Questions and Answers

Hello All,

I live in the Netherlands and travel frequently on AF / KLM (mostly in coach and 2-3 times a year in the lowest fare business). I find the FlyingBlue program to be quite worthless – takes forever to accumulate points and redemption rates are very high.

I’ve been thinking of building up miles on another program as well and BA comes to mind. It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to move much of my travel to BA but I would like to try other approaches such as a credit card, buying miles when there is a good offer etc…

Any suggestions on whether BA is a good option? Should I be looking at something from Star Alliance as well? Any ideas or strategies others have successfully used in Europe to accumulate miles without travelling very much on the airline? I’d mostly be redeeming miles for travel from Europe to North America and Asia.

Cheers,
Kau

[USER=1035]@Kau[/USER] Most people use Avios (BA currency) for short trips. They are very expensive to use for long haul trips because of the high associated surcharges and fees and segment based pricing. Have you investigated any transferable point options like AmEx Membership Rewards or SPG that might give you some flexibility?

[USER=1035]@Kau[/USER]

Welcome.

Are you flying mostly short or long haul? Do you normally get status with AF/KLM on miles or segments?

How important is having status with the airline for you? BA use something called Tier points for status accumulation and I’m sad to say that Y/coach does not earn much.

As [USER=79]@Gaurav[/USER] says using Avios for long haul travel can be expensive.
For long haul on BA they are best used for upgrading to F
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/09/20/upgrade-british-airways-avios/[/URL]

Frankly I don’t know anything about Dutch credit cards and what is available.
So you need to check out what your options are for transferring points to airlines with the cards you can get in the Netherlands.

Thanks Gaurav and No Name. On AF/KLM I get status through flight segments (I’m one flight short of Platinum for the year which, of course, I’ll make).

Howeve, what I want to do is find an airline where it’s worth while to accumulate points without travelling on them (buy miles directly or transfer from a credit card) which can be redeemed for long-haul business class travel. Sounds like BA isn’t a great option. Any thoughts on Lufthansa? Or the Middle East airlines?

Well for buying miles the following comes to mind

Alaska Airlines
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2014/03/10/best-uses-of-alaska-airlines-mileage-plan-miles/[/URL]
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/08/27/bonus-alaska-miles-deal/[/URL]

Would work great to North America, but not so good to Asia since they publish an award charter for each partner airline in each zone.
[URL]https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mileage-plan/award-chart/award-chart-asia.aspx[/URL]

Are also a partner with AF/KLM so you can credit flights to them, but that would lose you status with AF/KLM.

How many years have you been Plat with AF/KLM? Think it’s 10 years for Plat for life.

Avianca Lifemiles
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/09/11/discounted-star-alliance-awards-with-lifemiles/[/URL]
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/09/08/lifemiles-bonus/[/URL]

And then there is AA, which have a sale at the moment.
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/10/13/american-miles-sale/[/URL]
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/10/27/10-best-uses-of-american-miles/[/URL]

[QUOTE=”Kau, post: 8985, member: 1035″]Howeve, what I want to do is find an airline where it’s worth while to accumulate points without travelling on them[/QUOTE]

You do know that you can credit flights to a alliance or partner airline and earn miles that way right? As in fly BA, but credit to American or Alaska?

Unless you have access to US credit cards you need to check what is available in NL when it comes to transfer partners. Sadly a lot of Europe card are very limited in transfer partners, that included EU Amex’s in many cases.