Asiana Club - Is it worth it to use Asiana miles travelling to MNL-Perth?(ROUNDTRIP)

Hello All,

I am in a dilemna now if I am gonna use my miles with Asiana for my trip from Manila-Singapore-Perth-Singapore-Manila(all via Singapore Airlines). I have enough miles with Asiana(zone 3, needed 50,000 miles) to deduct the mileage, but when I asked them how much do I need to pay for the taxes(its not entirely free you know)..they quoted me around 350 USD which was almost half of a new ticket with mileage..The new ticket with Singapore Airlines would cost $700 USD vis a vis a mileage ticket with no miles and 50,000 miles to be deducted to my account.

Do you think its worth to purchase the mileage ticket or just purchase a new ticket outright with Singapore Airlines?

Btw, this is also strange. I have United Mileage but I lack 4,500 miles for a free ticket to Perth. When I asked UA how much would I pay for the taxes, for the round trip, they quoted to me about USD100 only, plus 25 handling fee, via SQ, against Asiana's USD350 taxes. How do they compute how much we pay for taxes, I brought this up to Asiana and they couldnt explain why for a mileage ticket using UA(to be booked thru a star alliance carrier-SQ), it would cost less against what theyre charging. Can anyone explain to me how they compute the taxes and why those 2 airlines are different when it comes to computation with the taxes I need to pay.

Please move this to the Star Alliance forum if this is not the proper forum to address this question. Thanks.

Btw, this is also strange. I have United Mileage but I lack 4,500 miles for a free ticket to Perth. When I asked UA how much would I pay for the taxes, for the round trip, they quoted to me about USD100 only, plus 25 handling fee, via SQ, against Asiana's USD350 taxes. How do they compute how much we pay for taxes, I brought this up to Asiana and they couldnt explain why for a mileage ticket using UA(to be booked thru a star alliance carrier-SQ), it would cost less against what theyre charging. Can anyone explain to me how they compute the taxes and why those 2 airlines are different when it comes to computation with the taxes I need to pay.



Airlines all have different calculation of taxes for award ticket, we don't know for sure how do they calculate, some also include very high fuel surcharge, especially on asian airlines like OZ and NH. Every program also has its upside and downside about redemming award ticket, like maybe has less taxes for award tickets, but for example UA also has "starnet blocking", one maybe hard to find availability on partner carriers especially on premium carriers. But on the other hand, if you can find avaibility on UA, their taxes are often the lowest among all carriers, like I have used UA miles to redemm awards for ORD-HKG with partner carriers, even for flying F class, all I need is to pay only for $50.

For other *A partner carriers, it is always easy to find and redemm partner awards, what you see using ANA to research for award avaibility, basically you see what you see, unlike if you use UA miles, sometimes you see the availability on ANA, then you call, they will say they don't have it.

For this very reason I almost always use mileage tickets on Business or First. I would buy the ticket and keep the miles for something worthwhile.

Agreed. I would never consider an economy class award ticket unless it involved some very unusual circumstances. If F is available for the award flight I want, I'll always choose that, otherwise C.

For the OP, I certainly wouldn't even consider 'wasting' my miles on that sort of an award ticket where you had to pay so much in taxes/surcharges. You're getting very poor value for your miles. Of course if you have miles that will soon expire and don't have any other chance of burning them, then by all means go for it as it's better to get something out of them rather than nothing. If not, hold onto your miles and save up for a better award.

Asome also include very high fuel surcharge, especially on asian airlines like OZ and NH.

Actually I don't think OZ's fuel surcharge is very much currently due to the lower price of oil. Back when oil peaked, the fuel surcharges were quite high though. This is referring to ex-ICN tickets though. Tickets for flight originating from other countries may have varying fuel surcharges based on what is allowed and/or what the competition is charging.

I think currently SQ and TG are the ones with the highest surcharges in Asia. OZ I think is one of the lowest and NH in the middle. That's the situation the last time I checked, though it changes all the time and I don't constantly track the surcharges.