Just spent 11 days bouncing around 8 cities... no *A options... sigh!

Welcome to the suck.

Virgin Australia does have a partnership with SQ, so you could put miles for domestic flying in Australia into Krisflyer, or use Krisflyer miles for VA flights in Oz. That's the closest to *A mileage accumulation I've been able to come up with.

Seems there was a shot when Air New Zealand owned a bunch of VA... Qantas does have a nice offering but I just can't get behind AA in the US... and DL is ok but they fly garbage buckets and for biz to northern europe you need lh/sas, klm/af isn't bad but their hubs aren't ideal.. being based out of HNL/OGG for 1/3 year and TVC for 1/3... UA really is the only option... so i've been shooting points over to AY (Finnair) as a few months are spent in the Helsinki.... but not the ideal scenario.. example would be TVC-ORD-VIE-BRU-ORD-TVC the other day to get a few meetings in across two cities... only *a could accommodate this on one ticket.

But go down under and you are sol..

Though DL can get me, TVC-HEL about 5-8hrs quicker (unless i go LH metal)... its nuts as OGG-HEL can be as quick as TVC-HEL, even though i'm starting at the half way point...

Sigh... missing the days of Ansett!

As this is a thread on the lack of *A options in Australia, the Star Alliance forum is the place for this discussion.

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator

Well there are two *A routes within Australia, just not many people would want to fly them

NZ operates SYD-NLK and BNE-NLK a couple of times an week with an A320.

If really desparate can travel between the main Australian cities via AKL.

LOL

Imagine doing SYD-AKL-PER instead of the direct SYD-PER!!!

syd/mel/bne-bkk-per

syd-bkk-hkg-jnb-per

in that case, why not just go SYD-AKL-LAX-ORD-FRA-SIN-PER? ;P

That's why you need one FF membership in each alliance!