Best Mileage Program to India (Business/First only)
 

I know this has been discussed many times. But last week with Mexicana being ousted out of the Star Alliance program and Delta increasing the reward levels in Business-Elite after March 20, 2004 to India, it would be a good time to re-evaluate the best program to redeem miles on, if India is where you wish to travel too.

From the US Carriers only NW & DL are the 2 actual carriers that fly their planes to India themselves. Both have a decent product and now the mileage required in Business Class is 120K for both after March 20, 2004 for Delta as well. DL had a great 100K reward in Business Elite but that will end soon. Basically if you have DL/CO/NW/AF miles you can use them to travel Business Class for 120K next year.

BA & LH both have extremely high rewards of 180K in Business & over 240K in First. In fact BA is at 270K. A total rip off in First. But that has been discussed enuf already.

BA & LH probably have superior products in Business & First. I suggest if BA is what you want the use the AA award of 135K in Business and travel AA/BA to India. If LH is what you prefer then i suggest people go with UA now and not MX. I was a strong advocate of MX via the Star Alliance reward chart cause you could use 120K and fly First Class on LH to India. You can still do that till Mar 31, 2004. I think thats the maximum bang for the buck.

I think most carriers now are in the 120K plus range to India. So I personally feel AA might be the best bet with 135K in Business Class, or you can even fly on a cheap ticket on AA to London in Economy and use a VIPOW to upgrade your self. Then use only 60K miles on AA to travel from LHR to BOM/DEL/CCU/MAA in Business on BA. More so date changes are free and there are various AA offices including one in Bombay.

Please feel free to add more information here.

UA is 120K in Business flying via LH; AC is 100K in Business and nonstop from YYZ to boot...and no capacity controls for SuperElite inventory. KLM is 150K via AMS and offers quasi-no capacity controls for its Platinum Elite members.

You can fly EWR-DXB on Malaysian in Business for 120K and then take a cheap 2 hour a change flight to just about any major city in India for a couple of hundred dollars.

You can fly to TLV in Business for 100K on AC and then use an AA award TLV-BOM.

You can fly US-BKK or KUL or SIN for 90K in Business on various Star or oneworld carriers
and either use a reasonably priced paid ticket or a second award from South Asia to Central Asia.

Both the TLV and SE ASia options will top off around 140-150K, but award availability to India will be better from those gateways than LH (FRA) or KL (AMS) for the most part.

Hope that helps.

For me, ORD-DEL would always be best served by AA and Oneworld. I have remained loyal to the alliance for years and would continue to do so. I am not going to trade long term loyalty for short term gains on other airline alliances.

As long as I am not in a DL/AF, NW/LH/Gulf Air & AI's sh**ty coach flight to DEL, I'm happy. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

The problem with Star Alliance Awards is that NO DATE CHANGES are allowed on the return flight.

On the other hand with Skymile Awards or One World Awards the date changes are allowed.

Is march 2004 deadline for booking the 100K delta award or do you have to fly by then?

while the mileage levels on lh are higher, keep in mind that you get 250% in C and 375% in F as a status flyer. date changes allowed for a $75 fee.

Has anyone tried using Alaska miles on BA to destinations in India?

Business - 140K
First - 160K

How is the availability?

Swaghmar,
You have been great in giving advice in the past about Starwood/Amex/ Mexicana combo. We are concerned about which place to transfer our miles from Starwood. You seem torn between United and American. Can you advise for the party, that just earns mileage from credit card spending--about 80K/Yr? We unfortunately, had just put 20K miles/25K with Starwood bonus to Mexicana. Are they redeemable on United until March 2004. We also want to try to transfer miles from Starwood to the best mileage plan for us. We like to use FF miles for Biz class or better every few years to somewhere exotic--not Europe--that's a short hop as far as we're concerned. Please advise best plan for travel after March 2004 and what to do with 25K miles at Mexicana. We're in Florida, bye the way. Thanks ever so much

Check BA availability at www.ba.com under the Executive Club section. You can view inventory live there.

U for Business & Z for First. Alaska has the same access.

Right now its sold out to India the LHR to BOM/DEL segments till Feb/Mar 04.

Most of all remember no date changes are allowed once ticket has been issued.

Need to ISSUE before Mar 2004. Not redeem miles.

Hi Narob,

I did speak to Mexicana agents and they claim they are reviewing the Star Alliance deal again and might join them again, Not sure about that. There are rumors that they might join One World. But what I would do right now is keep those 25K aside for a future trip within the US on United as of now via the Star Alliance. I am sure before Mar 04 they will announce what they have decided.

Now since you are in MIA, i suggest start racking up miles on AA as the best option. AA & BA to India via LHR is a great option. You can get awesome deals from MIA to LHR for under $500 and upgrade those using the VIPOWs to Business Class and use only 60K miles from LHR to India on BA Business Class.

Get the AA MasterCard as well and get some additional miles and move the SPG points to AA. REMEMBER DO NOT MOVE THIS TO BA at any cost. Move to AA only.

Now if India is not where you wish to travel, I still strongly recommend AA since it has a better reach and talking of destinations other than Europe, with AA's parters most destinations are covered including Africa, South Pacific & Asia. The mileage program is decent and moving SPG points there would be the best bet.

There are 2 issues: award levels and award availability. Things have changed a lot on this route. Redemption levels are all over the map. BA used to have one of the best levels for J/F and has now gone to one of the worst. AA decreased J from 150,000 to 135,000 but eliminated the pacific routing (on CX or AA/JL). Star carriers have different levels and some of the levels have been posted earlier in this thread. The Mexicana/Star route was a great option (I learnt about it on FT) and is soon unavailable.

In addition to the redemption levels, the challenge on this route is award availability. India is tough place to get award travel at peak times. You are fine during non-peak travel. Peak travel time has been increasing in duration. It is now Dec-Feb and again June-Sep. The peaks are driven by huge numbers of overseas Indian heading to meet families and by tourist arrivals in the colder season.

I have preferred OW to Star in the past for my travel. Star frequency was always better but OW had good RTW fares from India. Now Star may become a better choice because of the limited open-skies initiative by the Indian govt which allows TG/SQ to increase capacity. With AC adding new service, LH increasing capacity availability on Star is definitely increasing.

My understanding of some of the "politics" on this route and why that affects FF award availablity. India has limited open skies with select countries and used to demand parity in bilateral agreements. This means that routes via LHR are constrained by BAs refusal to open up slots for Indian carriers (though AI is one of the few airlines to enjoy special rights on LHR-North America markets). This leaves BA from getting better access to the Indian market. LH signed a decent deal and is able to increase a lot of frequency to India (in addition to DEL/BOM they also have BLR-MAA; this is great if you need to bypass DEL during fod). SQ has a lot of frequency and is now expected to add CCU in addition to a lot of interior destinations. TG has added MAA and is adding BLR and other Budhist tourist destinations. In all Star carriers are going to be increasing capacity massively to India compared to OW (LX- Swiss will join OW in early 2004 and increase OW capacity a little but they have already dropped the ZRH-DEL route and only fly to BOM for now).

Outside of the Star network, DL, AF, NW, CO, KLM are not too bad. Redemption levels are decent and non-peak availability is good (except CO). I am not a fan of their BF product and the general lack of 3 class service.

EK flies to a lot of destinations in India and does not have flts to NorthAm for now. It is planning to add US services in 2004 and they do have plans for a fantastic J/F product. EK or their partners (I do not have redmeption experiences with them) may be a good options. They offer double miles for online booking but you may get better prices through ethnic agents.

update for this summer??
 

What's the best business class award to BKK/DXB/CMB from the US (lowest# of miles) for a split ticket to BOM.

Have miles on DL, AA, UA, CO, NW.


Thanks

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i am also new to flyertalk and have dl and ua and am looking for bom/bkk for travel nov/dec 2004....any advice ie fly one way to cmb...any good agents in bkk or cmb

I strongly suggest use the UA or DL points for a flight to BOM in Business Class since it will be worth it. More so you will have options of flying on LH/NW/DL/AZ/AF or use DL points to fly to DEL via VS in Upper Class.

The options are tremensous. However, I recommend LH since they have the FLAT BED BUSINESS CABINS from JFK to FRA. Anyways from BOM you can purchase great fares to CMB or BKK. Its cheaper to purchase them from BOM itself.