Newbie confused & would much appreciate help

[kobe2256]

I've been lurking around for a few days & finally mustered up the courage to join up.
I thought I had a reasonably good grasp of the English language until I started reading through the posts on this forum. I have been trying to work out what all these codes, etc mean. and have no clue. So please bear/bare(?) with me as I am very new to all this.
We: myself, husband & two adult sons will be flying, economy,to the U.S. in December.I will be using Travel Plus to book our flights through as I have a visa gold card and wish to take advantage of the visa purchase points and insurance. We are not currently members of any ff programme.We were going to fly and join Qantas. After reading previous posts it would seem I may be better paying a bit extra for the flights and fly AA and join their FF. We would be flying Mel-L.A. returning N.Y.- L.A.- Mel. Our internal flights will be with United and Air Canada so we will purchase seperate vouchers for those as my no.1.priority is the least number of stopovers and these are the only airlines that offer nonstop flights for our internal destinations.
Later next year my husband and I plan to fly to Europe. I am hoping that the FF points from this trip can be used to our advantage for that trip somehow. (upgrade to Business class would be wonderful )I would be able to transfer the points from my sons' accounts to ours as we are paying for their flights anyway! Will we earm enough points to be of any use?
Do I join Qantas FF? AA? Save my money...don't join any?
I hope I have supplied enough details without boring you with too many details.
Thankyou in advance for anyone who has the patience to offer me some advice.

 

[Evan]

This link should give you an idea of the endless different abreviations used here and other frequent flyer sites.
http://www.frequentflyer.com.au/community/your-questions/abreviations-and-explanations-5056.html

A few really common ones...
whY = Y = economy (whY because whY on earth would you want to fly economy, but a lot of us do)
J = business
F = first
SG,WP are gold and platinum frequest flyers in QF scheme.

With so many different ideas on AA or QF it will always be difficult to choose but for enconomy flyers and people why buy more discount airfares in Australia QF may be a better option, but you will have to make your own decision. Not that its "legal" you could join QFF from an overseas adress, maybe a family member etc, then later "move" (change address) to Australia, then there is no cost to join.

I have not even thought of calculating the points you may earn and how that would help on your Europe trip but regardless of that when i travel in that direction i am generally just happy to have a seat on a flight i want, anything else is a bonus if i can manage an upgrade from points. Also an upgrade can only be sourced on your home carrier, ie for a QF flight you need to be using QFF points not AA points. (You can of course use AA points for the obtaining the full flight, just not upgrades on other carriers aircraft)

Gold and Platinum FF's etc always get first priority as well.

E

 

[Maca44]

You could also book your international flights with AA (through Airline Tickets and Airline Reservations from American Airlines | AA.com) and save money on the fuel taxes, and then credit your flight to the QF program. There is a little bit of mucking around paying etc, but you do save money. The result is the same as you receive QF points.

Alternatively, it would appear you do not fly often so if you are not members of any FF program you might consider flying Air New Zealand as their whY service (in my opinion) is much better than QF, and then you could credit your points to a *A program and also earn points with internal flights with United/Air Canada. Mind you, I know almost nothing about *A programs, but others will no doubt advise you better.

 

[NM]

If you join and credit the flights to Qantas FF program, you will earn around 18,000 Qantas FF points for each person. So for 4 people, combining the points via family transfers, you will have around 72,000 points, plus whatever you have from the credit card spend.

To upgrade from Melbourne to London from discount economy to business class, you will need 96,000 per person, so assuming you both want to travel together, that is 192,000 points, so will need a reasonable amount of credit card spending to reach the target. And that is for a one0way upgrade only - double for return.

Then consider that Qantas FF upgrades are not confirmed, but waitlisted on request and services based on FF status. So as Bronze members you are at the bottom of the list after all Silver, Gold and Platinum members. So the chances of being able to use the 192,000 points for an upgrade to Europe is very low.

If you use AA's FF program (called AAdvantage), and you book the AA flight number on the flight operated by Qantas, you can undertake the AA Platinum Challenge. This will be completed upon the return LAX-MEL flight and then you will have AA Platinum status (OneWorld Sapphire status) until either the end of Feb 2009 or 2010 depending on whether you commence the challenge before or after July.

The benefit of doing the AA Platinum challenge is not in so much for the FF miles, bit for the status benefits. For your later planned trip to Europe, you will have lounge access when flying with any OneWorld airline, priority check-in, seating preferences etc.

So AA will get you guaranteed Platinum status and hence guaranteed OneWorld Sapphire status benefits. While QF will get you FF points that you have a low probability of using for an upgrade to Europe.

But AA does not have the same family-transfer of points as QF, so not quite so easy to pool the point. And you cannot use AA miles to upgrade a flight to Europe unless you fly the long way using AA operated flights (such as MEL-NRT on Qantas and then NRT-ORD-LHR on AA). Such AA upgrades will require a co-payment in addition to FF miles, but can be confirmed immediately if there is availability at the time of booking.