Questions and Answers

Hello everyone,

First of all i would like to apologize for my english (italian here) and because this is gonna be a long one, will try to keep it short tho.

For 2017 i had gold on Skyteam with Alitalia, which i am not using very much and given the situation of the airline i don’t know if it will be useful anyway, so for 2018 i will challenge to get one world middle status.
I’m Italian and i live in Tokyo, normally i fly back to Italy twice a year and for those 2 flights i try to fly business if i can , then Australia once/twice a year normally in PE and a couple other flight around Asia. I also have an italian AMEX platinum which has terrible earning ratio 1 euro 1 point and the only airline with 1:1 transfer is Alitalia, the others are all 5:4 and neither Jal or Qatar are included but i don’t mind since i normally book an extra flight a year for holiday with the AMEX point with the most convenient airline for where i have to go.
Now i need to choose between the 2 in the title of the topic and i would love to have an advise from you guys.
Jal is amazing in Y, 9 abreast on the 777 and 8 abreast on the 787 with good legroom and the service is always consistent. On the other hand is IMPOSSIBLE to pay their business class fares, it doesn’t matter when during the year, the cheapest business ticket you can buy with JAL, Tokyo to Milan is like 5000$, and flying only Y, as everyone here knows very well, is very difficult to get status. It would help getting a Japanese co-branded JAL credit card, but being a foreigner i can totally forget about getting any japanese credit card for the first 3-4 years (they are pretty racist lol), so this is not an option.
Qatar fare for business HND-MXP is always around 2500$ and it gives you 130Qpoints which means, with those 2 flights a year you are almost done for gold (more difficult to get status on Jal since 50% of the flights must be done on expensive fares and JAL metal).

Everything seems telling me QR is better for my needs, but there are a couple things that stops me from take the final decision, in fact JAL has a much more extensive partnership with many other airline outside the oneworld alliance, such as Emirates and Alaska, not to mention AirFrance which is very useful for intra-Europe flights.
Also the embargo the UAE put on Qatar seems like is giving them an hard time, and no connection anymore with Dubai (where i fly kinda often).
Qatar on his side have a MUCH better app, english speaking customer service etc etc. Just for reference, JAL in 2018 has a Japanese-only ios-android app…

The reason why i would like to obtain at lest gold status is that i want to earn more miles with my normal flight and MAYBE, even if i know is difficult, to be bumped from Y in some occasion…

What you guys would do in situation?
Sorry again to everyone for the long post, every idea or suggestion will be very very appreciated.

Nobody? 🙁

Welcome [USER=4094]@Ennio[/USER] – it’s probably more that we’re just not as familiar with oneworld programs other than AA and maybe BA. While most of us may periodically transfer points to JAL or QR we’re not trying to gain status with them.

Maybe [USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER] can provide some words of wisdom.

Hello [USER=184]@MidSouth Skier[/USER] and thanks for the reply. I was also considering AA or BA for status, but since i’m not going to fly with them often i wouldn’t take advantage of the milage multiplier that comes with status. Maybe finnair would be better (is it also a tranfer partner for italian AMEX), but i don’t know much about the real advantages of having status with them. Just to clarify a little bit, even if i never had status with Jal, i had with ANA before, and what i can tell for sure is that Japanese carrier give so much value with status, the way they treat you is totally different, that’s why i am aiming for JAL status. Just wondering how is QR in that regard.

Let’s see what [USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER] will say about this.

Thanks again

I don’t know that there’s a right answer here. If you have elite status in any alliance partner, you typically get the elite bonus multiplier regardless of which partner carrier you’re flying.

Qatar treats their elites well, but if you’re trying to get to Dubai that seems like it will be a bit irritating. Their awards are also expensive.

There’s no reason you couldn’t aim for JAL status, including crediting the occasional Qatar flight to JAL when the business class fares make sense, right?