I was recommended to come here from people at Fodors Airline forum. We just purchased our daughter a ticket to travel Melbourne, Australia on Singapore Air to study abroad and the fare earns frequent flier miles. Since it will earn $25,000+ plus miles, we want to sign her up for a frequent flier program in one of the Star Alliance airlines. Given the tenuous situation recently of some of the US airlines in the program (US Air and United), I was thinking of just enrolling her in the Singapore Airlines ff program if the miles are interchangeable among the participating airlines. Does that sound like a good way to take advantage of the miles? If not, what would you suggest we do? Thanks very much.

SQ miles are not interchangeable with other *A airlines. You can only credit miles to one airline/flight. The SQ FF program is very strict on earning miles on discounted fares. Most discounted fares on SQ will NOT earn miles. This is also true with earning SQ miles on its partners. Be warned. Usually the best frequent flyer program is the one from your main traveling point. If you live in the states consider UA. If you live in SE Asia consider TG or SQ. If you live in Germany consider LH. YMMV.

Welcome to Flyer Talk dellyb


While that strictly is true, I think the OP was referring to the ability to redeem SQ miles on other *A airlines, which is certainly the case.

Welcome to FT!

Indeed Singapore Airlines miles can be used to purchase flight awards on other Star Alliance carriers, as well as Virgin Atlantic, Mexicana and Delta Airlines. Said miles can also be used towards flight upgrades on certain Star Alliance carriers (eg ANA, Lufthansa, Thai, there might be more but I cannot remember - check the website for more details). Unfortunately, miles cannot be transferred to another FFP if that's what you're getting at.

And 25 000 miles would just about qualify your daughter for Krisflyer Elite Silver membership, which translates to *Silver across the alliance. Check that the fare class earns status/redemption miles on Krisflyer first though...

My comment - think about a couple of things here:

- where daughter is studying may have influence - that suggests she will be staying wherever it is for some time (given the 25,000 miles mentioned above from MEL, it sounds like it must be in europe or noerh america at a guess). She may wish to redeem while o/s, or at the very least travel around the area she is in, and thus some affiliation with a carrier in that region might make some sense (specially if she might do enough to reach a status level).

- I'd worry less about UA and US now, who are both out of Chapter 11 and doing OK.

- Think about how the miles might be spent in the future (this is tied in with the first point) - perhaps on her return to Australia - eg: an award to asia or the south pacific. Look up the redemption tables to see how much an award might cost to somewhere she might like (UA is good value with Star awards to NZ/South Pacific for 20k miles in Y, 30K in C).

KF may be a good option, but as I say it depends on the end goals. Also perhaps consider any partners (eg: credit cards, etc) she might use while studying and back here to earn additional mileage.

I hope she enjoys her studies

Thankyou for your responses. I see I should have provided more information (it was too late last night when I posted). We live in the US and my daughter will be studying in Melbourne. The flight does qualify for miles from SQ. My question was how to determine which of the Star Alliance partners ff programs she should join since I am a little leery of the US airlines that have been close to bankruptcy in the past few years. If the miles are easily used among all the Star Alliance members, then I thought she might as well join SQ ff program.

Can you please advise us what exactly is the booking class for your daughter's ticket on SQ? SQ does sell some cheap fares from the US to Australia via Singapore but as far as I know, these are restricted to the fares that do not earn miles unless something has changed recently.

There are many SQ fares that do not earn miles and this same non-earning booking class will extend to other FFP's as well.

The biggest issue on Krisflyer is that the miles earned on this programme expire within a certain number of years (4, I think) if you don't use them.

It is OK to earn miles on UA for example, I don't think you have much to worry about. There are many more people who have millions of miles in their account and I am sure they will be fighting for you to keep UA Mileage Plus alive if anything should happen.

I must beg to differ here. Only G, N, V, Q and T classes do not earn miles, and those are often exceptionally cheap or companion fares. Of course, you will see the non-earning fares in some markets more often than others, but to take the UK as an example even the GBP440 fare from LHR-SYD (20k miles return) is booked in W which earns full miles in most programs.

The remaining (even including W, as long as your program does not specifically reduce earning on SQ W fares as they do on BD, SK etc) all earn 100% of the miles flown.

It really depends on what your daughter's priorities are and what future pattern of flying she s likely to do apart from these flights.
If she is likely to remain just an occasional flyer, the key issues will be: 1) how many miles you get, 2) how easy it will be to redeem and 3) whether the miles expire or not.
Regarding 1), rules vary from one FFP to another as to which fares are eligible and which amounts of miles you get. As to 2), as a rough rule of thumb, it is usually easier to redeem on the airline whose FFP you are a member of.
As to 3), most FFPs let you keep your miles forever as long as there is some flight activity to keep the account alive every 3 years.

If there is going to be more flying, your daughter might think about getting status and, here, Air Canada and BMI would be definitely worth considering as they have substantially lower thresholds for elite qualification.

As a rule of thumb it is best to join the FF program of the airline you are using most often. So even though your daughter is now flying on SQ - long term she might use a US airline more often and thus making it a better deal to join UA or US.

But the selection of a program is really hard - if you fly a lot first class LH is great, if you fly a lot in coach UA is very good. If you want to have your gold card fast you should go to BD, if you want to have award tickets for fewer miles the American airlines are better than the Asian airlines - the options are endless...

Thanks so much for all this input. I guess I will look into the ff plans of US Air and United.