Good luck to anyone able to spend a morning or two on the phone ringing for ASA's each time you want a flight.
I thought ASA's were a clever marketing tool to instill loyalty from high value customers whilst still filling seats for significantly more points than normal reward points.
I am fortunate enough to generate more than enough points to meet my family's traveling needs and always fly J+. I happily waste points to ensure the family of four can always fly together on the dates we desire.
I used to channel all my points to QF (long family ties with company) until they did the forced points transfer on cards I used at which time I opted out apart from EDR's to keep the account open. Having then started to shop around, in the five years or so since, the total QF redemptions have totaled less than half the points generated in one year or around 10% of total redemptions with my QF points still in 7 figures. Accordingly, over the past 12 months to August, flights have been with VA (multiple), DL, CX, SQ, EY and one QF leg.
I found myself getting hooked on the status wagon due largely to AFF and my two daughters reaching silver and gold with VA largely by accident. I was aiming to get to QF gold booking JASA's to Singapore and Adelaide in the coming months and planning Europe for mid 2014. In both instances, these bookings were at significant cost over rewards with either SQ or VA with Adelaide JASA costing 80,189 points (60,000 QF rewards) to 42,400 with VA rewards.
Thank you QF for healing me of the status madness I was developing and will resume booking flights with the airline providing best value, which unfortunately is rarely QF.