hardworking21

Hi flyertalk! Long time post-reader, first time poster!

I may soon be traveling for work from JFK or EWR to VIE in J class on Austrian. I plan to credit the miles to my MileagePlus account. Would it be smarter to book as a United flight or an Austrian flight? Will be flying in the coming week or so, assume ticket prices will be high ($4k+). I took a look at the United-Austrian page, but couldn't fully figure out how to optimize earnable miles/premier qualifying miles.

Thanks for your advice!

hardworking21

mahasamatman

Welcome to FT, hardworking21!

If you book on United ticket stock, your earning won't change based on which flight number you book, though it does matter where you book. The common wisdom is to avoid codeshares whenever possible, though, so I'd recommend booking the OS flight number unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise. If you book on Austrian ticket stock, however, your RDM earning will be based on distance instead of price. You'd have to evaluate which one of those would give you better earnings. Also, I'm pretty sure you'll only get PQD if you book on United ticket stock or with a United flight number (PQD are meaningless to me, so I may not be current on those rules).

SkiAdcock

Book on United stock would be my recommendation.

Cheers.

Duke787

Depends. On OS stock you'll get 100% PQM and 200% RDMs for P fare, not sure for Z/D/C and based on distance not fare cost.

On UA stock you'll get whatever your fare cost (minus taxes) times your multiplier (E.g. 5x ~$3.5 if general memeber). On phone so can't see if you have any status.

Should be able to do the math on those two options pretty easily and find an answer.

Not sure if PQD on UA stock - can't find any documentation that says you so but I used OS stock for my P fare earlier this year so can't verify.

mymilesandpoints

If you care about elite status definitely try to get on a UA codeshare because you'll get the relevant PQD and PQM to fulfill the yearly requirement.

If all you care about is award miles that you can redeem for free flights, flying on Austrian in J and then crediting the award miles to United will probably snag you a higher number of miles because it's distance based (with a multiplier for class you're flying)

findark

As mentioned, flight number doesn't matter - ticket stock does. You would have to book directly with United to get 016 stock. If you must ticket through a corporate TA, an 016 ticket may not be possible.

For premier qualifying miles (PQM): same on both stocks
Premier qualifying dollars (PQD): zero on OS stock, the full fare on UA stock
Redeemable miles (RDM): a percentage of the actual flight distance on OS stock, and a multiple of the fare amount on UA stock

If you're US based going for UA status, you probably care about the PQD and want an 016 ticket. Otherwise it's not a big deal.

hardworking21

Thank you all for the responses and warm welcomes! This would be corporate travel, so would book through corporate travel agency. Can book on either OS or UA stock (price is the same). Goal is to achieve status with UA (and in turn, *A status). If I book on UA stock, can I select OS seats in advance? Any "downsides" so to speak of booking on OS stock? I'm a general MP member, so mileage credit would be 5x the ~$4k ticket = 20k miles, versus the 8k miles traveled on OS stock. Plus the PQDs.... seems like UA's the winner? Again, would love to know about any "drawbacks" to booking premium OS class on UA stock. Cheers!

cyclogenesis

I'll also add, once, as a gold, I booked a codeshare through UA and got a no-cost upgrade on Austrian. It was wonderful. But yes, I have flown Austrian many times as a UA codeshare always got PQM and RDM

fatlasercat

Last year, when I tried to book through through the united site I wasn't able to select seats. I called Austrian with the OS booking code, but they told me they can't assign seats. However, according to the agent, what mattered is not the ticket stock, but the flight number. So if it's a codeshare with the UA flight number you might be out of luck, but if you can get OS flight# on UA stock through the corporate agent, it could work. Again, this was about a year ago and only experienced on OS (LH and LX don't have this problem)

Duke787

One caveat - due to taxes / fees, your $4k ticket is likely closer to $3.5k in pure fare and on OS J ticket number you get 200% RDMs not 100%.

Taken together that makes the RDMs a tad closer (18k and 16k respectively) but it still sounds like 016 is the way to go.

hardworking21

I think some of you may hate me for this, so apologies in advance - I realized that I won't fly UA metal 4 times this year. Thus, despite flying this route potentially monthly in J class for work, I wouldn't earn UA status.

To that end, would folks recommend joining M&M with LH and obtaining status with them? Assuming round-trip NYC-VIE in J every 4-5 weeks till end of year.

Mwenenzi

No
Just fly UA 4 times. That is not hard.
Do you earn UA miles from credit cards or other sources?

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

hardworking21

I do have Chase Sapphire Preferred, but no other cards that impact UA. I'd have to fly UA 4 times while abroad in Europe? May be tricky?

gaobest

People are implying that you'd fly ual metal while in the states. But if you're spending most of the rest of 2016 outside USA, then you'll probably not qualify for ual status so may as well do M&M - if you think you won't need ual status for 2017.
We all earn status in anticipation of the rest of our travel plans for this and the following year...
Good luck and enjoy OS!!

dcfromdc

I'm Europe-based who frequents OS both intra-Europe and TATL, and I'll introduce my data point, which is probably in the minority. Basically, what seems like almost 50% of the time, my OS flights don't automatically credit to my UA MP account, and I find myself needing to wait the 15 days. I can't tell you whether in those instances where the miles weren't posting automatically were on tickets bought via UAL, AUA, or an OTA, or whether they were on codeshare flights. Generally speaking, OS has not been 100% reliable when it comes to posting when I fly on their metal. Also, I don't know if my experience is a problem within OS where one might have a similar experience if their OS flights were being posted into M&M.

I really enjoy flying OS, except when it comes to waiting for their flights to post.

Also, fly on UA metal 4x. It's so easy.