
I just looked at a couple of flights I have on United.

They are both L Class which appears to get 100% on Asiana so maybe I will be fine.
RDD-SFO-EWR-DUB - Return ~11914miles
RDD-SFO-FRA-DUS - Return ~11713miles

Looking at this to people agree with my deduction that Asiana would be the best? Turkish seem to award well too for this type of airfare.

Another BMI Orphan here looking for a home. Would really appreciate some guidance on where to put my (small) amount of business:

1) What is your home airport?LHR
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? Mixture mainly econ with odd business
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 25-50
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? No and it's unimportant to me
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Redemption long haul (London to Aussi/NZ
(6) Which routes do you fly most often - London - SE Asia and London NZ
(7) Preferred Airlines Singapore
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Both

BMI was perfect for me (Cash and miles, family membership and C/Card) What is key is getting a programme that I can earn non flying miles mainly through c/card spending (c£20k PA) that leads to redemptions in business at a reasonable rate.

Any help gratefully received

BMI "orphans", why don't you at least have a look towards One World? While I'm having absolutely no status with them, I can only assume that with the British supremacy with BA&BMI, it will be quite hard for any Non-OW program to compete, won't it?

With 25k or so miles in "el cheapo", most probably neither A3, nor TK or Asiana will get you *G (either no miles, or only 50%)

If you're mostly on Eco in Europe, check out LX, as they'll always get you into lounge with FTL-only already (as long as it's European destinations, however even some international ones like Montreal are included on LX) and often get better milage ratio. Also connecting in ZRH and GVA is very convenient. With LX as carrier and A3 as *A program, it will be possible to get *G with 38 flights in "super cheap" (30 flights on LX will get you FTL, too, but *G is, besides on LH-group, better) - less than 2000 £ or so..

(1) home airport: SFO
(2) I usually buy the cheapest fares through travelocity
(3) Travel about 30-40k per year.
(4) no status at present. I have Chase Sapphire card for points transfer.
(5) upgrades to Business/First
(6) 1-2 transpacific trips/3-4 domestic
(7) Prefer Singapore or Jet airways. Often fly Southwest domestic (bonus miles from CC).
(8) Mostly pleasure but 2-3 domestic work trips.

I have an upcoming trip booked from SFO to BOM in Continental "L" fare bucket. At this moment I care most about free baggages.

This trip will earn 20742 CO miles but only 50% miles through A3. I will make *S if I use Asiana.

I am trying to weigh following options
- forget A3 miles and just enjoy the *S I get through them. T
arget *G with an upcoming trip/MR
- Credit miles to CO and mileage run for *S. Easiest to top off mileage balance using Chase Sapphire.
- Get *S through Asiana without any mileage run cost. I don't know if I could ever redeem these Asiana miles.

Thanks for the help

A3*S and OZ*S are equally bad. You are better off going with A3 and getting *S, because then you are closer to *G than if you were with OZ...

AC, LH, or SK?
 

Here's my situation. Based in Switzerland, and collecting M&M miles on LX credit card and on SPG. I have SK *S which is pretty worthless.

I'm considering switching main FFPs from the current LX to somewhere else. In addition to LX (balance 40k) and SK (balance <20k), I also have an old AC account (balance 0).

My currently booked flights this year will earn me 30k on LX, and I estimate the total for 2012 will be 50k. Haven't checked what these flights would earn me on AC or SK, but I'm assuming it's about the same.

This means I will reach LX FTL, which will give me lounge access and +25% earning on LH Group flights, which is what I fly most often. However, LX requires 100k for *G, while AC requires only 35k and SK 45k.

So my question is: is it worth switching from LX to smething else to get *G? I haven't flown any of those 30k booked miles yet, so there's still time to switch.

(1) What is your home airport? BSL, ZRH (happy to go to SXB too)
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy ? 50% business, 50% full mile-earning economy.
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? 50k
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? What is it? SK *S.
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? Frequent upgrades on travel, free lounge access.
(6) Which routes do you fly most often Intra-Europe, 1-2 North America trips per year
(7) Preferred Airlines LX, LH, AC, SQ
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Both, and can choose airlines quite freely.

Kanaman: I would collect miles on M&M, you should be able to get FTL (35k miles, but in Europe your booking classes will most probably earn 750/2000 miles per segment, no matter the distance) - which will get you in lounges in Europe and Some in North America when flying LX, is (usually) ahead of Non-M&M-*G in the way of upgrades, and the 25% Exec. Bonus do give a nice boost. As well as the status being valid for 2 years+, it seems to be the most sensible choice for you. Of course when you fly AC and SQ it will only get you lounge access in Europe when departing, and on those airlines *G might be better, but with many short hauls in full fare eco/business, the most obvious choice A3 would earn relatively low amounts of miles (Unless you've 2-3hr flights in Europe, on which A3 would be very good on LX, while still bad on LH)

I would calculate carefully, if you know pretty much your whole flight schedule ahead, you could even try to do FTL first, and then gain A3 *G (for better&everywhere lounges) - some flights might even gain more miles on A3 compared to M&M even with Exec. Bonus (Basically, in LX C on European flights, everything over 1250 miles will get you more than 2500 miles, which is 2000+25% Exec on M&M)

That's good advice, YuropFlyer. In addition to the lower *G limit, one reason I would consider SK is I like their mileage bargains. Every month they have something 50% off. Haven't seen any mileage bargains on M&M for ages. However, the SK bargains are mostly ex-Scandinavia - made more sense when I lived there. Plus, given the way SK is hemorrhaging cash, they might not even be around for long.

Did I understand you correctly that on LX, M&M FTL gets higher priority on op-ups than Non-M&M-*G? Does that apply to other LH Group members as well? If true then I definitely stay with M&M.

Actually, there are so called "Meilenschnäppchen" on M&M

http://www.meilenschnaeppchen.de/

Several destinations (usually) discounted (funnily, right now there seems to be none, but it used to be several ones at a time, maybe it's because M&M will do huge "upgrade work" next week, which means some special offers have been disabled for the time being.

Yes, usually on LH group, FTL are ahead of *G in term of Op-Ups, BUT on LH (only, not LX.. at least that's what I know) and especially at their own hubs, op-ups are now happening first on fare class (ie, a M&M base in Y comes ahead of a HON in W) - so if you're buying full-fare economy tickets like Y or B, your chance of scoring an Op-Up on a overbooked flight is very big. Of course, it needs to be overbooked, and at outstations and at LX, status seems still to be the most important fact. (But higher booking classes can't hurt, either..) - so definitely not bad chances to score one if you're in a high booking class and do have some status.

[QUOTE=wtcmor;17902066]Hello my Flyer talk friends

I was wondering if you could help me work out which Star Alliance to join. I have filled out the info that most people give, however my situation is a little different. As I live in Australia, Star Alliance is not possible for domestic travel so I am Qantas Gold. However, I am just about to embark on the following journHong ey in July.

What I am aiming for is to get enough points to get a ticket from brisbane to new zealand, even if its one way. The RTW journey has some 1 qantas flight from SYD to Hong Kong which obviusly won't get me Star Alliance points but the rest is:

Hong Kong to Zurich on Swiss
Geneva to New York on Swiss
JFK to Sydney on United ( one flight number 819 via SFO)

I also have two internal flights with Air Canada - Boston to Quebec City and Toronto to Chicago.

Standard Info:

(1) What is your home airport? Brisbane
(2) What types of fares do you usually buy? Cheapest economy or business airfare I can find.
(3) How many miles do you usually fly each year? Around 20,000.
(4) Do you have any kind of status at present? None for Star Alliance Qantas Gold Frequnt Flyer
(5) What is most important to you in a FFP? For this its all about getting points, The Qantas Pub (oops Club!!!) keeps me very loyal to them
(6) Which routes do you fly most often? Mostly within Australia.
(7) Preferred Airlines? None.
(8) Do you travel for work or pleasure? Both - allthouogh no FF points awarded for work travel :td:

Thanks for the advice, any other thoughts from people?

Take a look at A3/TK/OZ - you might be able to get Star Alliance Gold with these carriers looking at your travel profile....

*G is (obviously) better than nothing..