New Star Alliance Award Chart
 

Alas, Santa brings bad news for AI-FR !

Their aesthetically pleasing new Star Alliance award chart is now confirmed. The changes take place from tomorrow, 23rd December 2016.

Here's their old chart valid till midnight, 22nd December 2016: http://flyingreturns.co.in/images/do...ward_chart.pdf

And here's the new one. valid from 23rd December 2016 onwards: http://www.flyingreturns.co.in/image...pdated_SAC.pdf

Salient Summary of Enhancements-
- Every single redemption is costlier now, other than some intra-region short flights.
- India to North America: Y redemption goes from 55k one way to 100k one way. 81% increase.
- India to Europe: Y redemption goes from 32.5k one way to 90k one way. 177% increase.
- India to South Pacific: Y redemption goes from 42.5k one way to 90k one way. 146% increase.
- First Class redemptions were 250% of Economy in the earlier chart. Now they go up to 300%.
- No Date Changes allowed once award is booked, you have to cancel award and start new.
- If you cancel the award, you will forfeit 20% miles used for booking.
- Cancellations allowed only till 72 hours before the journey.


Now for the silver lining (!) :
- New chart allows for either 3 layovers, or 2 layovers + 1 stopover. This eliminates a huge frustrating nature of previous chart.
Previous chart only allowed for point-to-point ticketing. e.g. a BOM-FRA-EWR award used to cost BOM-FRA sector + FRA-EWR sector points. That's gone away now thankfully (hopefully?).
- No Fuel surcharge ! ^
However, they will collect INR 1000 per sector as ticketing fees.
- Intra-region short flights < 500 miles are cheaper across the board now. For Intra-USA, flights < 1000 miles also come out ahead in the new chart. In all other regions however, flights > 1000 miles go up.


I wished they might have implemented online booking of partner awards to at least counter their grossly incompetent agents, but I guess I will have to wait for next Christmas for that! I might have to ask myself why the AI-SBI card still loiters around in my wallet anymore.

Thoughts?

P.S.: Those who have a redemption coming and might now look at the old chart wistfully, you might want to move a bit quicker !! :D

Hey guys is there anyway to claim my SQ miles in AI if I have not input the FFP no at time of booking or check in. On AI site it says that "class not valid or not found error" . Is there any way around it ?

Whats your booking class for SQ flight?

AI FR is refusing to issue ticket for LAS-EWR-DTW for 15k miles on UA as per their new chart. Anyone know how I can get this done?

how many miles are they asking for????

the first step would be to try calling back & talking with another agent....

Maybe they consider it backtracking??

Are you planning to transit EWR or make it a stopover?

I tried multiple times with other agents. I had originally placed it on hold an dgenerated PNR last night and they asked me to call back in the morning for payment after all fees had been calculated. On calling back they're saying it is not bookable as 1 single PNR. They want to issue 1 PNR for LAS-EWR for 15k miles and then 1 PNR for EWR-DTW for 5k miles. They're also saying that this would not be connected in any way which would mean my 1 hour connection in EWR would be in danger if I have to claim and re check baggage. In any case being on 2 different PNRs I would not have any IRROPS protection also as explained by them.

It is just a transit layover for a Origin - Destination journey of 1749 miles which should allow upto 3 flight segments anyway. However they're not agreeing to this logic and saying this is backtracking and they can't ticket it.

I have had to email them and they've said I'll receive a clarification from them. I have given up hope and just booked a direct LAS-DTW on Delta using my HDFC Diners points. I was just hoping to use some of these useless AI miles that I seem to be swimming in.

By routing thru EWR you are exceeding the TPM by >25%. ORD or DEN as transit are possible and within 25% of TPM, hence the rejection.

They never mentioned this on the couple hours I was on the phone with them. I even asked them to take 20k miles as they asked but to put the ticket in 1 PNR but they refused.

Cancellation before 72 hours now being charged 20 percent of points for award redemption. Not sure when this was changed from the flat 500 (or 1000) points.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/27649116-post226.html

Successfully booked a UA award flight using Flying returns miles. ( SFO-DEN-MEM )

Data points - Had to call thrice to complete the booking. Called their US tool free number, and the agent was polite enough to transfer to the Star Alliance desk, and the second agent was good enough when I feeded him the UA flight numbers ( the award availability matched the UA website for X inventory ). Was placed on multiple holds throughout the call for the agent to check the flights, number of miles required, tax amount etc, but eventually the agent could generate a PNR and was asked to call back after couple of hours by when the agent said UA would confirm the availability ( I thought that happened instantly !! ).

Called this morning to check if I can get it ticketed, only to be informed that it's not possible yet. Called the third time and the agent walked me through the process of completing the booking, used a US credit card over the IVR and it went through successfully, was charged 15k miles plus 1532INR.( The same flight would have set me back by $320 )

Not the easiest redemption booking I have done by I must say AI is coming of age with their customer service, all 3 agents I dealt with were very polite and sincerely wanted to help, although I would appreciate AI giving their agents a bit more training when to comes to searching for awards.

Glad to help others if they have any questions.

tried to book a nyc-iad sector today but was told there was no availability on the 2 days i could have traveled on....neither in economy nor in first....ua was showing saver awards so i called back again & the second agent told me the same thing....:(

I've found that sometimes Aeroplan shows United space available to Star partners more accurately than UA's own website. If availability matches on AC, AI should probably be able to see it.

too late now....already booked on delta....will try that next time....