Questions and Answers

Hi Ben,
I’ve been an avid reader for the last 6 months, using what I’ve learned for a first class round trip to Asia on CX and JL, so first off [I]thank you[/I].

I’ve always flown AA for business, and have a healthy balance of points with them, but when I’m flying for personal travel, I’m often searching for the lowest fare, rather than loyal to any one airline. My current situation is when considering booking on United, should I credit the miles flown to MileagePlus, or to another star alliance carrier? I have Copa ConnectMiles gold status thanks to an AA status match (again learned from your blog so [I]thank you[/I]) but I’m willing to credit to wherever is best. Any similar advice for flying delta would be great, since it doesn’t seem valuable to accumulate Dellta miles either.

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to hearing from you, or any others on your blog, and for continuing to learn how to maximize my travel.
Mikey

[USER=1438]@Mikey[/USER] typically (but not always) your mileage earning is best with the airline you are flying but that leads to the downside of having small amounts of miles in multiple programs–not really helpful. For *A I would look at Aeroplan, UA or SQ and see what their earnings would be for the fare classes you normally book and pick a program that works well for the places you want to go to. For skyteam, as maligned as DL is, I’d probably pick that program just because the miles don’t expire or maybe Flying Blue as a backup.

Just know that there will be a discordance between maximizing the value of any given flight vs. getting useful balances in a single program. Overall I’d lean towards the latter.

[USER=1438]@Mikey[/USER]

Welcome

Gaurav gives good advise, better to have all your miles in one place than scattered all over the place.

For finding what a booking class earns in different programs check out this website.
[URL]http://www.wheretocredit.com/[/URL]