stripakis

A3 is disregarding all *A frequent flyers (except for their A3 captives as well as OA, the latter is not *A) when booking internal flights originating and terminating in Greece. This was not the case last year.

For example, if you try to book a ticket from CFU to ATH, whether operated by A3 or OA metal, you only have the choice of the two ff programmes for Aegean and Olympic. This is absurd, especially for flights operated by A3 and marketed and sold on the A3 website.

Does anyone know a way around?

And is there a contact address/name/tel or e-mail at the Star Alliance headquarters to put in a formal complaint against A3? This airline is getting worse by the day, their website is woeful, customer service nearly non-existent and so on.

Jma12

For OA flights, you can only earn miles from M+B, you can try to contact their Greek phone number for M+B at (+30) 210 6261000. I see that the flight is under OA flight number but operate by A3, but I am not sure if that is the reason that only M+B member can earn miles..

I only had 1 major problem 2 years ago for my AC flights not credit to my account. It was eventually resolve. Other than that I found A3 agents are very friendly and helpful.

KLouis

Ha, ha, ha, Star Alliance! Don't forget that the first airline to introduce this schema was The Big Lufthansa (as in The Big Lebowski), with its German/Euro-wings, Air Dolomiti, non-*A brands, etc. Everybody (e.g. also LX, TG and others) seems to listen to His Master's Voice.

I do understand that you lost your 200/500 miles, but don't you think that you exaggerate a bit? What's the big problem with their web site, and how do they get worse by the day? Calm down, getting so much upset about a few hundred miles is certainly bad for your health.

Jma12

I realize you can leave your FFP blank, and call A3 to add your other *A FFP number, or add it when you are at the airport.

NWIFlyer

The only reason to complain to Star Alliance is if an airline is in breach of its *A service conditions. All of the things you mention are entirely subjective and would not be covered. Frankly, even if they were, there is no-one at Star who would look at this - it's not that sort of organisation with masses of corporate employees, and the only way corrective action would ever happen is because the other member airlines vote for sanctions. This is the same for any alliance.

I would also have to say that if you believe A3's customer service is non-existent, you possibly need to make contact with a few other airlines. Ever tried ringing Air Canada?

Save your ire and blood pressure - you honestly are not going to get any satisfaction out of this one.

stripakis

Maybe. However, if you book CFU-LHR bingo you get points! It is the inconsistency that annoys me. I do not care at all about the miles - it is too short a distance from CFU to ATH to matter miles-wise.

As per the website: you cannot book multi-city itineraries (as you can do with other airlines), or multiple open-jaw routes.

Deteriorating service: I have been flying Aegean for a long time, and in my opinion their service is not as good anymore. And the majority of their flight attendants do have to improve their English and make the effor to be understood.

Sorry to sound unsatisfied with Aegean, but they have a tall order. I wish to see them compete with the best and be Greece's ambassadors in the skies. It pains me to see them loose out to the likes of Ryanair and Easyjet.

End of the rant.

stripakis

Thanks for this. Just for information, *A office in Frankfurt were very helpful in the past in clearing another issue I had with A3. At the time they had a 'contact' e-mail on the staralliance.com

No, have no experience with Air Canada. More familiar with the SQ, TG, QR, BA and a few others, which I rate above A3.

yauee

I want to cry I didn't earn any miles on full Y class on my SQ5346 operate by MI to my A3 FFP

stripakis

This is due to Silkair (MI) not being part of *A. Have you tried to retro-claim on your SQ KF?

KLouis

As for inconsistency, other than LH and LX, here are four more of the *A biggies with their non-*A daughters:

SQ - Silkair (no *A miles)
TG - Thaismile, Nok air
TK - Sun Express (with Lufthansa!!!)
AV - TACA (yes, they still exist outside *A, I flew them last year)

Of course, you have the right to be unsatisfied with the service provided by A3 (I am, actually, rather satisfied, also my right ). But other than the statement that the majority of their FAs speak an incomprehensible English you really don't cite any real examples (by the way, I honestly think you're exaggerating as A3's FAs do speak much better English than most FAs at TK or TG). Indeed, A3's site isn't the best (but which one is?). Agreed, multi city is not a feature that works all the time (see the relevant thread for the explanation) and neither does open jaw, but since one-ways are usually 50% of the return tickets, this is not such a big problem. Finally, rather than complaining for shortages at *A, which really couldn't care less, you should point to A3 the problems that you've encountered. Who knows, they may be willing to improve things.

Now, back to the A3 flights operated by OA, but in reality by A3. It is a fact that, at first glance, this doesn't make much sense. Why should a flight ATH-CFU or RHO-HER be officially OA yes be flown by A3 metal? Clearly, this has nothing to do with the few miles that are saved when non-M+B *A frequent flyers don't get any. My guess is that, in contrast, this has something to do with the conditions imposed by the EU for the merger of the two airlines. Of course, I could be wrong, perhaps somebody who knows will let us know one day.

tmac100

What???

I flew 4 sectors last year on Aegean and everyone spoke English quite well. Yes they have an accent, but no matter.

As for service it is A+ in level.

Anyone been to Texas? Cornwall? Tamworth, Australia? Now those places have incredible accents that are quite delightful - BUT with some it will be difficult to understand.

Nope, the English level of an Aegean FA is a red herring. YMMV

stripakis

Indeed you are right. And yes I have on a number of occasions made recommendations to A3 and suggestions, and a few times they gave me additional points. For the English let us agree to disagree. I am multilingual (and also a native Greek speaker) so I can be a bit demanding with the standard of English. Maybe I have been unlucky on the many flights I took on A3, and had better luck with TK, SQ, LX and so on. On the website issues I echo the dissatisfaction of people in the business/travel trade.

Maybe. However, you will recall that all internal flights were renamed OA at the start of January plus the bizarre case where it is OA locally but becomes A3 when connecting to a flight outside Greece. I believe this had to do with a re-design of the booking engine, at least this is what I heard in the grapevine. If I hear any more on this, sure I will let all of us know.

witlesspax

I completely agree, I find the flight attendants at least speak English well enough that there were never any difficulties. This doesn't necessarily generalize to other A3 staff, but in my experience, the FAs are perfectly competent in English.

TPJ

Use a Travel Agency - tell them which metal you want to use and they will book accordingly... Oh, wait - you will have to pay the Transaction Fee (as airlines do not pay commission any longer) but the choice is yours - either a human being you can communicate with or computer (which often says 'no')...

BTW.. the claim the A3 F/A's cannot communicate in English is pretty ridiculous...

Knobbgb

Well, hardly ALL! Looking at flights this week, CHQ, CFU and MJT are the only ones I can see that are OA marketed but operated by A3. All the other A3 domestic routes, including HER, RHO, JTR, JMK and SKG (maybe others) are still marketed as A3. Of course there are many other OA routes but these really ARE operated by OA.

My personal take on this (and it's just a guess) is that they do this to allow those routes to be excluded from their figures (profit, load factor etc.). Maybe these are loss making routes that they want to "hide" in this way. Certainly there is big competition from Ryanair on ATH-CFU and ATH-CHQ but that doesn't explain why RHO and JTR are still A3 marketed.

I'm not sure it does, not really. For example, looking at CHQ-ATH-LHR the booking engine DOES show the domestic sector with it's A3 flight number but it also clearly says "Operated by Olympic" (even though it isn't). I suspect that a non-A3 *A pax would NOT get points for that flight, even though it is A3xxxx flown on A3 metal! I'd be happy to be proved wrong if you have actually flown those routings of course.

I think those weird flights are a bit of a con - I know other *A people have complained here about not getting points (or, more importantly, lounge access and extra baggage) in the past but I agree that I don't think that was their intention in doing this. I too would really like to know the reason.