Aegean vs Asiana for Star Allaince Gold

As many who pay for their own flights I am looking for the fastest way to Gold and then maintaining it for the least amount.

I live in NZ and am trying to work out what is the quickest way to get to *G. I can never get to it with just AirNZ. I really only want it for the lounge access.

I will be living in UK for the next few years so don't really need AirNZ.

My thought was to
1) Get onto Aegean now. Earn the 20k miles in year 1. I should make this by April of 2012.

2) Once I get Gold then swap over to Asiana and start racking up the miles on them. I should reach Gold on Asiana by early-mid 2013. Then I will have Gold until October 2015. My start date on Asiana is today.


Can I get an Aegean Gold without ever flying with them? The thing is I will probably never fly on one of these airlines. Do I need to? I have confirmation from Asiana that I do not but have not heard back from Aegean.

Also with Aegean, once you hit Blue do your status miles get reset? Say I was on 3000 and traveled and earn 6000, do I move up to Blue and start on 0 Status miles or 5000 miles?

Any other thoughts or ideas?

Thanks!

Welcome to FT and the friendly OZ forum, NZBone! With Star Alliance programs you do not need to fly the airline to get status. The only exception to this is AC who have just introduced steep minimum requirements.

Personally, I would most probably stick to A3. They have a decent earn/burn ratio while OZ is among the worst. And I wouldn't split my miles. Just stay with A3 for the easy status and you will be fine. OZ is only really good if you are after lifetime Gold status or if you need some specialty redemptions with lots of stopovers which OZ allows.

Thanks mate,

What do you mean by earn/burn? Sorry such a newbie!

I'll probably want to use my redemption for flights from LHR to AKL.

I am currently with AirNZ but seems very slow to get anywhere. Is that your experience? If I had known if Aegaen I would probably be golds by now.

What specifically does asiana offer? How much would I need to fly to get to lifetime?

I may stop flying as much come 2014-2015 and it will be hard to maintain the gold I think even on Aegean. So I thought that if I had it out to 2015 with asiana then I would be sweet.

Also do you know about the question I asked below
"Also with Aegean, once you hit Blue do your status miles get reset? Say I was on 3000 and traveled and earn 6000, do I move up to Blue and start on 0 Status miles or 5000 miles?"

Thanks.

The miles don't reset when you hit blue so your total mileage for the year all counts towards gold.

Earn/burn means that on OZ you don't get many miles but you need a lot of them for award flights. So the value of the miles you get is low. In order to get to lifetime you currently need 500,000 miles.

Also, if you want to fly to Aotearoa then you should pool your miles. Having two half awards in two programs is no fun.

One word of caution on A3. Look at the earning table carefully. There are fares that earn less than 100% EQM in Y, which would make achieving *G more difficult.

LAX

Thanks guys,

Yeah I saw the earnings table for A3 is a bit low for certain economy routes.

The same routes earn 100% on OZ.

Anyone have any experience with the two?

Thanks

I also see that both LAX and DownUnderFlyer are part of the OZ diamond.

Happy with it?

For me, I get lounge access on domestic (US) flights, which is the main selling point. Nearly 4 years of "lounge membership" at the cost of 40K every 2 years is well worth it, IMHO. I consider the 40K a "sunk cost" because of OZ's terrible burn rate, so whatever I get out of them are bonus.

Aside from lounge access, *G also gets me extra luggage which has come handy on few occasions. Priority check-in, priority boarding, & priority security (where available) are also nice perks.

LAX

It is just sad to see more and more New Zealanders are opting for alternatives when their home carrier NZ and Airpoints are no longer their first choice given the stingy and illogical structure of the program.

A3's burn rates are decent, and status lasts 3 years. Those 2 considerations by themselves have made me pretty happy...

If you're going to Europe more often than Asia, stick with a European airlines becasue all the upgrade certs or upgrade points that comes with the status can only be used on the airline which you got the status.

I found the biggest benifit of status is the luggage allowance. I go to Asia and many times buy a lot of stuff and would require extra load or extra baggage. North American airlines charges for even first check in bags, so this is a good benifit.

Lounge is a hit or miss. Some lounges in US's like United Red Carpet Club for domestic passengers are not that great. Some crackers, some cheeze, some pop. It was fun the first 1 or 2 times, it's over-rated by the 5th time you enter these lounges.

Once a while, you get a very good lounge. Singapore Airlines's lounge in Singapore was a memorable buffet with lots of people. Tokyo's United Lounge have shower rooms or Tokyo's ANA lounge have hot noodles... At the end, how much can a person eat or drink. This benifit wears off.

As a Asiana's Diamond Plus member, I haven't tried Asiana's First Class Lounge in Seoul. I only tried the Business Class one when I was a normal diamond member. It was quite crowded when I went for a transfer. What I heard of First Class lounge was more exclusive, more quiet and Haagen-Dazs Ice cream. Personally, I rather have an extra hour of sleep than an extra hour in first class lounge.

Priorty check-in lines is good. It makes travel less stressful and you can arrive at the airport 10 - 15 min later than you would normally do without status.


Priority Luggage tags is a hit and miss. Sometimes, airport just ignores it. I also have many times where 1st luggage comes right away and the 2nd or 3rd one came with the masses which voids the whole priority luggage benifit... Most times, you'll be spending more time going through immigration that all the luggage would be out before you reach the luggage carousel.

Sorry, I never replied to this one.

Am I happy? Yes. But: The only reason why I use OZ as a program is because of the lifetime status. If that wasn't my goal I would have gone with someone else. The other reason of course is because I fly OZ but from a program perspective it really is about the lifetime benefit.

The OZ ICN F lounge is much more peaceful than the C lounge.

Likewise.

I think the flexibility of the stopovers on OZ makes it all the worth while. I was in a similar situation, but I decided to go with OZ because of that. Plus, it's two years rather than one, so if you have an inconsistent travel schedule like myself, you at least have the second year to meet the requirements.