LondonAndy

If lounge access is important, your friend may want to consider Priority Pass. The lounges are not as good as BA (!) but most, although not all of them, are better than nothing. I get it included with my credit card - I don't know if there are similar deals in the US:
https://www.prioritypass.com/Join/What-it-Costs.cfm

NA-Flyer

I agree and also their ecomoy class fares are very cheap. probaby the cheapest across the atlantic.

Prospero

Moving over to the Virgin Atlantic forum at the request of the OP.

Cheers,

Prospero
Moderator: BAEC forum

LeisureFirst

If the OP's friend is mainly doing a single route on a single airline, then he'd need to check if there is a PP lounge he can use. LHR T5 doesn't have any, and nor do many terminals of American airports. For example, only three of the terminals at JFK have a PP lounge, which doesn't do you a lot of good if you're flying from one of the other five terminals.

Jenbel

If he were UK based, at that point he'd be better off getting a Amex Plat (presuming he can), because then he'd get PP and access to various airline lounges.

I'm presuming though, that because the OP asked that it be moved to the VS forum, that he's looking very hard at VS. First thing to do then if he doesn't already have a Flying Club account is to find someone to do a member get member application with him, so that they both get bonus miles.

Downers from my POV on the VS scheme for him:
- upgrades are not good value from Y, as only available from certain (expensive) classes, albeit that you can do a double upgrade with suffcient miles
- reduced mileage earning on lowest economy fares

Positive points:
- he'll get VS silver after 4 trips, with access to priority check-in, and then be on VS gold after another 6 trips (if he can do that within a year), which means he'll get lounge access and additional mileage accrual.
- he's also got CO as an option for TATL - which would also be better for miles earning, but worse for tier point earning

onedsla

Without wanting to sound too much like an advert, I can share my experience from the last year, which involved very frequent flights on the LHR JFK route to visit my girlfriend (now wife) in New York.

I intially used AA as they were generally the cheapest, with convenient departure times, but kept with them for other reasons which later became apparent:

No credit card fee when booking on aa.com, and frequent sales.
Recieve full mileage for discount economy class.
Can pre-select good seats. As there is no prem-econ class, it's possible to select row 21 in the 777. This allows very quick exit from the aircraft and can make a big difference in the immigration line (key for me when I was visiting one weekend at a time). It also helped that the majority of travellers appeared to hold US passports, meaning there were fewer 'foreigners' in the line.
Once status increases to gold (basic level), it's possible to pre-book the exit row seats (though a littlle further back), making economy a little better. Also pre-boarding for elites.
I believe AA offer an extra inch or 2 of pitch (I'm tall, though had no probs on a VS 744 last week, so not sure if what I read is true).
Frequent double elite qualifying mile offers.

They offer a platinum status challange, where if a traveller expects to fly 10,000 EQP (0.5 eqp per actual mile, so 3 returns required). Once plat, lounge access is available on an economy ticket. Also with any oneworld flight (I make good use when flying with BA). I had been travelling for some time before finding this site, and now now I was stupid not to take advantage of this. There's also a gold challange for 5000EQP.

When it comes to spending miles, there are also some bargains. A OW Y award from LHR JFK is 20,000 miles offpeak. Not great, but it's the same cost for a flight from LHR to HNL...! The honeymoon to the USVI has been paid for by miles

However I had zero success with op-ups (though only 2 trips as plat). Meanwhile my wife was clocking up miles on VS, has recently reached gold and has had 50% success over the past 4 flights (both occasions being bumped from prem to UC). The VS club house is far superiour to the AA lounges too. IMO the JFK lounge is bordering on pathetic - the only food available without paying being carrots, celery and nuts whilst it's a pay bar (you're given 2 drinks vouchers). During my travels the AA lounge in LHR was being refurbished, however there's a choice of OW lounges, some of which were great.

Now we're both in the UK, out of convenience (we now fly to EWR, not JFK) we're now staying loyal to VS. With approx 5 return trips per year, I see no way that I'll reach gold, though the wife can just about retain status by booking the occasional leg in premium cabins.

Dave

hotdogs

He would reach the highest level at AA which is executive platinum (EXP)

That would in addition to double all FF miles flown he would get 8 FREE upgrades to the next class of service. In your case 8 times he would get a space available upgrade to business class!

There are many other valuable benefits to being EXP as well. See the AA section of FT for more info.

Jenbel

onedsla - welcome to FT and that's a great experience/information you shared with us with respect to the OP's question!

nycguy

Thanks for all of the great input. Looks like AA will be a good choice based on everything suggested.

Jimmie76

Also good to look at Partner airlines in an alliance (if any) can be useful if your plane goes tech and they can shunt you to another alliance carrier.

DaMadCroat

I'm a bit surprised that nobody has mentioned the 40,000 mile opportunity for new US-based VS AMEX applications (20,000 after first purchase, 20,000 if $750 spent in 90 days, if I'm not mistaken), or the 100,000 mile opportunity for new US-based BA Chase card applications (again, 50,000 for first purchase and then another 50,000 for something around $2000 in 90 days).

As has been mentioned, BA and VS do not tend to be the cheapest airlines flying the NYC-LON routes, but if you're already starting out on a nice pile of miles, that is already few reward tickets or more than a few upgrades.

If seriously considering US-based carriers, I would choose CO for the simple reason that cross-earning (and redeeming) with VS is possible (as well as earning/spending miles on UA and US). DL is on its own for the NYC-LON routes and AA members cannot currently earn miles when flying between the USA and the UK on BA.

NickB

Farewise, in discount economy this is going to be much of muchness among all direct carriers: this is a very competitive route and fares are fairly low on all airlines.
For status, AA with a Plat challenge will probably be the quickest way.
Looking at it in a slightly oblique manner, flying with CO but joining another *A program is also worth considering: possibly AC for the low elite requirement or BD for the outstanding earn/burn ratio and, as a rule, much better award availability with *A airlines (with the caveat, however, that the medium-term future of BD's FFP is anybody's guess). Potentially, BD could also have the advantage of a relatively low elite status threshold but this is not as straighforward due to the resetting of the clock each time a new threshold is reached. Thus, whereas you only need 38K to renew Gold (top tier), you will need 56K miles the first time round to reach Gold from scratch as you need to go through Blue Plus and Silver first and your status miles balance is reset at each level (same system as for BA, incidentally).