Hello all,
I am a rookie points hacker.
I am thinking of joining Egypt Air Star Alliance due to the family pooling available to achieve/maintain Gold status.
My wife and I will be flying to Vancouver from Brisbane about every 18 months and prefer the direct Air Canada flight…and we will be flying Brisbane to NZ once or twice a year with Air NZ.
We were using Virgin, but with the direct flight to Vancouver with Air Canada, and Virgin not affiliating with Air NZ, I think we need to do a Star Alliance program.
We will fly premium economy and economy.
Please feel free to give us any advice…good and bad…you will not offend my ignorance 
Hi,
I think I understand where you’re coming from: you’ve decided that Egypt Air gives you your best shot at achieving Star Alliance Gold, given your situation. However, you’ll be sacrificing a helluva lot of potential points in the process. Consider…
- To my knowledge there's no credit card in Australia that will earn you Egypt Air points.
- There's no domestic airline in Australia that will earn you Egypt Air points.
- There's no supermarket or any other store loyalty programme in Australia that will earn you Egypt Air points.
Unless you are willing to forsake the opportunities to earn points through your spending, credit cards, domestic flying, supermarket shopping etc, you really should have at least one other FF programme going. For your situation, I would suggest Velocity given the fact that you can, via Singapore Airlines/KrisFlyer, use Velocity points for Star Alliance flights.
My hunch is that if you forget Egypt Air and focus on a combination of Velocity, KrisFlyer and AmEx Rewards, you’ll find that you and your wife may well be earning just about enough points between you that you’ll be able to use points to fly Business class to Canada every 18 months anyway-- and if you’re flying Business, you’ll have all the benefits of Gold status. Alternatively, there’s always the option of paying for one-off lounge access, or each getting a credit card which comes with complimentary lounge access: this may make more sense if you’re only flying a few times per year.
That’s my two cents’ anyway! All the best.
Hi Overseascanuck,
Yes, you can transfer your Velocity points to KrisFlyer (Star Alliance) and use them on Air Canada.
Virgin also codeshares on some Air Canada flights already and is talking of a closer partnership with them. So it’s possible that in future you’ll be able to use your Velocity points on Air Canada flights from Brisbane to Vancouver without having to transfer them first.
Asiana has a good FF programme with some really good value redemptions (eg business class to NZ for only 25000 points each way or economy for 25000 points return). But, simply for convenience and because you’re just starting out, I’d personally choose KrisFlyer over Asiana. In fact, I already have!