[Brisey]

(07-14-2014 07:16 AM)G_global Wrote:  

Hey Brisey. I read Boarding Area from time to time - its useful and there are many similar sites that have useful information frequently updated. I put a bunch in my RSS feed. Among the ones I frequent are:
The Points Guy
Million Mile Secrets
Hack My Trip
One Mile at a Time
The Flight Deal
View from the Wing

Many of them have overlapping information, and so you'll end up with redundancy to some degree.

With respect to your aggregation of points, if you've taken 20 flights per year, you should really be hitting status on an airline alliance. If I recall, you live in Europe (I won't be more specific unless you want to disclose it). Regardless of what you do, I'd suggest a few things - one, you should aggregate until you hit status on a single airline, and then perhaps diversify. Conversely, you could aggregate enough for the reward you really want (say a trip to Las Vegas - been there done that ) and then diversify. What I mean by diversify is start to aggregate on a second alliance (or airline with allegiances, like Virgin, even if its not part of an alliance, per say). Perhaps once you've aggregated enough on a star alliance carrier, do OneWorld next. But again, that really depends on your preferred destinations. Someone traveling from the UK and wanting to hit NYC or LA might choose OneWorld next, or Virgin next.

Do not break your miles up between carriers in a single alliance, in general, except where you know you'll not be stranding little chunks of miles here and there. Keep your SA miles on Lufthansa for now, until you hit one of the benchmarks I mentioned above. Then its cool to switch, but I'd really consider switching outside SA at that point, unless, for example, you've gather enough miles for the reward trip you want, or status for some reason is easier achieved on the other SA member (I wouldn't think so, but perhaps, due to a credit card).

What hotels are you staying at during all these trips. You should be aggregating status through that as well, as well as possible points transferable to your Lufthansa account?

Thanks for the feedback mate! Hope you are well.
Lufthansa Miles and More is 35000 status miles or 30 flight segments to Frequent Flyer (i'll hit that this year) or 100000 miles to Gold. I have a Miles and More AMEX which gives 2 miles per 1 mile spent but they only go towards award miles and do not affect the status. If I fly in Europe and take economy I'll get about 500 miles per segment. My flight to Vegas netted me about 6000 miles for the 4 leg trip. I haven't really gotten any points from hotel stays so far, simply because I've not checked properly, definitely something i'll look into from now on.

I'm about to book a trip to Beijing in October then onto Guangzhou for the Canton Fair. Going to pay for an economy flight then use my points to upgrade to first.
If you are around in October it would be good to catch up again!