Star Alliance Redemption Experience
 

I would like to share with you on how impressed I was on Continental’s Star Award redemption last minute booking to attend my mother’s funeral. First, I tried to redeem on United where I have more miles to use but UA’s agents could not see available seats in O or I buckets on any star alliance partners. This was not the case for Continental. With CO, for the outbound, I was able to get a seat on US from MIA-JFK and SQ from JFK-SIN-MNL all in first. For the inbound, I was booked on TG from MNL-BKK and BKK-LHR in I and O respectively, and on LH from LHR-DUS-MIA in X and O.

Things learned (including reviews of other Star Alliance members flown):

1. Although most of CO’s agents were very helpful in making changes, make sure that the agent reviews the new itinerary before the ticket/s is/are re-issued. In two occasions, a segment was drop for the SIN-MNL for the outbound and then the original BKK-SIN segment for the inbound. The dropped SIN-MNL was added at the last minute and thanks to the accommodating SQ check-in agent in JFK who patiently waited for CO to finish making the changes just to let me check-in even if SQ's check-in time was already closed. For the inbound, I was supposed to be on SQ from SIN-FRA but because of the dropped segment after reissuing the ticket by CO, CO had to rebook me on TG and LH for the BKK-LHR-DUS-MIA flights. I missed the excellent service of SQ for the SIN-FRA but this was compensated by the very nice free spa I had 2 hours before my flight to LHR, courtesy of TG for flying first.

2. Even if tickets were issued by CO on another star alliance carrier like TG, it takes more about 24-hours for the re-issued CO ticket to appear in TG's system. The last minute rebooking of CO for my BKK-LHR had to be manually searched by a TG ticket agent in BKK before they could enter it manually in their reservation system and to allow me to check-in. This is what I was told by the TG agent who helped me fly out that night to catch my DUS-MIA flight.

3. Unlike UA, CO sees all existing award inventories that are shown in the ANA award reservation system. In fact, the O seat for the JFK-SIN that I was booked on did not even showed up in the ANA award system but CO was able to snag 1 seat for my outbound.

4. For the 3 long haul first class experienced I had for this trip on SQ, TG and LH, SQ has the best in-flight service including food and beverages. At the same time, TG's free pre-flight spa and very personal attentiveness by its ground staff (check-in and lounge) impressed me of their service before the flight. LH compared with TG provides better in-flight personal service. Also, I like the long sleeve shirt of LH better than the pajamas.The only downside of LH is that the Senator Lounge is after the passport control when you are arriving from a connecting flight.

5. US Airways allows only up to 3 segments for check-in baggage. Since I was flying MIA-CLT-JFK-SIN-MNL, the US check-in agent had to use manual tags and taped them together then manually entered them into their check-in system to have my 2 baggage check-in all the way to MNL. The agent acknowledged this to be a limitation for the part of US Air.

Before the entrance of CO into the Star Alliance network, I was thinking of dropping them because of my UA membership. However, this redemption experience I had with CO and UA made me decide to stick with CO and will definitely do less flying on UA. Although some CO agents made some errors that almost caused me to miss my JFK-SIN flight and the re-booking out of my preferred SQ flight to another star alliance flight, I consider these to be CO agents' learning curve while they are integrating themselves into the Star Alliance Network. In fact, they had outperformed UA agents in booking my award tickets.

Thanks Continental.

Oh no! Don't let channa see this post--- a UA 1K generally praising CO and finding fault with UA. This close to the holiday's, we wouldn't want to risk sending him into shock :eek:

Shock or no shock, UA just could not deliver the same service as CO did for a 3 day booking window for an award ticket.

UA = Starnet blocking.

Nothing new here.

In terms of value of miles, US > CO > UA

Why do you value US over CO?

Better redemption rates on a number of routes/classes of service. And the points are cheaper to buy outright. The only worry is investing too heavily in them and the risk that the points might go poof one day.

Nothing new here. With UA's *net blocking, if you get hit with it, reward redemption can be a challenge.

The minute CO joined *A with no blocking, CO's miles became easier to use than UA's. I think that's well documented here on FT.

Not to mention, UA has some arcane rules on their awards -- no mix/match of cabins or saver/standard, and UA does not allow changes to *A awards once travel has begun (unless you're switching to fly a UA segment). CO is also more generous with allowing a stopover and an open jaw, whereas UA allows only one or the other.

The one thing UA does better policy-wise is that there's no close-in fee for awards for anyone. CO only waives this for Plats (effective today). But that's somewhat offset because CO allows everyone to change for free, provided you do it 21+ days out and keep the same O/D. UA goes all arcane again, and requires that you fly the same carriers along the same route, though there is no 21-day requirement, but you could get hit with the no changes to *A carrier flights once travel has begun rule.

Didn't US announce some increases coming up soon? It may be advantageous now, but not for long, IIRC.

This makes CO miles a whole lot more valuable than UA miles for sure.
No *net blocking and SQ award = ^^ from me.

It increased its own mileage redemption more than star alliance awards. For example, F *A award costs 120 to N Asia and 125 to Europe, which is still much cheaper than UA and CO, and that's the new rate (well, old rate too, they didn't increase F) C went up to 100 and 105 I think, which is still better than CO and UA.

There's a US thread on this. Many *A awards didn't change. To Europe for Y/C/F effective January 6th it will be 60/100/125, which will also be the same for S. America. The US definition of North Asia (includes HKG) remains unchanged at 60/90/120. Ditto for South/Central Asia at 80/120/160, South Pacific at 80/110/140 and Africa at 70/110/150.

Others have made handy comparison charts of old/new. For the most part, US *A awards are still much better, or slightly better than CO/UA and I have to think that's by design since US doesn't have much else going for it over its domestic *A brethren.

Thanks for the clarification channa. As one who rarely ever uses CO miles for awards I wasn't aware of the issues. As far as the 400,000+ miles I had accumulated when I was a 1K on UA, I used all of those on merchandise, rather than use them on UA flights (TV's, cameras, gifts, household items etc) or see them expire worthlessly :D

PS- my million+ CO miles (that won't expire) will be eventually used for upgrades internationally.... although I do plan to reach the new status of 100,000 on CO next year to garner those Free Upgrades (thanks to UA for that idea) ^

Yup. Overall the increases announced just don't suck that badly. Even with the new award charts in play they are still better than CO or UA on many awards. You get hit with a phone booking fee and they may not be the most stable carrier, but the miles are still a better value in many cases.

To the agents.
 

I'd also like to echo the positive comments about CO and *A award bookings.

Don't know if it's new software, better training or CO just simply being better integrated into Star than it was into Sky, but I've found the agents to be on their game when it comes to awards. And even when they run into issues, they have seemingly better support mechanisms in place to get problems fixed.

I don't miss :rolleyes:Team at all. :)

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...tion-star.html

Yup. As critical as I am / was of US, booking rewards with them was always the best part of that program.

Amassing hundreds of thousands of miles was rather :rolleyes: but that's off-topic.

For me, CO provides the right balance between not very painful earnings and not very painful redemptions. Unless you do something :rolleyes: and throw EK into the mix on an award ticket. ;)