sokolov

The dropwdown menus are back to 50,000 per hospital.

But I have to say I find it weird that I should pick a specific hospital. Why not divide it equally? I don't know the hospitals, I don't know how numerous the staff is.

headingwest

Well I wasn't going to say anything but I also had a couple of thoughts. Not detracting from the fact that this is a nice gesture from Aegean, but I have a serious question to ask. Will these be free flights instead of just miles (I am assuming they will not), because taxes and fees also have to be taken into consideration. Surely better to say that they will double the miles and pay the fees, instead of tripling miles but not waiving the fees. These seats are probably going to go empty, will the medics just be helping to pay fuel costs?



Another thing, I think that from this initiative Aegean's future has been secured. It would be very controversial indeed to let an airline go bankrupt that had issued thousands of tickets to medical workers who have bravely saved so many lives. The government would surely have to step in. Aegean probably didn't consider this...

NWIFlyer

From someone based in the UK, thank you for everything you’re doing, and for the personal sacrifices you and your colleagues in the UK NHS are making - sadly sometimes the absolute highest one. Obviously my thoughts are with you and I hope you recover quickly.

I’ll put my mod hat on now to say this isn’t a competition - not between each other and not between countries. It’s not particularly helpful to try and shame or chastise anyone. Not everyone has a massive miles balance, and not everyone can afford to give large amounts - even within a community that’s likely relatively wealthy. Some will already have donated in other countries where appeals were launched earlier. For this reason, some of the worst post examples have been removed.

Let’s instead celebrate A3’s generous offer and be thankful to those who have given in whatever way, wherever in the world they are.

giorginho

headingwest The way I read it, it is pretty clear that they will just give them "regular miles" (you need a M&B account, which I already advised my cousin to open) to spend as they wish (they just 'advertise' the "2 return domestic tickets", you could just as well use them for international flights or Star Alliance redemptions). And surely, people will have to pay the taxes as usual, it all goes through the M&B account like a regular redemption (X fares will obviously need to be available too!).

Xandrios

Still, even with the Ota fares, the price difference in the above example is about 100 euro. And that is assuming a very cheap paid fare.

However awards can be used in place of a very expensive summer fare. Sure you can find cheapish fares, but you may have to fly at an inconvenient time. It all depends on the person, destination and schedule. For some miles will work out better.. And for some buying a ticket would. Though I think that for most the award ticket will be advantageous.. Or at least offer a substantial discount over the paid fare.

Also keep in mind that not everyone is flying between major airports. Some smaller islands just charge a few euro taxes. Athens has some of the highest taxes in Europe.. But not everyone will be flying to/from athens either.

headingwest

Those were T fares, not the lowest fare buckets...U and P fares are cheaper.

But I certainly agree that summer fares (if possible this year!) or last minute bookings would be more expensive. My point really was that a lot of these medics will really appreciate this gesture, but might be a little disappointed by the fees and taxes, as that might not be being communicated to them at the moment.

Alexandros Bravos

A source of disappointment can very easily be the lack of availability of award seats....

Carpacchio

Exactly - I doubt a lot of seats would be available in summer, for instance (assuming a normal summer/tourist period)...

Marambio

This is actually a pretty brilliant idea from Aegean.

I had 1,400 A3 miles that had been sitting in my account for years now, and with sadly no Aegean/Olympic flights in sight, I just gave them away to the hospital in Agia Varbara, which was the one with the lowest amount of donations.

sokolov

I also thought about donating to a less popular hospital. But in reality, the least supported hospital depends on how many people work there in relation to the miles. Not the absolute number of miles.

Has anyone cracked that?

sokolov

I'm trying to donate to two hospitals. The one suggested by DrHalxx works. The other one - the one with the lowest miles so far - doesn't. That drop down arrow in the top right corner doesn't work. It works for some hospitals, but not all. Is that a known issue? Does it mean they have enough tickets there?

giorginho

sokolov according to the latest email regarding this project and the current indication on the corresponding website, some (quite a few) of the hospitals have already gathered enough miles to cover all of their staff, so you should only donate to the ones that haven't gathered enough miles yet, even though if (them being big hospitals) they already have even more than 4000 tickets worth of miles!

Edit: They have now also set a cap on the total amount of miles to be collected for all hospitals at 480.000.000 and it will come quite close (7 hours left for 43.000.000). And indeed the hospitals where the "arrow" isn't working all the ones that have reached their respective required amounts.

sokolov

Thank you. So I've doubled my modest donation to Ioannina, simply because it was suggested by DrHalxx.

giorginho

I didn't follow the development of the numbers late last night, but the announcement today states that the requirements were met for all the staff members to get 20k miles each, so it probably means that 480 million miles were gathered, 160 million of which came from M&B members (Aegean could sell these miles on a Black Friday for 2 million €).

KLouis

If each staff member is to get 20K miles and 480 million were gathered, this would mean that these 17 reference hospitals have a total of 24000 medics and nurses or an average of 1411 each. Why do their unions complain about the National Health System being understaffed?