Ethiopian Airlines - best star alliance program to credit P class miles to?
 

I'll preface my query by saying I'm mostly a "One World" flyer and seldom fly Star Alliance on long haul but sometimes, depending on price, use them for short domestic/regional flights within EU/N. America/SE Asia/and now, after the demise of Jet Airways, in India.

However, this year I find myself flying 2 * BOM - VFA (Victoria Falls airport, Zimbabwe) round trips on Ethiopian Airlines in their business promo P class. I don't see myself flying Ethiopian in the foreseeable future. Additionally, I have 3 economy flights, within N. America on Air Canada and a few domestic economy flights in India on Air India.

Assuming that the primary source of star points would be the 2* BOM - VFA business class round trips, what Star Alliance program other than Ethiopian's own program would you suggest to maximise the earnings. Given my infrequent flying on star, I wouldn't be able to hold/retain any status on Star; hence the objective is to maximise miles earning with the aim to buy/upgrade UA/LH/LX domestic/regional flights.

I understand that many star alliance airlines don't credit Ethiopian's P class miles and hence this query.

I would be chaffed if any of the suggested airlines status match QR/BA/9W - I'm top tier with each of them.

Thank you in advance for your time and wisdom.

For the P fares on ET, you only have 2 choices of where to credit them. ET's own Sheba Miles program and Air China's Phoenix Miles. Of the two Sheba Miles is considerably more attractive unless you live in China.

Sheba Miles is 30k miles round trip for intra-regional in North America or Europe plus taxes, which are very minimal on UA flights. They offer one way awards at 75% of round trip price. It's extremely unlikely that you'd be using the miles for upgrades since upgrades in the Star Alliance Upgrade program are only on Y and B fares (for the most part) and those are frequently as much or more than a P or Z fare itself.

With regards to your other flights, you can check a site: www.wheretocredit.com and put in the airline and fare code to see what it would earn in ShebaMiles.

Unfortunately I don't believe that ET status matches. For a Star Alliance status match you'd be looking mostly at TK but as you know, the ET P fares a 0% there. I want to say these days as well that it's usually offered as a challenge so you have to have some TK flights to keep the status.

Your 2x BOM-VFA flights are worth a bit over 17k miles, so it's certainly something that's a shame to waste, but also doesn't go terribly far in redemptions since ET's doesn't have an overly generous short range award chart like BA or UA. If you throw all of your *A flights into ShebaMiles you'd likely get into the range of a one-way redemption in Europe or North America. In Canada that could actually be fairly valuable where domestic flights can be quite expensive.

Thank you for the very detailed and informative post ...much appreciated.