Relocating to UK - What is best choice OneWorld Airline - current QF Platinum FF

Hi,

I'm relocating to London for my work to be closer to the markets I travel to most in Europe and North America. I'm currently a Platinum QFF, who I favoured to maximise my points for upgrades flying internationally just about monthly out of Australia pre-Covid.

Any tips on which Airline I should favour with London my home base? Is it possible to convert a Platinum QFF to another OneWorld carrier like BA? Or is it easier to match to a StarAlliance carrier. I am Gold on both Virgin Australia and separately Singapore but that's not too helpful if my target destinations out of London are mainly EU/NA.

I will however be returning home to visit Australia at least annually.

Thanks for your consideration of my questions. (Apologies if this is answered somewhere else but I could not find it.)

You can keep your platinum QFF by virtue of an annual return home which uses up two flight but depending on how you arrange your bookings this can be four e.g if your home is Sydney then fly via Perth or Melbourne to bring four sectors to your home trip. You should then have access to most BA lounges except perhaps the Concorde lounge, and AA lounges for the US trips.

If one is a krisflyer you have United or Air Canada to the USA and Lufthansa or Swiss in Europe.

BA is probably going to be easiest if you are based in London. If you can somehow swing it, Finnair is the other European based OW airline worthy of consideration. Qatar may be a stretch if your trips don’t involve Asia/Africa/ME. Virgin is your other option. There are no UK-based SA airlines as far as I am aware.

Definitely worth asking the question of BA EC if they are willing to QFF status match (even if at Silver/Sapphire to start with).

It’s really hard to maintain QF status in the UK unless you’re travelling to Australia at least once a year due to the minimum 4 segments needed on QF/JQ flights.

When I moved to the UK I signed up with BMI which was Star Alliance but when it got taken over by BA they switched my membership to BA. BA Executive Club is a great program but you do have the down side then of deciding whether your credit your OneWorld points and to BA or Qantas.

The great thing about BAEC though is it’s really easy to earn status on OW partner airlines. I once warned BA silver (equivalent to Qantas Gold) just by flying a return discount business class journey on QR from Europe to Australia.

If you will be travelling in Europe and to the US a bit I would look into the United status challenge. United status would get you perks in the US and on European star alliance airlines like Lufthansa etc.

United?...shudder.