Star Alliance RTW Questions

[ozscot]

Hi Guys,

I travel often on a OW *ONE4 ticket and am presently planning an economy itinerary for the wife and kids to visit family and intersect my travels in September.

As their trip includes LAX-PHX-SEA-NYC-EDI I'm considering SA instead of OW as this has better direct flights. Whilst I don't mind collecting SC's through DFW all the time the thought of these extra sectors and lay-overs with a 2 year old in tow isn't so good.

I've got a valid itinerary built on the SA travel planner and the sectors are available. Are there any gotchas to look for using Star compared to OW or is it much the same with etickets and OLCI etc?

Also, the family are all NB QFF. Is there any particular SA FF program worth them joining?

Cheers,
Steve.

 

[SeaWolf]

There's no particular traps, I used one last year with 12 flights on 5 carriers and had no issues at all, except for occasionally horrified looks from check-in agents when the itinerary spewed across their screens. For North America Star Alliance has much better coverage than oneworld.

The only trick I learnt was to watch out for the fuel surcharges. The online tool will tally these up and spit out a number that's usually HUGE. However, because airlines tally and collect these differently you can save several hundreds by booking it through the right airline. For example, Air NZ do not collect fuel surcharges on their flights that start or end in NZ. Also, they don't collect fuel surcharges for other airlines (or at least they didn't seem to when I booked). So by booking through Air NZ, rather than online I saved myself something like $700, even though Air NZ hit me with a $100 booking fee. Also, Air NZ made booking this very, very easy, I can certainly recommend their call centre.

You can book through any airline that has a flight sector on the itinerary, however it's worth noting that while the tickets do allow booking onto codeshares (I believe) the airlines don't seem to like doing this and tend to flatten out the codeshares and book on the metal code instead, often because there is better availability on the metal code. If you have a specific reason to book a codeshare, rather than the metal code, you will probably need to be very clear about this when making the booking.

For a FF program, if you and your family don't fly on Star Alliance very much, you'll probably want to look at the programs that have very long expiry, or no expiry at all, so you have a good chance to pile up more miles and make the cash in worth while. If status is more important, then you'd be hard pressed to go past new member Aegean, which requires just 20,000 miles in 12 months to hit Star Alliance Gold! Alternatively, Asiana requires 40,000 in 24 months, with the same to renew, giving you a bit more flexibility with your renewal. Also, they offer a 'Family Plan' where you can link a family's accounts together and pool the miles for a reward, something that might be very handy in your situation. I think bmi now offer this too, but it's likely they'll be absorbed in Lufthansa's "Miles and More" shortly.
There's a very good (though slightly outdated) chart that compares the various programs at Gold level:
Untitled Document

 

[Masonic Phantom]

Hi SeaWolf

Perhaps you may be able to advise/help me also, I wish to make an award RTW with Star Alliance,but not sure the best way to go about it.
I have KrisFlyer miles,:shock: their web-site is not much help to me,I must be doing
something wrong

Cheers Gary.

 

[Flashback]

Hi SeaWolf

Perhaps you may be able to advise/help me also, I wish to make an award RTW with Star Alliance,but not sure the best way to go about it.
I have KrisFlyer miles,:shock: their web-site is not much help to me,I must be doing
something wrong

Cheers Gary.

I believe that in order to book a *A RTW award using KF miles you need to call the contact centre.

If you want to look up availability beforehand you can use the ANA tool.

 

[ozscot]

Hi SeaWolf,

thanks for the advise. Much appreciated. The first sectors out of Aus look like Air NZ through to LA so I'll give them a call to arrange.

Cheers,
Steve.

 

[SeaWolf]

Perhaps you may be able to advise/help me also, I wish to make an award RTW with Star Alliance,but not sure the best way to go about it.

It's up to each individual reward program how they want to go about offering an Award RTW, there's no alliance-wide standard and some programs don't offer Award RTWs at all. KrisFlyer, however, does. Unfortunately there's virtually no info about it on their website except:

STAR ALLIANCE ROUND THE WORLD AWARDS
With Round The World Awards, you can travel around the world with the flexibility of multiple stopovers. Circle the globe and visit up to seven cities of your choice for just 180,000 KrisFlyer miles in Economy Class, 240,000 KrisFlyer miles in Business Class and 360,000 KrisFlyer miles in First Class.

So while it's obvious how much it costs, there's no rules etc. The rules for an Award RTW are generally very different from a paid-for RTW. They usually have quite strict limits on the number of stops and the number of flights you can take, not nearly as generous as the paid-for tickets. You'll need to give KrisFlyer a call and have them outline the specifics of their particular Award RTW. At least you know the limit of stops though (seven in this case).

 

[Masonic Phantom]

I believe that in order to book a *A RTW award using KF miles you need to call the contact centre.

If you want to look up availability beforehand you can use the ANA tool.

Thanks Flashware [D]
So it looks like a phone call then....ok,
sorry to be so dumb:shock: but ANA tool.....help??

Regards Gary.

 

[Masonic Phantom]

It's up to each individual reward program how they want to go about offering an Award RTW, there's no alliance-wide standard and some programs don't offer Award RTWs at all. KrisFlyer, however, does. Unfortunately there's virtually no info about it on their website except:

So while it's obvious how much it costs, there's no rules etc. The rules for an Award RTW are generally very different from a paid-for RTW. They usually have quite strict limits on the number of stops and the number of flights you can take, not nearly as generous as the paid-for tickets. You'll need to give KrisFlyer a call and have them outline the specifics of their particular Award RTW. At least you know the limit of stops though (seven in this case).

Thanks also SeaWolf for the help.
Gary.

 

[Flashback]

Thanks also SeaWolf for the help.
Gary.

If you create an account with ANA (q‹óŒ” —\–ñE‹óÈƉïE‰^’ÀˆÄ“àE‘“àübANA) you can then search for availability on *A airlines. Note that they have changed the way it works now, and to access data for non-ANA flights you need to first do a dummy search with an ANA flight, which will then give the option to specify new routing and to search over all *A airlines.

 

[Masonic Phantom]

O.K. & Thanks again Flashware, most helpful fella,s
now to get the show up & running!!!!:shock:

Cheers Gary.