American or Qantas?

[CardsFan]

Hello. I am new to Australia (and to this forum!), having only moved here three months ago from the UK. I'm based in MEL and expect to be flying internationally at least a half dozen times over the next year to the US and Europe. I hope to use these flights to begin earning miles towards a family trip back to the US, and I'm trying to decide whether it will be best to do that with Qantas or American's miles program. I already have some AA miles and AA seems to have the better rewards levels for flights to the US from Oz, but AA has also just changed the levels at which they award miles and status on Qantas flights, making it more difficult to get 100% of the miles flown. My travel is for work, so I'll have some flexibility over the fare class I go with, but probably not much, since I'll have to go with something near the cheapest option. Is there any general advice about which of these would be the better option for racking up miles to use for reward tickets to the US from MEL? Thanks!

 

[samh004]

Welcome to the forum!

I'm not particularly well versed with AA, but if your focus is on building miles for an award, AA generally seems the way to go. That said, you should also take into account the fares you'll likely be flying as I'd imagine the cheaper fares wouldn't earn as much, especially if you're taking red-e-deals domestically within Australia.

With QF now favouring their own metal for earning the most points, if you fly Qantas, you could be earning quite well with them, but they do have higher co-payments for awards.

I'd definitely check out their earning calculator and see what you could be earning with them, and then compare with AA (presumably they have a calculator too).

 

[Mattg]

If you think that you'll meet the "4 AA flights per year" requirement (which generally requires an annual trip to the USA) then I'd probably go with AA's program.

Having said that, I find Qantas to be miles better as an airline...

If you want to use your points to fly between Australia and the USA, then Qantas could actually be a better option. Award seats are available sooner through Qantas, and by the time AA members can get there hands on them many of them are gone. This is more of a problem with premium cabin seats though. If you'll be in economy, then there should be sufficient awards with AA. And the taxes are much cheaper with AA.

Which airline do you think you'll be flying with the most? Often better to stick with their program to maximise the potential to use your points for upgrades.

 

[CardsFan]

Hi. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. The choice of airline is up to me, which is why I'm trying to decide who to go with. So far I've flown mostly United, and have managed to rack up enough miles for 5 RT tickets to the US in the past 6 months through credit card sign up bonuses, credit card spending points, and actual miles flown. I like United's program, but when I checked for Star Alliance flights from Oz to Europe, I kept coming up with either no tickets or really expensive ones (maybe I'm doing something wrong here?). So that made me think about switching to a oneworld airline, and AA or Qantas seemed the two obvious choices. The four AA flights per year shouldn't be a problem since one trip will do that, and an AA rep even offered me the chance to do a "Challenge" so I could achieve status faster, but I'm worried whether Qantas flights will really add up to much in AA's program. E.g., as of 1 Jan 2016, most economy tickets on Qantas now only earn 25-50% miles and 0.5 EQMs for AA. I've spent much of the morning trying to figure out how to check the fare bucket on the Qantas flights that come up on their website, and have discovered that it is very hard to find! Even calling a Qantas rep didn't help because they put me through to the booking line and I finally hung up after being on hold for half an hour.