Please report your Star Alliance award redemption experiences

Oct 2010 Post:

As Aegean is one of the easiest to earn Star Alliance statuses, I am very interested to find out more about redeeming Aegean miles.

Has anyone here redeemed Aegean miles for travel on non LH Star Alliance carriers?

Can you do a one-way on all of Star for 50% the RT award cost?

Does business class always cost 100K miles RT no matter if I am going USA-Europe/Africa/Asia/South America roundtrip?

Does Aegean charge fuel surcharges on redemption tickets on other carriers? Which ones?

Do they have an English speaking call center reachable by phone from the US during US awake hours?

On a RT award, can dates be changed after travel has started?

How many stopovers are allowed?

Is stopover and open jaw permitted?

Do they have hotel/car rental/online shopping/credit card partners that would be useful for a US based person?


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Nov 2011 update: Nice to see my post from more than a year ago finally has a proper forum home!

Since then, a lot of questions about redeeming miles have been answered by helpful Flyertalkers. ^

Some key points:

- YQ (fuel surcharge) is added for (almost?) all international itineraries including (almost?) all partner airlines. YQ is the same on award travel as regular paid tickets so can be looked up and compared using search engines like http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ Some airlines such as OZ have lower YQ than others such as LH, so plan accordingly.
No YQ is collected if you redeem Aegean miles to travel on:
* NZ operated routes that depart from New Zealand (hansetang81 - can you confirm if this is all routes)
* Flights within the USA/Canada/Mexico on UA/CO/US/AC - can anyone confirm this?
Please let me know if there are more exceptions.

- One-way Star Alliance bookings for 50% of the miles are allowed!

- Aegean does not allow any stopovers on Star awards. Only one connection is allowed, with a maximum duration of 24 hours at the connecting city. When going between two cities where there is NO star alliance single stop service, Aegean can make an exception and allow more than one connection.

- Once you finalize your itinerary and Aegean deducts miles from your balance, absolutely NO CHANGES ARE ALLOWED. You CAN CANCEL, but then only HALF of the miles you used are deposited back to into your account. [Mod note: this applied to bookings made before September 2012, and was correct at the time the OP wrote it. As at October 2015, changes are permitted and all cash and miles are refunded on cancellations up to 30 minutes before departure. In both cases, only a 20 Euro admin fee is charged.]

- Aegean uses Amadeus so you can view/print/confirm your redemption bookings on www.checkmytrip.com

- When redeeming your miles, calling the reservations number may have better results than calling the Miles and Bonus center.

- The award chart has quite a few good values where less Aegean miles are required than the average frequent flyer program. The award chart also has a number of regions where the award level is higher than average.
For example, good for values for those of us based in N. America include:
* 90,000 roundtrip business or 120,000 for first class North America to/from Europe & N Africa
* 42,000 miles roundtrip business class within N. America (use for UA 3 class flights such as PS JFK-LAX/SFO, Air Canada business class, and other flights where a front cabin is sold as business rather than first)
*110,000 for business or 150,000 for First Class N. America to/from Central/South Africa


The Miles & Bonus redemption chart is found here:
http://en.aegeanair.com/milesandbonu...n/spend-miles/




The zones include some places you may not expect.
http://en.aegeanair.com/Themes/1/Def...demptionA3.pdf

NORTH AMERICA: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Canada, Cayman Islands, Clipperton Island, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Montserrat, Navassa Island, Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, United States, U.S. Virgin Islands
(IAH/EWR-BON/CUR/AUA, CLT-BGI/UVF/ANU/SKB/SXM anyone?)

EUROPE: Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, F.Y.R.O.M., Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Vatican City, Turkey

NORTH AFRICA: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Egypt, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Israel

MIDDLE EAST: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iran

CENTRAL & SOUTH AFRICA: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d' Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagaskar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, British Indian Ocean Territory, Mayotte, Reunion, St. Helena, Canary Islands, Ceuta, Madeira, Melilla, Socotra, Puntland, Smaliland

CENTRAL ASIA: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia-Siberia, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka

FAR EAST: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam

OCEANIA: Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Micronesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Wake Island, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Easter Island, French Polynesia, Niue, Pitcairn Islands, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Wallis and Futuna

CENTRAL AMERICA: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama

SOUTH AMERICA: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela

HAWAII: Hawaii, Maui, Kaho 'olawe, Lana'i, Moloka'i, O'ahu, Kanua'i, Ni'ihau

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How to find availability:

As a rule, Star Alliance availability is the same for all Star Airline partners (long haul F class on LX, LH, and SQ are the main exceptions to this rule). Each Star carrier accesses Starnet and whatever is loaded to Starnet is available to every carrier (most of the time). We can use other airline's websites/tools to check Star Alliance miles availability and 99% of the time, Aegean will have access to exact same redemption seats. Star carriers only have access to each others "saver" or low level miles seats; the double+ miles type awards with little capacity controls are not available to the alliance.

The best Star Alliance carrier websites to check Star miles availability are:
a) http://www.continental.com - select "Reward Travel"
b) The All Nippon Airways award booking engine (requires an ANA account)
c) The Air Canada award booking engine

The best paid tool to speed the process allowing you to simultaneously search all three of the above Star Alliance sites for several different routes or date ranges:
www.AwardNexus.com
If you sign up, I suggest you read their Guide and Tips.

If a simple search from origin to destination does not show you any available award seats, try this: To maximize your chance of finding all available awards, you need to build your own connections manually and search for each part separately.

For example, suppose you want to fly ORD-SIN (Chicago to Singapore) on Star Alliance. A search on ORD-SIN will not return all possible ways to travel from ORD to SIN.

Instead of searching:

•ORD-SIN

Knowing that Star Alliance have hubs at ICN (Asiana), NRT (ANA, United) and PEK (Air China), you should search:

•ORD-ICN
+
•ICN-SIN

•ORD-NRT
+
•NRT-SIN

•ORD-PEK
+
•PEK-SIN

This is just an example.

AwardNexus members can use Search Builder to quickly identify all your connection options. If you are not going to sign up for AwardNexus, my favorite free tool to explore airline routing options is the Airline Route Mapper - a Windows program you install on your computer.

how about award flights on A3?

How about them?

I recently booked an award itinerary with several legs on A3. I found the availability of award flights very good, and the planes were new and comfortable.

YQ was a bit higher than I'd hoped, I paid about $250 USD for a 6-leg itinerary.

Did you have any specific questions regarding the award flights?

how did you book the award?
did you book it with *A phone agent, or with A3 phone agent?
how did you search for award flights?

I booked the award with ANA miles. At the time, I could check availability using ANA's search engine. I did not use A3 miles for the trip.

Do Aegean Rewards allow stopover/openjaw? I would be booking a Y-Class inter-asia flight.

Bump. Anyone know the answers?

I've been crediting miles to Aegean for *G and was wondering how easy it is to actually redeem these miles. Has anyone tried this?

Bump. (I'm intrigued as well)

+1 I may call to find out.

Does anyone know?

Not sure anyone has yet run up enough miles to have tried this aspect of the program out. But as someone looking for new home for *A earnings at the 200/300% level for J/A (although granted not for all airlines) I had given this program some thought.

But the lack of information about rewards is a problem for making a jump. I guess if you just want *A Gold this program is great, but if you are looking to rack up miles in premium cabins for premium awards, the devil is in the details!

BTW, is there a Gold tier mileage bonus with this program, or do you just earn the flat 200/300% when in premium cabin?

Same questions here.

Thinking of keep UA E+ or Star gold + RCC from Aegean.

Well , I have successfully booked and ticketed an award booking using my Miles and Bonus miles .
Good thing is that they still have the old redemption chart i.e 90K for a business RT TATL flight .

My 90K res was for CO 105 CHQ - ATH - EWR while for the return trip I 've used LX 053 BOS - ZRH - LHR .

They tend to have a lot of availability with LH flights , but they heavily promote CO codeshare flights .

It took me a week with 3 hours daily huggling with the Operator to get my ideal combination .

Catch is that once you finalise your itinerary and deduct miles from your account , there are absolutely NO CHANGES ALLOWED .

And if you decide to cancel it , then only HALF the miles are deposited back to your account .

Fare Booking class is I and tickets are only valid for day of travelling .

Any more questions , give me a shout .

I am an active member of Aegean, it is a quite nice program, Aegean cares more about you than you think; the call center is professional, in Greek or English, great level of English.