Which Oneworld airline alliance loyalty program is best for children?

Finnair is the best for children <18 years old because the mileage does not expire following the standard policy until they reach 18 years old.

This is an absolutely amazing benefit Finnair offers, providing a mileage "travel bank" until they reach 18. Learn more at https://www.finnair.com/sg-en/finnair-plus/finnair-plus-membership-tiers-and-benefits/finnair-plus-junior

Until I discovered this amazing benefit, I've been worrying about mileage loss every 18 months as I had signed up for Cathay Pacific's Asia Miles.

Family Pooling

While Finnair doesn't offer family pooling of mileage like other Oneworld alliance airlines such as:

• British Airways Executive Club
• Qatar Airways Privilege Club
• Japan Airlines (JAL) Mileage Bank

... once your child turns 18, they can create another account with one of the three carriers above, and transfer their Avios to that new account and participate in family pooling!

The point of mileage pooling for most people is to redeem mileage before expiration, but keep in mind Finnair has solve the mileage expiration problem for children. This also alleviate the pressure to chase miles or top-up for adults.

Cathay Pacific Asia Miles pooling .... sort of

If you aren't sold on Finnair for children already, and you prefer Asia Miles and can easily generate Asia Miles activity every 18 months to prevent mileage expiration, you could consider crediting Oneworld alliance travel to the Asia Miles account for your children. See details at https://www.cathaypacific.com/cx/en_KH/inspiration/membership/explore-cathay-membership-family-benefits.html

I don't really find this program friendly as Cathay requires the child/minor to have an account for at least a year. It's almost like they want to make sure there's a good chance of your child losing the mileage before you're allowed to save.

The program is also not that great because there is no transparency as to how many points people in your "redemption group" have. Sure, you can redeem on their behalf, but that's more work for you and you're still not really pooling mileage. It's annoying your spouse's mileage is managed one way and your child managed another way.

In my experience, my child had their Asia Miles account get deactivated and it may take up to 16 days just to process the account reactivation which is plain ridiculous. Self-service password reset was not possible and I had to resend my child's passport info for the reactivation. Why? It makes no sense at all. I'm not asking for a name change or birth date change.

To add on top of that, mileage claim is slow. I literally have submitted a mileage claim that was accepted by Cathay and the mileage hasn't posted after 8 months. Even Cathay acknowledges it "may take several months for miles to be credited to your account" on their site.

Contrast this to Finnair's site, where mileage claim for Finnair flights only takes <30 seconds to post in the transaction history after submitting the claim.

Despite the bad Asia Miles experience online, another factor to consider is where to credit your airline mileage. You need to do your own calculation using https://wheretocredit.com/ because Asia Miles is class, fare class and distance-based but Finnair Avios is spend-based (in EUR) and frequent flyer status-tier based. The higher your frequent flyer tier, the more Avios per EUR.

In my case, flying Finnair I can reach the Asia Miles required for a long-haul Premium Economy flight more quickly by crediting to Asia Miles than if I tried to earn Avios via Finnair.

Which family pooling option to use?

Not Cathay Pacific's Asia Miles as I explained above. In order of preference, I would say British Airways is my top pick, but keep the mileage credit to Finnair for the expiration policies mentioned earlier and also because the lifetime tier is easier to achieve on Finnair vs the other airlines.

1, British Airways Executive Club

• Pro: shared pool for redemptions. Website easy to use.
• Con: "Only" up to 7 members, and requirement for living at the same address, but who will check the address and why does the address even matter these days?

2, Qatar Airways Privilege Club

• Pro: up to 9 family members!
• Con: contributes to main member's account only. Sure, my family members trust me with the mileage, but I really don't want to be the travel agent for my family more than the next person and be involved in every mileage redemption.

3, Japan Airlines (JAL) Mileage Bank

• Pro: up to 9 family members!
• Con: the website is hard to use and antiquated. Don't take my word for it. Upgraded Points also thinks so according to the https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/airlines/japan-airlines-mileage-bank-loyalty-program/ post.

My pet peeve is JAL still sends out physical membership cards in this day and age. Not so eco-friendly, and the process took a while. It truly felt like a country club application.

While on this note, I also want to commend Finnair on making account signups instant and easy. Signups can even be done after you have boarded the plane. They provide free on-board wifi for Finnair Plus signups and you just scan a QR code to get to the input form.