Tag Archives for star alliance.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Virgin Atlantic miles aren’t worth as much as other miles. However they do have strategic uses and I believe the single best one is ANA first class roundtrip from the Central U.S. and East Coast for just 120,000 miles per person. (San Francisco and Los Angeles is just 110,000 miles roundtrip, while business class runs 90,000 or 95,000 miles depending on the city.)
Another strong use of Virgin Atlantic miles is Delta business class between the US and Europe for 50,000 points each way, which becomes an amazing deal witht he 30% tansfer bonus. There are other award chart sweet spots, like Australia and New Zealand.
If you want to go to Asia with the family in business or first class, there’s one airline that’s got you covered and even one best route though there are several good routes.
Star Alliance member Asiana simply offers fantastic award space. The United website is great for seeing this quickly at a glance. Their award calendar will show you which dates have availability — in this case non-stop availability from Los Angeles to Seoul for four passengers. Dates with solid lines have coach award space and dates with dotted lines have premium cabin award space.
The Star Alliance program Avianca LifeMiles has a hotel booking site that is really Rocketmiles. And they have a one-day triple miles offer (there’s only about 12 hours left). You can earn up to 36,000 miles per night.
Etihad has talked up a strategy of linking up with several Star Alliance airlines saying that since they are no longer ‘their own alliance’ this isn’t in conflict with Star rules.
Etihad isn’t the only Gulf carrier pursuing closer ties with the Star Alliance though. Gulf Air says this is their objective as well.
This would allow Air Canada to start with all of Aeroplan’s members, instead of starting from scratch. It would take the pressure off of Air Canada to offer as rich a value proposition to members in order to compete with Aeroplan.
There’s a certain irony to spinning off the program, realizing income, driving down the value of that program and then acquiring it on the cheap.
Star Alliance member Asiana is suffering widespread delays for catering and many flights are leaving without meals at all, even on trips as long as twelve hours.
Reportedly on Sunday “51 flights departed behind schedule and 38 left the airport without meals to feed passengers.” Then on Monday “18 out of 75 international flights operated by the carrier were delayed more than an hour and 16 short-haul flights to Japan and China even departed from the Incheon International Airport without in-flight meals.”
oneworld has three elite tiers. Star Alliance and SkyTeam have two. Star Alliance says they’re considering a third, a new top tier. But they aren’t saying what that would look like but it probably would involve devaluation of Gold.
Star Alliance also wants to introduce ‘dynamic redemption’ in other words revenue-based ‘miles and money’ across the alliance, spending points from one program as cash to buy a seat on another.
Star Alliance introduced the connecting partner model last year which is like ‘alliance lite’.
Now oneworld has announced the same thing and even called it a ‘connect partner’ (as opposed to a connecting partner). The first oneworld connect partner will be Fiji Airways.
Back in 2008 I was earning 9999 Delta miles per one day car rental. That same year Mrp alert who shares a birthday with me earned 100,000 miles in 45 days renting cars.
Those days are long gone but Avis will currently give you 10,000 SAS EuroBonus miles for a 3 day rental.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
