Airline Loyalty Mileage Scheme - Best One?

[Manc]

Alright Guys/gals

I'm looking at starting to collect airline mileage when I fly. Whats the best one to join or do you just join them all? For example Star alliance or one of the others such as BA etc.
Just wondered if there are a few tips people could give me (PM is ness), such as best routes to travel to get mileage.

Just joined the Star Alliance(BMI) one and the Air France/KLM as most of my flights would be in europe for the time being but would look for outside europe for using my miles. I can use the BMI one to book hotels etc and collect miles.

Cheers
Ian

[gocaps16]

It all depends. If you live in Chicago, then United Mileage Plus. Atlanta, Skymiles, and so on. I collect miles on all carriers that I fly. OneWorld, skyteam, and star alliance, including some low cost carriers like JetBlue which is pointless for me to collect since I don't fly on them as much.

Kevin

[LXA330]

Flying Blue has a nice scheme, you can acquire miles for flying Air France, KLM, Alitalia, Czech Airlines, Aeromexico, Korean Air, Delta, Continental, or Northwest, as well as by sailing Royal Caribbean Cruises and there are hotel chains such as Sheraton that accept it as well. You might get close to 23000 miles for flying from LHR to MEX (25000 in a calendar year is the minimum to upgrade the tier, and also you need only 25000 miles for an upgrade. 20000 are needeed for an award ticket from CDG-MAD etc...). As you can see here, most of the companies are european, so you can have miles for flying four different airlines in the same way as you would have them for flying Air France alone.

BA has also a good scheme and you might get some good perks by flying IB, AY, EI, AA, QF, CX, LA, and others, but you need 25000 to opgrade from World traveller to World Traveller Plus.

For BMI, I have no idea, but I've heard it is good, for more info go to www.airreview.com, there are a list of different airlines, and there they explain their FF schemes, though KLMīs FF is outdated (The flying dutchman), but the other's are fine.

[RobinB]

BA for me

Hi guys - not sure of what's available in your respective countries - however I have BA miles and it works as follows:

Local banking institution I am hooked up with offer a credit card that rewards one with airmiles. In my case it's BA. So, I use my credit card to purchase EVERYTHING (and with electronic banking, doing the fund transfer from current acct to credit card to cover the purchases is a cinch) - Also, obviously, each time I (and/or my family) fly BA, I get credited with the said airmiles. Also, BA fly locally here in S Africa (operated by Comair). The best thing is that the miles do not "expire" - unlike S A Airways where you have 3 year cycles to gain/spend airmiles. So far, I have cashed in my airmiles to do 6 trips from FNJS to Europe and back. Have fun......