Kwang su

What do you think about this?

nme7

Exactly what will change?

deltaflyinglawyer

Dear Kwang Su,
This is a much-anticipated step. Due to extremely generous *A mileage redemption chart, Asiana has issued a huge pile of *A award tickets using Asiana Club miles over the last couple of years. This is not good for Asiana's balance sheet. As a measure of inducing more redemption on Asiana's own flights, the company had to change the rule on par with other *A airlines.
We can live with new redemption chart.

Unlike US air, United, and Aeroplan, etc that block a portion of Star Alliance award inventory as a means of revenue protection, Asiana does not block any *A award stock known as StarNET.
We all hope this good practice will continue in the coming years.

LAX

Really? I have always thought OZ has pretty poor earn/burn rate. Perhaps I have been missing the gems of the program??

LAX

jon503

I don't know about "extremely generous", but I assume deltaflyinglawyer is referring to how the distance-based redemption chart for *A awards coupled with the possibility of including up to 4 stopovers allows for a pretty cheap multi-destination itinerary.

I doubt most members know how to use that, and using it requires a lot of free time anyway, unless you want to only stay in one place a day or two, so I doubt this is a huge issue of OZ. I'm also curious about precisely how the *A redemption chart is supposed to change and why OZ thought this necessary. Anyone have more concrete info?

deltaflyinglawyer

To be more specific, I was referring to the Koreans who collect miles with Asiana associated credit cards in Korea.
OZ redemption chart is far better than KE's ST redemtion chart.

THD

New redemption chart for *A now posted onto the website. OZ will move from mileage based system to region based. Effective June 2014.

I would not say this is an overall increase, but rather an adjustment in policy. Some journeys will be more expensive (say Thailand to Australia), while other journeys will be significantly cheaper (Continental Europe to Australia in Business goes from 180000 points to 165000, FRA-LAX will now be 30% cheaper in first class!!)

Other changes to the conditions:
- (unclear) Miles deducted per segment, rather than per itinerary??
- Mixed class itineraries no longer subject to the highest class
- Maximum 8 segments per journey
- Cancel and refund fee now applies to *A tickets
- High season surcharge does not apply to Asiana flights when included in a *A award itinerary

http://us.flyasiana.com/Global/pop/n...s/en_pop1.html
http://us.flyasiana.com/Global/pop/n...s/en_pop2.html
http://us.flyasiana.com/Global/pop/n...s/en_pop3.html

jon503

Wow, did I read that correctly, that Europe - USA is now 50, 80, 100k? If so, that's massively cheaper depending on the itinerary. I sometimes want to go from CGN/FRA to PDX and that would be massively cheaper as that's over 10k roundtrip.

It really does seem to depend a lot on where you want to go - flights to and intra Asia seem very expensive now. This makes sense to me from OZ' perspective though; discourage people from taking other airlines on routes serviced by them, make the program more attractive for award redemptions on routes they wouldn't be an option for anyway.

For my needs, I'd say this is a positive change overall, but someone else might easily come to a contrary conclusion.

Frayed_Yak

It's a pleasant surprise that Asiana Club FFP members are getting so much notice on the change.

I haven't figured out whether the changes are better or worse for me, but it seems most programs changes things "immediately" leaving very little time for members to adjust/plan.

yeunganson

Looks like this only applies to Star Alliance rewards. The award redemption on Asiana flights remains the same it seems.

I haven't redeemed a flight with Star Alliance using Asiana miles. So now Europe has a lower cost, perhaps that is something to think about.

deasine

I wonder will stopover rules be changed as a result. OZs programme for stopovers is one of the most generous in the industry (if not the most generous).

123dd

They need to clarify the word "session" used in their announcement..... The way I read it means segment, which implies the stopover rule being irrelevant, because each individual flight will be charged according to the chart.. But I think this is just lost in translation, hopefully some Korean speaker can shed some light on this from the Korean version.

If the 5 stopovers still remains, then OZ will be one of best programmes now with this change!

stargold

OZ website says that deduction will be for each "leg" according to the reward chart.

My understanding of the new system is that only transfers will be allowed, not stopovers. The 8-leg limitation appears to be for transfers only.

They don't yet say whether one-ways will be allowed, which means that it is not yet known whether it will be possible to do any stopovers at all - hopefully you can do AAA-BBB // BBB-CCC // CCC-AAA on three "segments", but that requires one-ways being allowed.

deasine

But that really doesn't seem to make sense especially in areas in the world when you need to go to a different region in the world (like Intra-Latin America 2 when TAM leaves Star). Moreover, in the English chart, it explicitly states "Miles/Round Trip Basis."

deltaflyinglawyer

One of the many reasons why Asiana will change from the distance-based to region to region redemption is the introduction of Amadeus Altea, whose award reservation system is primarily designed to support region to region based award bookings. Under Altea, distance based award calculation is somewhat troublesome and time-consuming.
Max 8-leg rule contains two enroute stopovers, but can be varied if Asiana wants otherwise.
Current distance-based *A redemption along with generous stopover
rule has been for Asiana too pricy, I think.