Hi All,

I'm just wondering if there is a sensible and obvious reason why each individual partner has a different mileage requirement for what is essentially the same thing.

For example, I want to u/g the family when we fly SYD-SFO in July on UA. I have all of my points (stupidly) with TG. If I look at the *A rewards page for a couple of the partners the miles required for 1 u/g are as follows

UA - 30k
LH - 40k
SG - 50k
TG - 60k ??

Typically TG seem the most expensive, and there is no way that I know of for us poor old aussies to get points into UA from our credit card rewards programs etc.

Why can there not be 1 rate for all regardless of host FF carrier? From the *A awards charts besides M&M they do not seem to care which partner you fly with so it should be one rule for all IMHO.

Ciao

That's not the whole story, you are also required to pay for an outrageously expensive fare class (Y or B) to enable *A upgrades.

If you are flying from Australia you can buy a LH/UA business class "RTW" fare to Europe via the USA both ways for about the same cost, see here

Every carrier has its own earning scheme and its own spending scheme. A IAD-FRA flight in 1st class gets you 12,195 miles in Lufthansa's program, but only half that amount in United's program -- and that applies whether you take the LH flight or the UA flight. And, a premium award from LH costs more than a premium award from UA.

So why shouldn't the price for an upgrade be different?

It would be easy to understand the philosophy behind the points discrepancies if partners singled out the other partners who do not allocate points to their FF members evenly and penalise them, but in most cases that I looked at (LH being the exception), then *A upgrade awards for one partner require uniform points regardless of the partner airline your FF program is with.

e.g. UA and TG seem (as far as I can tell) to aware members of each others FF programs equal points to what they would award their own members (besides loyalty bonus miles etc). In this case you would think that the miles have somewhat equal value, and perhaps the upgrade awards could be provided equally as well.

I would have thought that one of the points of *A upgrade awards would be to encourage *A FF to try and stick within the *A network when they are flying on their non standard routes, instead of perhaps choosing a OW partner instead.

I know there are lots of reasons why it is the way it is, guess I am just having a rant Now who do I blame for not being allowed to transfer AMEX awards to UA MP

Another reason why I'm anti-*A upgrade scheme.

Why are you singling out upgrades? The same applies for awards. The same applies in other alliances (eg compare QFF with AAdvantage award costs).

Nothing is valued the same. Personally I think it is a good thing, for with variety comes choice. Savvy FTers can then maximise their benefits.

Regarding Star Alliance upgrades: Do these come out of the standard award bucket (I or O) of the airline or is there special availability? In other words, does ANA availability match Star upgrades availability?

I singled out upgrades because this is something that *A has rolled out as a major benefit, and something that OW does not offer (AFAIK).

Interestingly I just went back to the UA page to look again here and now it has in big bold letters they are not accepting *A upgrade requests. Perhaps the system has a few flaws that they are trying to iron out?

I believe that's true with the exception of United. United has separate inventory for awards and upgrades.

A few flaws? You must not have much experience with united.com...

To use my United points to upgrade on another carrier, who do I call. In my case United said Swiss and of course Swiss said United. Ended up not mattering, wrong class of ticket.

You need to contact the FFP whose miles you are using to upgrade.

United has 'temporarily' removed *A upgrades. You used to need to use the web site as the res agents could not do them.

That is, UA res agents never could do them and now dotBomb can't either. Even UA admints they're gone

So, going the other direction, are Star Alliance Upgrades using other airlines' miles on United operated flights also suspended?

I do not think so, I think UA had (another) software problem. (Or I suppose it may not have enough cash to pay for them, but I cannot really see that.)