[rcfyelee98]

If you are based in London and you have GGL or beyond, then BA.

[BeckyBoop]

Here is a challenge for everyone for the rest of the weekend lets not mention or refer to BA….regardless of the circumstances?

Which airline offers and delivers the best FFP?

PLEAEEEEESSSSSEEE?

edited

[Vertrek]

BB, I’ve put my opinion.

Overall benefit, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, considering you live in the UK. You’ll be able to redeem on all VS flights and earn generous amount in discounted economy in most of Star’s European members.

if you travel a lot in J or F.

AF/KLM is a good one, as they consider London as Europe 1. Plus you can redeem any flight easily, for example London – Tokyo with KLM and AF. your LHR-AMS and CDG-LHR will be free and redeemed only AMS-NRT-CDG and seat in every classes is always available for redemptions either in AF/KLM jet or SkyTeam partners and all can be done from FlyingBlue account + if you are a fans of Accor hotel, once you reach FlyingBlue silver you’ll get Le Club Accor Gold card for a year which give you access to upgrade to the highest room, free wi-fi, late check out to 4 and so on.

The excess level miles from previous years are also carried forward like, you-know-who club.

But if you are not fond of AF/KLM and SkyTeam, SQ is a good one + you have LH and LX for intra european flight and for US flight, United and Virgins group.

[BeckyBoop]

I know you did thanks bubs 🙂 xx

[PatJordan]

Hi Becky,

In my opinion, for those who fly in and out of Dublin a lot, Aer Lingus Gold Circle is the best.

SwissExPat, my Gold Circle account has also gone into a minus figure. According to the Gold Circle club, this due to an IT glitch which affects older accounts. Interestingly this glitch is not going to be fixed for a while. E-statements reflect the correct balance, however.

What a lively debate this has turned out to be!!

[ReneReyes]

MIles and More, , I find them reliable, fast in accounting your miles, when flying lufthansa, I have booked long flights with my miles and very serviceable people attending, at this moment Senator in M&M, which gives you good pluses.

[feijitong]

So much depends on how you fly to earn (business, economy, etc.), where you fly when you earn (short or long-haul), where you need to fly on points, preference for privileges (e.g., upgrades) vs. redemption flights that what the best programs are is really quite personal. BA does have good redemption availability. My current OneWorld strategy is to accrue on AA (Exec Platinum, liftetime Plat) and CX (Diamond) – I’ll normally accrue the premium flights on CX but not always.

[MartynSinclair]

Credit to the BA shorhaul redemption system.

Needed to change a return flight for a day trip this coming week, Europe – London – Europe. Went into the BA website Saturday afternoon, changed the LHR-Europe sector from the last flight of the day to second last flight – no problems, took all of 4 minutes and no charge.

Please may my holiday season present bring such ease and flexibility with BA longhaul rewards…….

[GlynWilliams5]

I still feel that the Qantas program is outstanding. I have been a member since 1989 and achieved Platinum when that was introduced. Points dont expire if you are a regular user unlike Singapore Airlines etc and receipt of points appears to be far higher than competitors. For instance I just travelled Sydney to Singapore in First Class on BA and they gave me 5862 points. I flew Singapore to Denpasar on a $220 fare on Jetstar Asia and got 2086. BA doesnt come out of that looking good.

[TominScotland]

However, GlynWilliams5, had you been a member of the BAEC, you would have collected 11,748 Avios one way for the same BA flight so a somewhat better return although, I agree, the Jetstar points sound good (not available to BAEC members). Was the Jetstar figure for the return to Denpasar? If it was, that looks less attractive. I am doing Glasgow – Gatwick return today on a £70 fare (no hand luggage) and will get 2,000 Avios plus 20 TP for that.

Edited to add: Had the BA/ QF JV still been in place, I guess you would have got the full amount for your SYD-SIN flight? Out of interest, why did you choose to fly BA rather than QF for this journey?

[TominScotland]

Interesting comparison here, between BAEC and Air France/ KLM’s Flying Blue. I have Gold and Platinum respectively with these programmes. I have just flown Glasgow – Singapore return with KLM in lowest cost Economy via Amsterdam and this will generate about 4,000 miles. This equates to 20% of the 20,000 miles required to redeem a Glasgow – Amsterdam return ticket (plus 45 Euros in fees).

Had I flown BA, from Glasgow to Singapore I would have earned just shy of 30,000 Avios for a lowest cost Economy return, enough for 3 round trips (9,000 per trip) Glasgow – Amsterdam with 3,000 Avios left over. Fees per trip are much of a muchness.

No brainer, really, is it not?

[MartynSinclair]

which Tom, is exactly the reason I have remained with BA (for BKK & USA) – it makes economical sense for my business, whilst I am flying within Europe (for free)…

[talparis]

AF have often 50% promo on certain destination so book early as it is amazing value for J

[Bath_VIP]

I was going to start a new thread but I think my question can be accommodated within this thread since it’s been revived.

I’ve been looking at flights to the USA in June and Avios availability is extremely poor which is similar to what i have experienced in the last two years for June. However, AA are offering some decent J class fares for £1500 from Dublin at the moment (on US metal) and I have been pondering whether to go for these fares or hang on to see if redemption availability improves. In doing so, I have come up with a decision rule that makes sense to me and I wondered how others made this kind of decision.

BA allows you to buy 24k Avios for £400 which is an exchange rate of £16.67 per 1k of Avios. So if you buy a J class fare for £2400 and receive 24k of avios for that flight, you can say that the net price is £2000. Equally, if you buy a PE fare for £1200 and use 25k of avios to get an MFU to J, then your net fare is £1617. So if these two scenarios were the choices I had, it is clear that you should go for the second option (provided it is available!!).

For me in June though, it looks like my best option is to go for the AA fare on offer since the net fare is going to be about £1200 in this case.

Obviously, this rule only works, if you can redeem your avios at some point. But this rule has the virtue that it saves me from endlessly hunting for availability all the time and instead forces me to seek bargain fares on OW airlines which gives me avios and redeem the avios at times of good availability instead.

[malbarda]

This discussion so far is mostly very UK centric (“not that there’s anything wrong with that”). I’m NY based so for me it’s almost immaterial which program I choose because wherever I fly I usually have a choice of airlines from all three major alliances. I find the One World alliance very good as their redemption is pretty easy. Also, their earning opportunities are good. One down side is that flights to and thru the UK using miles in biz will set you back a lot of $$$ in taxes and fee’s. Sky Team is devalued a lot due to DL paying more attention to making profit than letting mile collectors fill their most profitable seats. (Good business practice but it’s making the miles a lot less valuable). Star Alliance never did it for me as I’m not in love with United or Lufthansa. So I book what’s cheapest and suits me best in terms of travel time and arrival/departure time. From the UK you could easily follow the same strategy.

[Author]

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