Questions and Answers

Hi everyone ! I’ve recently gotten into the frequent flyer world but I’m faced with a conundrum, I’m both a BA Avios Blue (1,290 Avios) and a AF/KLM Flying Blue Ivory member (4,795 Miles). My home airport is Nice, France and I’m not sure which of these two I should lean towards both in terms of climbing the elite ladder and award redemptions. I only really plan on flying a couple of long haul round trips a year and hopefully 1 short haul EU return per month.

Before starting this I’d go with anyone (Easyjet, Ryanair, BA, AF, the lot) but now I’m pondering on whether I should commit to one.

Any ideas for a newbie FF ? BA’s high surcharges or AF’s high redemption rates ?
Oneworld or Skyteam ?
Also NOT looking at getting any credit cards. Not in a position to do so.

Thanks !

[QUOTE=”hamiltus, post: 7972, member: 881″]Hi everyone ! I’ve recently gotten into the frequent flyer world but I’m faced with a conundrum, I’m both a BA Avios Blue (1,290 Avios) and a AF/KLM Flying Blue Ivory member (4,795 Miles). My home airport is Nice, France and I’m not sure which of these two I should lean towards both in terms of climbing the elite ladder and award redemptions. I only really plan on flying a couple of long haul round trips a year and hopefully 1 short haul EU return per month.

Before starting this I’d go with anyone (Easyjet, Ryanair, BA, AF, the lot) but now I’m pondering on whether I should commit to one.

Any ideas for a newbie FF ? BA’s high surcharges or AF’s high redemption rates ?
Oneworld or Skyteam ?
Also NOT looking at getting any credit cards. Not in a position to do so.

Thanks ![/QUOTE]

you are going to have to fly a lot…but I would do BA

What’s better about BA ? Just curious ? And don’t they charge crazy fuel fees ?

[QUOTE=”markreinoso, post: 7973, member: 876″]you are going to have to fly a lot…but I would do BA[/QUOTE]
What’s better about BA ? Just curious ? And don’t they charge crazy fuel fees ?

[QUOTE=”hamiltus, post: 7975, member: 881″]What’s better about BA ? Just curious ? And don’t they charge crazy fuel fees ?[/QUOTE]

yes, on BA flights, but their short haul flights on partners is super cheap and almost no fees. I am in Phoenix, but I regularly fly to Seattle for 15000 points round trip plus $5.00 in fees.

with european travel, you could get most places one way for 4500 points and almost no fees.

How do you plan to use whatever miles you collect? As [USER=876]@markreinoso[/USER] points out, Avios are great for short-haul economy flights, not-so-good for longhaul premium cabin flights (though even there they have their uses). BA charges 2x the economy price for business (not usually worth it intra-Europe) and 3x the economy price for First Class awards, plus the price is an accumulation of each separate segment so creative routing can end up costing a lot more.

One thing about Flying Blue is they only allow their elite members to access award seats in their longhaul First Class cabins, so just something to keep in mind.

But I think your plans for using the miles may guide your choice.

[USER=881]@hamiltus[/USER]

Where in Europe will your short EU returns take you normally? South, North or East? Or all over?

If connecting true a SKYTEAM hub to your final destination in the EU you would earn 4 flight segments on each return. Gold is 30 segments, Platinum is 60 segments.

The biggest drawback is that living in France you would need 60K Level miles to get FB Gold and 90K to get Plat which might decrease the value of any paid long haul you might have.

A better use for BA avios would be to use them for upgrades to F on long haul flights for paid J, there was an article about it on the blog not long ago. As other have said using BA avios for outright award redemption’s on long hauls is bad value on most routing.

Did you read this article by [USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER] ? And have you considered Star Alliance?
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/09/28/deciding-which-miles-to-use[/URL]
Seems Swiss has a lot of flights to Nice each day, and until AF finish updating their J cabins and BA gets started I would says that the Swiss J cabin would probably be a better experience.

[QUOTE=”MidSouth Skier, post: 7980, member: 184″]How do you plan to use whatever miles you collect? As [USER=876]@markreinoso[/USER] points out, Avios are great for short-haul economy flights, not-so-good for longhaul premium cabin flights (though even there they have their uses). BA charges 2x the economy price for business (not usually worth it intra-Europe) and 3x the economy price for First Class awards, plus the price is an accumulation of each separate segment so creative routing can end up costing a lot more.

One thing about Flying Blue is they only allow their elite members to access award seats in their longhaul First Class cabins, so just something to keep in mind.

But I think your plans for using the miles may guide your choice.[/QUOTE]
I’m guessing I’d like to use them to pay for all, if not part of my long haul travel costs to places like the US. I guess FB/Skyteam might be better in that regard cos Delta has a non-stop service from NCE to JFK which I’ve flown before and it was nice not to have to link up through LHR or CDG.

[QUOTE=”No Name, post: 7982, member: 268″][USER=881]@hamiltus[/USER]

Where in Europe will your short EU returns take you normally? South, North or East? Or all over?

If connecting true a SKYTEAM hub to your final destination in the EU you would earn 4 flight segments on each return. Gold is 30 segments, Platinum is 60 segments.

The biggest drawback is that living in France you would need 60K Level miles to get FB Gold and 90K to get Plat which might decrease the value of any paid long haul you might have.

A better use for BA avios would be to use them for upgrades to F on long haul flights for paid J, there was an article about it on the blog not long ago. As other have said using BA avios for outright award redemption’s on long hauls is bad value on most routing.

Did you read this article by [USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER] ? And have you considered Star Alliance?
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/09/28/deciding-which-miles-to-use[/URL]
Seems Swiss has a lot of flights to Nice each day, and until AF finish updating their J cabins and BA gets started I would says that the Swiss J cabin would probably be a better experience.[/QUOTE]
As far as short haul, mostly for weekend getaways (Fri-Sun) anywhere that’s a good deal. And I guess I didn’t really consider Star Alliance as an option. Probably cos I’d gotten a head start on Oneworld & Skyteam with my travels this past summer

If the numbers of FB points and BA Avios you posted are correct you should not let that have any influence on what alliance you chose, simply because the numbers are so small that they don’t really matter in the long run when it comes to redeeming for long haul flights.

I’m sorry too say that unless you earn a lot of points true other means like credit cards or hotel stays you can forget about covering most of your long haul travel with points, since in general even flying premium cabin earn little points compared to the cost of flying the same route on points.

Mileage running is in general dead, and the biggest advantage these days to staying loyal to an alliance is to earn status which give you an more pleasant flight experience in general.

You might want to look into sites like Pointshound and Rocketmiles to see if you can boost your points accounts during the weekend trips by hotel stays. Pointshound have something called Earn Big rates on some hotel that can give you extra miles in your chosen frequent flyer program cheaply by paying a higher price for a room.

Just to give an example of Pointhound Earn Big rates if you ever need to stay at an airport hotel in Nice on your way to an early morning flight the Park Inn by Radisson Nice Airport Hotel offer a rates for a standard room at 143USD on one day in November that I checked that would give you 2600 FB points or 2000 AA points. Normal rate for this room with breakfast was 110USD and would earn you 300 points of your choice, got to warn you that site is a bit buggy and don’t deliver that much information about the rooms.

Cheap weekend deals might not end up being cheap if you are going to stay with one Alliance.

[USER=881]@hamiltus[/USER] – before committing to either program I’d look at award availability to the US on the FB website both on DL and AF flights. I mention this because Delta is notorious for NOT releasing award space at the lowest level, meaning it’s not accessible to partners. This is very true for domestic flights within the US but I’m not sure how true it is for TATL flights. Considering that DL doesn’t even allow the public to see an award chart anymore, it’s hard to say how often award seats are available.

With Avios you can obviously fly on BA, but also on Aer Lingus, Air Berlin, Finnair and Iberia directly from NCE.

With AF miles, you also have Aeroflot, KLM, Alitalia, Czech Airlines and TAROM.

Star Alliance carriers at NCE include: Air Canada, Austrian, Brussels, Croatia, LOT (starting March 2016), Lufthansa/Germanwings, Scandinavian, Swiss, TAP Portugal and Turkish.

So it looks to me like you’d have more choices with Star Alliance carriers once you get to a point where you can redeem your miles. You have so few miles to start with that you’re pretty much starting from scratch, as [USER=268]@No Name[/USER] says.

As we generally state, let your destination drive what kinds of miles you want to accumulate.