The best Star Alliance frequent flyer program in the world is hidden in plain site. What if I told you that you could book first class to Europe for 60,000 miles, or first class to Africa for just 75,000 miles? That’s what Aegean Miles & Bonus offers.
They are a Marriott transfer partner but do not partner with any of the credit card points programs. And they’re now selling miles at a great discount.
Here are some of their awards:
- 42,000 miles roundtrip for United domestic first class (within the lower 48)
- 90,000 miles roundtrip for US-Europe business class, and North Africa is included at the same price as Europe and this includes Israel, too. First class is 120,000 miles roundtrip.
- 110,000 miles roundtrip for US-Middle East business class, 150,000 miles roundtrip for first class
- 150,000 miles roundtrip in business class between US and all of Asia and the South Pacific
- 90,000 miles roundtrip in business class between the US and South America
- 110,000 miles roundtrip for US-Africa business class, 150,000 miles roundtrip for first class
One-way awards are available at half these prices. You can book one-way Lufthansa first class to Europe for just 60,000 miles (plus fuel surcharges). You can book US-South America for 45,000 miles one-way (and no fuel surcharges).
The biggest drawback besides fuel surcharges is that you can only have one connection in each direction of your award. More than one connections is an additional award.
Via You Have Been Upgraded they’re offering a a 100% bonus on purchased awards (you have to log into your account to see this offer). This is only available through Friday, November 22 Athens local time.
You can purchase a limited number of elite qualifying miles, but here we’re interested in redeemable miles. You can normally buy up to 50,000 miles per membership year (12 months from enrollment or last tier status upgrade or retention). Purchased miles are posted instantly. And they normally cost 25 euros per 1000 miles.
With this offer you can buy up to 100,000 miles (50,000 + 100% bonus) and that would cost 1250 euros. You’re buying some of the most valuable miles in the world at just 1.425 cents apiece.
If you can find first class transatlantic space, that would be 30,000 miles purchased (with bonus yields 60,000 miles). That’s 750 euros, or US$855. That can be strategically worthwhile, even including Lufthansa fuel surcharges for instance. I don’t buy miles on the if-come, but it’s been years since I’ve seen a straight up purchase miles deal this good
Its capped at 60,000 miles still cheap though
I wish I had an idea of the fuel surcharges.
@miles use the ITA matrix. taxes and charges FRA-LAX One way are just under 400 USD and for LAX – FRA one way just under 800 USD. So if you take it Westbound that 100USD per hour of First Class..
So how is first class $855 if you also have to pay the surcharges. Not cool
Do Aegean miles have an expiration? If so, is there an easy way to extend them?
how to seach for J award tickets on the Aegean miles & bonus website?
I’m sure spelling was also hidden in plain site. You might want to edit that.
Does Aegean get good access to premium cabin space on other airlines consistently?
OMAAT comments highlight that if you haven’t credited a flight to the account over the past year, you only get to buy at most 30,000 miles.
@Asian Miler – I don’t think Gary would play us like that. I may be mistaken, but if he says we can purchase 100,000 miles, then I’d say that’s accurate. I’m not at all sure I need to pay to start accruing yet another currency, but that’s another point.
Aegean miles issued now no longer have expiration dates, but Aegean accounts can expire and with them the miles.
The Aegean fuel surcharge amounts applicable to their award tickets for partner airline flights can be quite high. It’s why I use UA or Avianca/Lifemiles more than Aegean miles except for use on certain carriers and/or on certain routes.
For those not able or willing to originate/terminate trips at major hubs or focus cities for multiple Star Alliance carriers, Aegean miles are more problematic than for people based at say a place like ORD or IAD.
Asian Miler,
A3 seems to get the same kind of availability as Avianca/Lifemiles but a little bit better than Avianca/Lifemiles, if you are looking at just non-stop or single-connection flights. Otherwise, Avianca/Lifemiles is better on average in terms of availability.
But UA seems to have generally better availability than both A3 and Avianca/Lifemiles when it comes to Star Alliance carriers, even if just looking at non-stop or single-connection flights.
I do have a concern about A3’s loyalty program: I suspect that the award chart is not years and years and years away from an adjustment the devalues the program customers’ miles.
Friday in Athens and everywhere is November 23rd, not November 22nd, this year.
“This is only available through Friday, November 22 Athens local time.”
@Christian- it’s not a matter of Gary “play us like that”. Check the Aegean T&C, and also the link Gary cited “You Have Been Upgraded”. If you want to believe that Gary or anyone for that matter as the end all truth without omissions, then you’ll be in for a bunch of unpleasant surprises. Various details are often left out for expediency, sloppiness, misleading headlines (it NOT $855) or otherwise.
My biggest stash of A3 miles came from having the SAS youth fares and “kids fly free” promotions gamed. Those methods were a pretty cheap way to rack up A3 miles, but this buy miles promotion from Aegean is far faster and easier to rack up miles.
For those with A3 “Together” accounts and those who have open A3 Together slots available, perhaps there are ways to buy more than 100,000 miles at this month’s promotional price.
@Spider2 – Placing absolute trust in a travel blogger, or anyone else that you don’t personally know, is generally a really poor idea. The thing is, I have a healthy respect for Gary’s due diligence and erudition. The guy may consistently ignore inconveniently difficult questions in the blog comments, but of all the titans, I trust him the most. If TPG listed this, I would be exceedingly careful, since he doesn’t care about honesty.
@Spider2 – I stand corrected. Sometimes I really hate this caveat emptor stuff. Good call, though.
Couple of things:
– your limit is 30k per year (so you can get up to 60k through this promotion) unless you credited at least one flight ever
– promotion ends on November 24th 23:59 Athens time
– what makes this interesting is that all people who had gold status while it was “lifetime” and had not renewed it had their membership year start on November 24th, so potentially you can buy total of 200k miles through this promotion as 50k purchase limit is per membership year. We would know for sure in approximately 2 and a half hours when it would be November 24th Athens time
I’ve got about 100k of these wonderful points about to expire and I’ve yet to
Be able to use them for F or J to suit my needs, even months in advance (and last minute). Seriously horrible availability in redemptions at least US-EUR. I even tried domestic and the routings were just bad. Maybe there is a secret trick but I sure struggled. Closest I got was Lufthansa F FRA-MEX but limited days and I’m based in Florida so that didn’t make any sense.
Some of the Aegean accounts which had purchased miles under this Black Friday promotion have not been fully credited with the amount of miles purchased with the bonus included.
So double check your balances to make sure you got all the Aegean miles you were supposed to get with the bonus or otherwise Aegean will have charged you way more for the miles than you expected to be charged for the miles.