mduell

Since the company is effectively keeping the miles, I'd just stick with MP, you're not going to get anything out of them in M&M. And even for status, all you would get is "Frequent Traveller" which is meh.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

I can't figure out if I would buy stock in your company or short it

polabear

Our company doesn't do a ton of business travel except for senior executives. Even then, it's only a few times a year. The project I'm on has a ton more travel than typical. I can't complain too much since I got to go to Australia twice, and Europe 6 times last year.

jmanirish

Use your GPUs to upgrade from business to first on Lufthansa for your flights back to the US. Very high success rates, especially into ORD.

chinatraderjmr

In Germany that may be allowed but in the US its not even legal for your company to keep your miles. This has been in and out of US courts for years. The airlines argue they are not awarding miles to the person who pays, they are awarding miles to the person who flys........this is why many airlines now have 2 programs (you can join both). Regular miles, status, etc goes to the flyer and a separate program rewards the company

In OPs case, just join whatever program you want and use an American address. Your company won't know and its none of their business anyway. (

sannmann

If he uses an American address, he'll be subject to PQD requirements.

chinatraderjmr

Well then only OP knows if that's a deal breaker or not . I've lived in Dubai for 15 years but still use my US address for FF & hotel programs (except EK). However, if making the min spend was an issue I'd be the first person to change my MP address to the UAE

eefor jfp

The advantage of M&M is lounge access on Y tickets at their main hubs (Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, etc.) after 35,000 status miles or 30 segments. And close in (less than two weeks in advance) award tickets for less miles which are almost always available. The main disadvantages are the much higher cash components on awards (the YQ rip-off) and the requirement of 100K status miles to make *G (Senator), though it does last for two years.

If your company is paying for biz anyways (even intra-Europe) then you will get lounge access as part of the ticket. In that case, I would stick with Mileage Plus. I've held silver status with M&M for a decade and have never gotten an upgrade so aside from lounge access, unless you can do 100K with M&M, you won't really get anything. Better to fly 50K with UA which will get you *G which will give you access to the better (Senator) lounges when flying LH or UA or any Star Alliance carrier intra-Europe or to the US.

jmanirish

What what? Can you point me to some of the cases? I know for fact there's a Fortune 100 company which requires employees to use a FF account the corporation can access when traveling on business. Can get fired for switching to your own. It's large enough I can't imagine it's flying under any radar doing this.

televisor

But on MP you get lounge access after 50k status miles. Moreover you get 100% PQM on most Y tickets on LH and UA (except for those pesky K-fares), so it's arguably easier to make UA Gold than M&M FTL. Especially since LH only seems to give fixed mileage units for intra-europe flights (rather than distance flown). And they give only 100%/150% PQM for many J fare classes, whereas UA gives at least 200% for all of them.

To be honest, the FF stuff seems ridiculous though, I know I'd avoid a company if they tried to do that (on the other hand, I rarely need to travel for business reasons, and most of my travel is personal, but it's nice to top up my mileage and status earning...).

Boo_Radley

At least in the case of MP, that's against the rules. Non-individual accounts are only allowed for "Small Business Network" members. See rule 39: https://www.united.com/web/en-US/con...s/default.aspx.

Allowing company access to an individual (non-SBN) account is also a fairly clear violation of rule 6:

chinatraderjmr

I'm traveling the next 24 hours so don't want you to think I'm ignoring this. Yes, I'll look it up & post the case I am talking about. It was big news around 10-12 years ago. (I doubt it was a state case since it's an airline but if memory serves me right, the guy who sued lived in California (I could be wrong there). I'll look it up & post what I can find tmrw

david7031

I agree with televisor. I live in Germany, and have some travel in Europe and some to the US. I stay with MP because of the wildly different *G qualification rates: if you have a German address, you need to fly 100K miles in one calendar year to get MM Senator, which is the equivalent of MP Premier Exec. Obviously, if you do 100K with MP, you are a 1K, which is much better. Stay with Mileage Plus!

Knightsbridge

Thank you, wouldn't it be easier to earn status though on M&M as I most of the time will fly F or A booking classes and they give 1500 miles minimum even for short flights?

SebastianMUC

I can just second all that has been said before: Do not switch to M&M.

Not only are the qualifications to any status level quite unfortunate (you easily make gold on mileage plus for something that wouldn't even give you FTL on M&M), but also booking award travel on M&M is a joke - as they charge ridiculous fees (can quickly reach several hundred euros for a simple intercontinental award ticket).
i am living here for a while now... and i am surely staying MP.