star Alliance - Thai, Ethiopian or South AFRican FF programs

[Mikey K]

Hi Guys

I may have some trips into Africa coming up. Have looked at best ways to get in and out and it looks like using a combo of Thai and Ethiopian or South African and Ethiopian wok best. Other option is to use Qatar airways and then Ethiopian.

My questions would be -
1 - which of those combo's do people believe is best and
2 - Out of Thai and Ethiopian, which FF program would you join for best benefits

I'm a QANTAS FF member mainly so I am leaning towards using Qatar / Ethiopian and using Qatar to help with QANTAS FF status credits etc and then being a member of Ethiopian Sheba Miles.

What do people think ??

Cheers

Mike

 

[dajop]

Hi Mike, welcome to AFF.

Which class of travel will you be in? Qatar/Ethiopian sounds like a sound choice. Presumably you are based in Perth, if you are looking at South African. The other options of interest might be to fly to Singapore on SQ to connect to Ethiopian flights to Addis Ababa.

How many trips are you likely to do? Typically unless doing a lot of travel on star alliance, IMHO, it's probably best to credit to either Singapore Airlines Krisflyer program, as they are closer to home, have plenty of options to earn via Australian credit cards, and also allow you to transfer balances to Virgin Australia Velocity (albeit at a ration of 1.55:1) , so you can use for domestic flight redemptions should you not find another use for the points, or join and credit to Avianca Life Miles programs, so you can relatively inexpensively top up miles to use.

I haven't looked into Ethiopian program recently, from memory there were some sweet spots, and business class earn is very good, but not sure how easy it is to use your points with them. Be useful to see if there is feedback from others, before committing.

 

[Mikey K]

Hi Mike, welcome to AFF.

Which class of travel will you be in? Qatar/Ethiopian sounds like a sound choice. Presumably you are based in Perth, if you are looking at South African. The other options of interest might be to fly to Singapore on SQ to connect to Ethiopian flights to Addis Ababa.

How many trips are you likely to do? Typically unless doing a lot of travel on star alliance, IMHO, it's probably best to credit to either Singapore Airlines Krisflyer program, as they are closer to home, have plenty of options to earn via Australian credit cards, and also allow you to transfer balances to Virgin Australia Velocity (albeit at a ration of 1.55:1) , so you can use for domestic flight redemptions should you not find another use for the points, or join and credit to Avianca Life Miles programs, so you can relatively inexpensively top up miles to use.

I haven't looked into Ethiopian program recently, from memory there were some sweet spots, and business class earn is very good, but not sure how easy it is to use your points with them. Be useful to see if there is feedback from others, before committing.

Thanks Dajop.

Most should be Bus class. I thought same regarding Ethiopian Sheba Miles. Will prob use Ethiopian a bit so may work well for Staus and lounge access etc (where they exist) but where am I going to use the points ?? I will check out KrisFlyer some more. You rate KrisFlyer over the Thai Airways program ??

Thanks

Mikey

 

[dajop]

Thanks Dajop.

Most should be Bus class. I thought same regarding Ethiopian Sheba Miles. Will prob use Ethiopian a bit so may work well for Staus and lounge access etc (where they exist) but where am I going to use the points ?? I will check out KrisFlyer some more. You rate KrisFlyer over the Thai Airways program ??

Thanks

Mikey

Unless you're actually flying Thai a lot, I wouldn't go near the Thai program. They've just done a huge devaluation, and weren't great to begin with. KrisFlyer has lots of advantages and generally lower rates for redeeming.

Note regarding lounges - you will get lounge access anyway, flying business class. You won't get lounge access in economy until you reach the required number of status miles in a calendar year for Gold status (and that's 50,000 for Sheba miles, although you will get Silver status and access to Ethiopian lounge in Addis Ababa after 25,000 miles). That means in business class you have to fly 33,000 miles to get the gold status using Sheba Miles.

 

[Mikey K]

Awesome.

Thanks you

Mikey

 

[Mattg]

This may be of interest - The Best Programs to Earn Star Alliance Status

Keep in mind that you can use any Star Alliance program - doesn't have to be the program of the airline you're flying.

 

[PineappleSkip]

Hi Mikey

I travel for work into East Africa regularly, with the client paying Y and me paying the extra for J. Ethiopan tickets are excellent value for J fares, although their website tends to give different options for Asia-Aust connections every day. The business lounge lounge in ADD is better than the others so status means less than class of travel there. Or so it seems. Out of BNE their connections are typically with CX or TG, less often SQ or QF. CX sectors I just credit to my QFF account. Qatar I haven't done yet because the price was never right, but they can credit to your QFF account (you know you can credit each sector in an itinerary to a different program?)

Originally I was going to credit my Ethiopian miles to Asiana because of the fast *gold qualification, but for some reason ET's website won't let you plug an Asiana FF number into a booking. Asiana demanded the original BPs etc by snail mail (PITA) before they would credit.

So I went for plan B which was Krisflyer, mainly because of the convertibility into Velocity points (albeit at an unimpressive rate), and the ability to plug an SQ FF number into an ET booking online. This will get me Krisflyer Gold in a few more months, but there isn't any real benefit in that unless I was doing Y bookings on *A carriers, which I ain't. Sexier bag tags I guess. The Krisflyer-Virgin conversion would also be a handy backup as Krisflyer miles expire.

Didn't really consider Sheba Miles as it wasn't a particularly good program, and leisure trips on ET don't appeal so much. You've seen the business lounge in J, which beats their others there. Also I saw poor value from Thai.

cheers skip

 

[drross]

Just back from Africa. Agree the business lounge at ADD is good. We found priority pass excellent when flying on smaller airlines..lounge access virtually everywhere.