Jeff Rowland

Hoping you can offer some direction to help me clear up some confusion on how to secure award tickets for a vacation to Europe next year.
I am hoping to secure business award tickets and have identified the following route/airlines that could get me to/from my destination.
Departure: JFK -> Frankfurt on Singapore airlines
Frankfurt -> Istanbul on Lufthansa
Return: Athens Greece -> Frankfurt on Lufthansa
Frankfurt -> JFK on Singapore airlines
For the below questions I will assume availability of award flights for each of the 4 flights.
Questions:
Both airlines are members of the Star Alliance. My confusion is how to determine which airline I make my flight reservations with? Can I reserve both Lufthansa & Singapore flights thru Lufthansa or vise versa all the flights thru Singapore airlines?


Having miles/points with both Chase and SPG for transferring, any suggestions on what considerations I should take into account when determining which airline to make my reservations with?

Gamecock

You book the flight with the sponsor's miles. IOW if you use SQ miles they book all the segments.

mahasamatman

You don't actually book with an airline, you book through your frequent flyer program - and that can be any Star Alliance partner (not limited to one of the carriers to be used, but see below).

There are different transfer ratios for different frequent flyer programs. Every program has different costs in terms of miles and taxes/fees. Some impose a fuel surcharge, some do not. And not all programs will have access to all inventory, which is why it's sometimes best to go with one of the carriers, as a carrier's program will often have access to inventory that they don't make available to *A partners.

dvs7310

If you really want the SQ flights from JFK to FRA then you'd probably be best served transferring points in to SQs own Kris Flyer program. I rarely make that recommendation though because the mileage required for premium classes isn't very attractive and their fuel surcharge imposed on award tickets is a bit ridiculous. That's the price you'll pay for a SQ premium award since it's quite difficult if not impossible to book via UA.

To add, I assume here that you're not planning to drive or take a train from Istanbul to Athens. Depending again upon the program since you're planning to use a round trip award you could get that flight on TK or A3 for free as part of the ticket as long as the program allows a stopover as part of a round trip itinerary. It'd be JFK-FRA-IST (Stopover) - ATH (Destination) -FRA-JFK

Whatever you do, research this first and make absolutely sure that you can confirm anything other than UA for the overwater segments. If you have to do UA overwater then it really only makes sense to transfer into Mileage Plus if you have enough Chase points (SPG transfers at an inferior rate).

Knowing if you have both enough Chase points and enough SPG points independently to cover both tickets without having to combine them would help with recommendations as they actually don't mix incredibly well with UA being one of UR's most common transfer partners but one of SPGs worst transfer partners. I think you might also consider using BA Avios if you need to mix your points, there are no surcharges on OneWorld partner Air Berlin.