Best FF Program to credit RTW ticket points to for a Star Alliance Newbie

[Danp]

Hi Guys,

thought I'd post this up as I'm not very familiar with Star Alliance airlines programs and especially on the cross airline crediting.

I'm looking to fly this itinerary here:

SWISS	LX179	Business Class	Monday 23rd November	Singapore - Zurich	23:30 - 06:10	(Arrives next day)
SWISS	LX316	Business Class	Tuesday 24th November	Zurich - London Heathrow	07:10 - 08:05
SWISS	LX333	Business Class	Monday 30th November	London Heathrow - Zurich	13:45 - 16:35
SWISS	LX18	Business Class	Monday 30th November	Zurich - New York (Newark)	17:15 - 20:25
United Airlines	UA1960	Business Class	Saturday 5th December	New York (Newark) - Los Angeles	11:00 - 14:20

With the likely return flight being United back to Sydney as well.


My goal is to build up United Airlines Miles to use for award bookings on Star Alliance in the future, I don't really care about status on Star Alliance at this stage.

Is this likely the best option to credit all miles to United or are there any other things to take into account?


Thanks if you can help!

 

[zainman]

Ensure your booking class(es) earn on United here: wheretocredit.com

 

[dajop]

Welcome to one of the more complicated programs out there, that is mileage plus.

It's a bit of dark magic on RTW fares what miles you earn travelling on United (i.e. miles that can use for awards also known as RDM), as they are earnt at 5 miles/$USD spent, and it is not very transparent what the spend is for the UA portion of the RTW ticket. Having said that a starting points is some math: (Total Distance on UA/Total Distance of all flights on ticket) * Ticket Price (in USD). Then multiply that by 5. (also capped at 75,000 miles/ticket which should not be an issue for this ticket).

If your ticket was issued by UA (ticket number beginning 016) you will also earn on Swiss flights at this level (5 miles/USD) , if not you will earn 100%, 150% or 200% of the distance travelled, depending on the business class fare level for your Swiss flights.

I would actually consider doing a status match using your QF status, for 90 days. That means you will get 8 miles/$ (if matched to gold) or 9 miles/$ (if matched to platinum during that 90 day period, and on Swiss flights you should get a 50% or 75% mileage bonus respectively. The distance from EWR-LAX-SYD is ~9940 miles, which will get 14910 elite qualifying miles, enough to retain UA/star gold, but you would short of retaining UA Platinum under the challenge.

 

[Danp]

Thanks a lot both zainman and Dajop, have checked out the fare classes now and they are all earning 100 - 150% on United.


Just to clarify, UA points are calculated in a couple of different ways:

Flying on United - points per USD spent
Flying on Other star alliance programs - miles flown with a potential multiplier



Thanks for the heads up on that status match too, I'll apply to that tonight but definitely leaning towards giving this itinerary a go.