Living in London: to move to BA Exec or stay with QF...

[rematch]

Hey guys - welcome your advice...

I have been living in London now for over three years, and my travel plans have fluctuated. In the first year being here, I qualified and moved from QFF gold to platinum, which I retained for two years. However my travel has since dwindled, and this year I dropped down to gold.

I have started travelling again, but much of my travel is with BA throughout Europe, as well as intermittent trips to Asia. It doesnt look as though I will qualify to maintain gold with QF, and I also have realised I havent flown the number of QF sectors...

Therefore - should I dump QF and move to BA and start earning BA miles and status or should I wait until I drop down to Silver (which I am not looking forward to)...

How many flights would it take to get to BAs equivalent?

Thanks
Look forward to your advice

 

[Dave Noble]

The time it will take is dependant on the type of fares being purchased . With a BA account based in England you need 600 Tier Points

Tier points are only earned on 1st class, business class and Y,B,H economy fares . Any economy flight in a booking class lower than H earns nothing

BA earning

For a UK domestic flight you would earn 20 TPs
For a flight with Economy and Club Europe cabins you would earn 20TPs in economy , 40 TPs in Business
For flights UK-Australia you would earn 110 in economy, 135 in World Traveller Plus, 220 in business and 330 in 1st
for other flights you would earn 60 in economy, 75 in World Traveller Plus, 120 in business and 180 in 1st

Other OW flights

<= 2000 miles would be 20 in economy , 40 in business and 60 (iirc) in 1st
> 2000 miles would be 60 in economy, 120 in business and 180 in 1st


This should allow you to work out how many flights you need based on your travel patterns. Just remember that cheap economy fares are ineligable for miles. You can tell whether the flights you have taken would have been eligable based on the miles you earned to your QF account; if they only earned at 25% mileage then they were lower than H

If you are going to migrate to BA, which would seem logical if you are doing no QF flights, do it now whilst you have lounge access and then you can get towards status and hopefully avoid losing lounge access

If you have an address in mainland Europe you can use then sign up there since you would only need 400 TPs to attain BA silver status


Dave

 

[simongr]

The first question as ever is what you want from your FF program

Dave has very clearly (and I am sure accurately) set out what the qualification criteria are.

However what that doesnt talk to is what you get for that. If you can make BA Gold and want lounge access - then that's great. Given the lack of QF sectors you might fall foul of the minimum QF sectors requirement.

If you arent flying to the US alot on BA then AA might be a consideration but if you are flying a lot of BA then you will lose out on the status bonus.

So question 1 - what do you really really want from the program?