Hi,
Have been reading some of the trip reports of member ‘Seat2A’ – he only posted one of his trip reports on here, that was a few months ago and a great read it was. He gave me this link to a collection of his reports on another forum: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=5471088&postcount=11 – you may wish to browse at them first.
He is a member of a frequent flyer program in America and regularly does jaunts around on cheap flights to get the miles in the bank. I was wondering if there were any frequent flyer programs over here in Europe, not just to a single airline, but where a multitude of airlines, or indeed hotels or other services, contribute to your mile account. I am aware that ‘Air Miles’ may be like this however i’m not sure if it meets what I just described, and I know very little about it. Would anyone care to name any frequent flyer programs, what individual plans other, and enlisted airlines to said scheme,
Your help is much appreciated,
Wozza
By: Pembo330 - 17th August 2006 at 14:38
I’m a member of BA but only travel with them a few times a year so don’t accrue a great deal of miles.
My main FF programme is Flying Blue, the award scheme of Air France & KLM. As KLM is a member of Skyteam, you can accrue and spend miles on other Skyteam airlines such as Continental, Delta, Northwest etc. This programme is great for me as the vast majority of my business trips are with KLM because a) they are relatively cheap and there are great connections in Amsterdam from my local at MME.
The programme itself is great. After little over a year in my new job, I’ve already achieved Platinum status meaning I get double miles on every trip as well as lounge access, even if travelling economy. I have enough miles now for two free business class flights to the U.S., or more flights if I travel economy. At the moment, I have no plans to use the miles but will one day soon.
If you want more details, check out www.klm.com
The miles do add up quickly, particularly if you always try and book with the same airline and you start moving up the ranks.
The best piece of advice I can give is stick to one FF programme. If you don’t travel too frequently, it can take a while to see things build up, this will take even longer if your miles are spread over a number of airlines.
By: BigVince76 - 16th August 2006 at 23:49
Most airlines’ FF programmes have links with other airlines, even those not in any formal alliance like Virgin have many airline and hotel partners. The best thing to do is look at where you will most likely be flying. If you do a lot of economy European trips with occasional long haul flights then bmi’s Diamond club might suit. You can get silver/gold status relatively easily and they let you use miles+cash, which means you can use money to top up you miles. Foe example a business class trip from Europe to the USA or Canada would be 37,500 miles + £255 cash + tax. This is great value and includes stopovers and connecting flights, all in Biz class.
BA would not be so good in this situation as you get virtually no miles on there cheap (and not so cheap) tickets. However if you do a lot of business class travel then BA are more generous and offers far greater choice of European destinations.
Personally I like bmi because you can get a very healthy balance pretty quickly with a few transatlantic trips and there credit card offer.
Bottom line if you travel every week on BA then join them, if you are always on Virgin go with them. If you want a mix of airlines pick an airline from one of the big three alliances (Star, oneworld or skyteam). There is little point in joining too many though as having a few points in loads of accounts is no use at all
By: symon - 15th August 2006 at 16:55
Most alliances should have a common program I think. In Europe, with Star, you’ve got: Austrian, bmi, LOT, Lufthansa, SAS, Spanair, Swiss, TAP, Adria, Blue1, Croatia. They have a loyalty section on their site www.staralliance.com but it’s framed so no direct link.
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August 15, 2006 at 4:27 pm