Which Star Alliance FF Program Is Best?
 

A buddy of mine has some questions for you road warriors.

He flies form the USA to Bangkok two or three times a year but otherwise does little flying. He is currently a member of the Eva and Southwest FF programs and usually flies Eva to Bangkok but is considering changing to Star Alliance carriers.

Can he, for example, fly on Asianna but deposit his miles into United Mileage Plus and then redeem them for a flight on Singapore or Thai Airways?

If this scenario works what's the best frequent flyer program for him to join?

Could he join the Continental program and apply for the Continetal credit card giving lots of miles and then after the Continental and United programs merge, then apply for a United credit card giving lots more free miles?

Are there any deadlines that we should be aware of or any othe rinsights you may have?

Thanks! :)

Yes.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/star-...post-here.html

Start there and if you need more advice continue there. It is a font of knowledge in comparing the programs relative to the relative desires of benefits and such for folks.
Yes.

Before this year, Mileage Plus was pretty much the clear, easy answer benefit-wise - if any of the rumored changes are true, it takes a major drop in standing relative to other *A FF programs.

If your goal is to fly on OZ, SQ and TG then crediting to UA holds very little value, even prior to the rumored changes were announced. The thread I linked above has quite a bit of valuable discussion from the *A forum that really is useful for such discussions.

I wouldn't play it this way.

I would get both cards before the programs merge. Then, transfer the miles or wait for the balances to merge.

Ask your friend to consider BMI Diamond club. It has excellent earning and redemption schemes and in many occasions it is much better than UA or CO FFP.

This is the worst advice I have heard in a while. BD is bankrupt, about to be sold by LH, and probably will leave *A as soon as they get sold. If they leave *A, then their miles are useless unless you want to go to some obscure location

But why would they leave *A if LH bought them I would think they would stay in *A as LH makes sure its airlines it has a stake in/partners are in the *.

LH currently owns them.
LH is trying to sell them. If LH sells them, they will drop their *A membership unless another *A member buys them (unlikely since the current airlines that seem interested/likely are IAG, AF-KLM for slots, EI, and VS.

Oopsies, mis-read.

Eva will be joining *A soon so if your friend is happy with the benefits BR provides then he should stick with it because each airline still treats its own elites better than other *G in term of upgrades, priority seating, bonus miles etc, it might be important to him since he flies Eva the most. But if all your friend want is miles and is happy with the regular *G benefits, then he can shop around.

I'm currently a BD*S but I want to pull out of BD (already used up all my miles). As I can't always choose who I'm flying with (sorry, but I prefer OW) I will need to have a *S card and of course I want to make the most out of it. I've read about the Aegean card on FT and I just want to make sure I understand this correctly. I've got a flight coming up from LHR to DUR, this is roughly 6000 Miles one way and as I will fly in J the actual Miles accrued will be just short of 24000. Does that mean I can get to *G with them in just one return flight?

From what I understand, yes.

In my opinion, I think UA MP is one of the better one for mileage accrual. If you reach Premiere Executive level, you can double your miles every time you fly. And you get mileage accrual with all classes of fare. Unlike many of the Asian carriers, they do not allow you to accrue miles with the cheap fare class. That's the reason why I drop Krisflier and EVA. I made 1 million miles within 7 years flying from SFO - SIN and SGN.

I think a bigger question is also what class of service as well? If Y, then OZ might be a better bet; if F/C, then BD/M&M are probably better bets and they offer the best accrrual for premium cabin miles by far, in addition, M&M has agreements with SQ and is the only other program besides SQ's KF that can redeem for 77W F and C on 345's, 77W's, and 388's.