Best program and use of *A points
 

Hi all,

A work colleague is flying with his family (4 persons all up) from MEL to Europe in a few weeks.

1) No current FF membership
2) They fly very rarely
3) Would like to (if possible) use a scheme where they could obtain award flights within Australia or to New Zealand

Their itin is:

MEL-SIN-ZRH-SIN-MEL on SQ for 3 of them (booked in, I believe, W class via SQ website).

MEL-BKK-ZRH, WAW-ZRH-BKK-MEL on LX flight numbers for the other 1 (I have misplaced this itin, but its close). It is economy class.

I have looked around and think I have the right recommendation for them, but would appreciate some confirmation, or otherwise being pointed in the right direction.

They would earn ~20300 points/miles for the 3, a few more for the 1 flying separately.

I figured that if they joined the UA program, then they could, with >20,000 points/miles, be able to redeem flights MEL-AKL-MEL on a (codeshare) UA flight number, on NZ metal.

This would use up their 20K points/miles nicely.

Do I have this correct? Even if I do, is there a better way to go about this?

TIA
Chris.

UA would be fine. You will earn 100% miles on all those LX and SQ flights.

You can redeem your UA miles on any *A flight and it does not need to be a code-share flight.

Actually, you can't redeem UA miles on any codeshare flight (booked as a UA flight number).

Sounds good. W on SQ is a mileage earning class (VGQNT are not).

Thanks very much for the replies. :)

Just so I have it absolutely correct (I've revisited the UA site with the benefit of your answers):

- with 20K UA miles, they could redeem a return Y on an NZ Trans-Tasman flight
- can be NZ flight number (and cannot be UA flight number), and could be MEL-AKL, or MEL-WLG, or MEL-CHC return?

Ta.

yes, any *A flight number on NZ metal and any route (even PER-AKL-CHC)

Thanks for that. :)