Zeehe

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with Aegean award flights. I'm looking for *A flights within Europe in Y class. I would like to learn about the availability and the taxes and fees. Also it is unclear to me if and for which airlines YQ is charged and how much that is.

It seems that this information is not available online - one can only request tickets but not search for flights or get an indication of fees. Advice/experience would be highly appreciated.

Air Rarotonga

Award tickets on A3 will be charged the same taxes as on a paid ticket. i.ex. for a OW ATH-LHR A3 charges EUR 35.15 taxes:

• Tax: A3 YQ surcharge €3.00
• Tax: Greek Airport Development Charge €12.00
• Tax: Greek Passenger Terminal Facilities Charge €15.15
• Tax: Greek Security Charge €5.00

Maybe you better call A3 to get your question answered!

SAllen

Do please update this board. I have the same questions... Looking at flying some of the Asian *A airlines - which all have crazy YQ surcharge!

belfordrocks

Availability would come down to the usual tools- ANA or Continental.com

SAllen

CO doesn't seem to always show you the best flights availability, at least in the Asian regions. They seem not to allow bookings for non-stop flights.

belfordrocks

In my experience using Continental.com I've had no trouble searching segment-by-segment (though admittedly ANA is better in this regard by miles)

crazyMRer

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.

belfordrocks

If you're more advanced, rather than getting the computer to "think" for you by simply entering your point of origin and destination on continental.com or aeroplan, look at the flights you want segment by segment- start with the longest segments and look segment by segment for the best flights you want. This takes longer but often the result will be better.

Go to Continental.com and click "nonstop flights only" followed by tthe city pair you are interested. This is particularly useful if you want to fly a certain airline such as Turkish or Asiana, you can look up these individual flights yourself rather than let the booking engine try to piece together a routing for you.

dinosims

How far in advance does A3 release its award inventory? I'm seeing availability for next June on a route on both NH and CO's engine, but the only thing that AC sees is <180 days (for all routes). Is AC just not seeing it correctly? Or does CO/NH falsely see the inventory and it's not actually there?

crazyMRer

The AC website does a poor job of displaying true availability on some routes. I am not aware of a <180 days limitation. Sometimes you have to call AC to book something that is not showing up online. What route are you looking at?

CO website does the best job of searching connecting options. Covers most but not all star carriers.

NH website does the best job of consistently giving correct results and unlike CO, covers 100% of Star Alliance, however NH website does not do a good job of searching all possible connecting itinerary options.

AC website has access to all of Star but is a little more quirky in my experience, sometimes not finding stuff it should.

I just did a random Aeroplan search Wed Oct 10, 2012 MHT-ORD and several flights were returned. Clearly AC can book more than 6 months out.

My guess is that A3 can book available Star alliance award space up to aprox ~330 days out as most Star airlines can. Can anyone confirm?

dinosims

I'm talking about A3 inventory, specifically BCN-ATH. It seems nothing shows up past 180 days on the AC online engine.

crazyMRer

If NH and CO show inventory, I would consider there is inventory.

enelym1978

I always found the NH website a bit time consuming... and not that user friendly...

Is there any simple way to do that on their website? Maybe I'm a bit too blonde for this?

crazyMRer

Yes, it is time consuming. There is no simple and fast free way to check a lot of things.

The simple & fast way to get NH award results in a user friendly format for many dates and routes is to pay for AwardNexus - see pose #7.

belfordrocks

For many dates, one route, use Continental.com, enter your dates of departure and arrival and you will get a calendar view which shows the days that there is availability. If you want to search segment by segment, click "Nonstop flights only".