drbala

There has been lots of attention to get the miles in the cheapest possible way. It gives you 2 domestic tickets or one transatlantic. You need 40000 Qantas miles for each You can get 100000 Qantas miles by buying 40000 Starwood miles thro inside flyer. This will cost you 16 subscriptions at $ 60 each totalling 960 Dollars and you will have one more 2000 mile ticket as a bonus. All from the comfort of your arm chair.

RichardMEL

That's very nice but has nothing to do with the Star Alliance.

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RichardMEL, UA 1K
A Star Alliance Member.

lewinr

Yes, and it is a pity for us star-alliance people...

drbala

Didnt you read the title? Perhaps I was too brief. Star alliance is promoting their 55555 mile award and it involves a number of restrictions and the need to fly 5 star alliance airlines before July. My point is why go through all that hassle to pick up a few miles. A similar promotion by One World two years ago gave 100,000 miles.


[This message has been edited by drbala (edited 06-14-2002).]

zrs70

Can't get status miles from the ol' armchair! (Ok, so you can on American, but it takes more $$$$ than the QF accrual).

RichardMEL

In the early days of Star Alliance (the first 2 years IIRC) they also had up to 100,000 mile promos so I wouldn't go around suggesting oneworld is better somehow in this regard.

Personally I agree - this 55,555 promotion is silly and I'm not bothering with it myself - I suppose it would be a bit much to give away 555,555 miles. Perhaps if you flew all 14 partners... I might have given THAT a go

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RichardMEL, UA 1K
A Star Alliance Member.

tmeyer

I think most of us do not do a real 5 Airlines run. I flew TG, OS LH anyway. Then the investment in a quick one day excursion from BKK to sin by SQ and SK seems reasonable. I paid 280,-USD and earn 55.555 miles, was upgraded to EconomyExtra and got a 300,-USD Voucher from SK due to bad handling at bkk airport office. - and spend a great day in SIN.

Koala

Dr Bala
I think T Meyer summed it up pretty well.
My son had to modify two flights on his RTW tix, at no charge, my wife made a stopover and change of flight in AKL to get her 5th carrier [cost USD75, and 2 hours extra].
I went for two 55,555 awards, costing just about the same as for the 100K QF points [USD 960]. However I find those miles more valuable than 100K with QF, as 60K gives SYD/NYC on UA and 40K SYD/SIN on LH.
Horses for courses.
Koala

ozstamps

I spent a lot of time looking at this and came to the same conclusion - spending quite a lot of dough and time for 55555 miles was simply not worth the effort. And the status miles would have been minimal as I'd only select short flights. I flew UA and BD last week anyway, and the BD flights to Ireland got me 250 United miles into my account. WHOOPEEE - I am rich! I had spare time in LHR and could have taken the cheap RG and SK flights to and from there, and a day cheapie on Austrian or LH group out of AMS to get to 5 carriers, but just could not get excited about it. KLM was giving us 1,000,000 FD miles for the round trip to AMS via the point match, so that sounded a far better deal as we used another FT'er's miles to upgrade each way on KLM anyway on 747s.

For those who were doing 2 or 3 Star carriers already on biz trips, yes, that is another ball game - more power to you.

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~ Glen ~

davistev

I 'll get credit on 4 carriers times two people = around 500,000 miles.

HEL-CPH-ORD-PDX-ORD-CPH-HEL (SK/UA) 100 GBP
LHR-BFS-LHR (BD) 44 GBP
LHR-CPH-LHR (RG) 102 GBP
LHR-BFS-LHR (BD) 44 GBP
LHR-FRA-TXL-FRA-LHR (LH) 104 GBP
LHR-CPH-LHR (RG) 102 GBP
BOI-SFO-RNO-SFO-BOI (UA) 50 GBP

22 SEGMENTS / 546 GBP EACH ($790 USD)
All prices INCLUDE tax.

Total cost for 500,000 miles for two people is $1580 USD. This works out to be .003 cents per mile. A much better deal than the LP promotion.


cheers - Dave - London,UK

[This message has been edited by davistev (edited 06-17-2002).]

satori

I agree with Davistev that 500 K is a pretty decent deal. I am 1K with UA, but a UA ticket can only get me to a few locations in Europe. I am looking forward to having the flexibility of adding other flights on award tickets to take me to places farther along than my paid mileage tickets.

As always with a mileage run there is a risk factor that all the conditions won't be met. I lost 100,000 miles on the 1999 One World promo because one of my tickets was in the wrong booking class, but I still fared quite well.

I spent an extra $500 and burned 30,000 AA miles for the LatinPass million mile bonus because a counter agent in Guatemala took my entire boarding pass and I didn't have any flight receipt causing me to take a third trip to Latin America just to pick up a boarding pass. Total trip cost was $4,500. I have redeemed well over $10,000 in Hilton hotel rooms so far with about another 100 nights of hotel rooms left to use.

I am doing this 55,555 trip in two segments. I just got back from Leg 1 today. My wife and I spent $1,200 for a weekend in Canada, including airfare, hotels, and all and 4 AC segments and 5 UA segments. (Love that Gate 38 Maple Lounge at YVR , but what is up with those rude YVR immigration agents ) We received VDB (Voluntary Denied Boarding) awards twice, (Ms. Satori threatened to kill me if I took the third VDB award last night), and recouped $1,200 in UA vouchers and 2 domestic ticket vouchers ((accrue miles)) + hotels and meal vouchers. We got home 3 hours after our originally planned return time.

In two weeks we start on our annual European summer trip. We altered five days to get three *alliance carriers. We will have a night in Ireland and two nights in Budapest. Assuming all goes as planned, we will accumulate 500,000 miles, I will get a free 50 K status miles on the VDB awards, and within the next two years I will turn the 55,555 miles in 4 programs into 8 business or first class transatlantic tickets through hotel, credit card, and other mileage transfers.

I consider this a great investment of $2,000 for airfare. Since Ms. Satori refused to take the LatinPass run I consider this the best run we've seen in the past two years.

Markie

It's been easier for me - I've booked a number of weekend flights from LHR to destinations which allow me to connect through a carriers hub, hence giving me four segments per trip - one each for UA, LH, SQ and AC.

I've bought a couple of extra segments in Austria just in case the LH code shares didn't post as OS.

I think bought a BRU-MAN ticket and a LHR-CPH and LHR-JFK to get SQ's and UA's rules sorted out.

Not too bad as now I have a number of miles in SQ for upgrades, have topped off my old miles in AC and added to my balance in LH and UA for upgrades.

Quite happy, just not home very much over weekends during the 55 days.