Thoughts on AirBerlin Topbonus

[Robbietenor]

Hi there everyone,

Was wondering what everyone thought of the Air Berlin Topbonus program for an Australian living in Germany, but spending 4+ months a year in Australia? Currently Virgin Platinum and Qantas Silver, but probably can't keep both and am flown more and more for work on QF. However not too thrilled about the latest 'enhancements' to QFF seeing as I'm in Discounted Economy most of the time. Virgin was a good program for me but I fly less and less domestically in Australia.

It seems that Air Berlin lets me choose either Australian airline to fly with (+Etihad and all the OW airlines)? Any caveats with the program?

 

[BOZZ]

Miles expire after 3 years as far as I can tell. Taxes can be high. But the miles seem to come easy, I got 10,000 and haven't spent a cent.
You can get value from Australia to Pacific redemptions if you can find flights, also Europe to North America. You might want to check Melia rewards as a transfer partner, just be careful as they seem to change transfer rates with no notice at all!