Looking For A Great Business Class To Delhi
 

I have tons of miles in different programs (British, United, US Air, Membership Rewards, etc). Looking for some advice on a really nice Business Class experience for my mom flying to New Delhi. She would be flying out of either Pittsburgh or Washington DC. Thank you so much for your time.

i think you would get a much better response if you posted in the ba, united, etc forums....if you expect some advise here then i would suggest giving details like date of travel & the number of miles you are willing to spend....

Sadly, you have no miles with AI partners.

LX (Swiss) is probably a good bet with United or US Airways miles - they are often rated one of the best business class carriers in the world.

If you want the "wow" factor from the lounge, try out TK (Turkish Airlines) - the lounge in Istanbul is the best I've seen in the world.

Avoid Lufthansa (except for 747-8i aircraft).

Avoid US Airways 767s (A330s are fine)

United (Continental) on EWR-DEL should be fine, but nothing "incredible" - both LX and TK are much better uses of your miles or cash.

UA miles for:

IAD-VIE-DEL

On OS (Austrian). Great food and wine. Angled lie flat seat.

OS is one of my favorite airlines.

I could have sworn OS suspended DEL... Maybe that was BOM?

Either way, I second the option of OS as well.

TK/LX/OS are definitely the best choices..

OS is almost as good as some first class products when it comes to catering. The food and drink (by Do and Co in ViE) is just outstanding. The coffee menu is super too.

However, and in my mind this is a big one, the seat is really poor for longhal J these days. The IFE is rather mediocre too.

All in all great for a day flight for relaxing, eating and drinking. Rather less so for an overnight sleeper service.

LH miles can be used to book flights on AI.

In addition to the above choices, I would also consider EK (if flying after September) and QR. Or even AF if they are still running the 380 on IAD-CDG.

Maybe I'm missing something, but of the list of different types of miles OP has, none can be redeemed on AI:
Unless membership rewards can be converted into AI/LH/SQ miles? I don't know much about the program...

Yes, that's right. Membership rewards can be converted to SQ (not LH as I mentioned earlier) miles.

Ah, good to know. Then I recommend AI.

We're flying to Delhi in February in business on Qatar airlines, It;s 15 hours from Newark to Doha, a shortish connection, and then another 3 plus hours to Delhi. They're a United partner and have quite a bit of availability on the United website. There's quite few threads discussing there service and most feel that they are just about the best business class in the world.

I don;t think QR flies from EWR! 18 hours to Doha from EWR seems too long. You must be flying to another city from EWR to connect to the DOH flight.

Me bad. I'm a Continental guy so I always think in terms of EWR. It's WR flight #84 from JFK to Doha leaving at 10:50pm with a 12hr25min flight time, 1hr45min in Doha, then 3hr30min to Delhi, so a total of 17hr40min with stop.

QR is a nice airline, don't get me wrong, but best business class in the world is stretching it...