It’s not often you get great earning, great status and great redeeming.
Aegean may not be an airline you’ll ever spend an insane amount of time on, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s an airline you shouldn’t be earning all your Star Alliance miles and status points with. The boutique airline operates flights primarily in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and is a central figure in the Star Alliance airline group, with some serious loyalty program gems. The program brings powerful earning potential, exceptionally good short cuts to earn Star Alliance Gold elite status and offers outstanding rates when it comes time to cash in your points. Here’s why Aegean is the program you’ve overlooked – but shouldn’t any more…
Aegean still credits points based on distance, and not on some silly equation about how much you overspent. Even the lowest Star Alliance fares earn 50% of the miles actually flown, and for many airlines, you’ll find the highest earning rates for most fares are offered by Aegean. Here’s the Aegean page which shows earning rates for all partner airlines. Put simply: more redeemable miles earned means more reward for less flying.
Earning elite status with Star Alliance is extremely useful. Star Alliance Gold entitles passengers to airport lounges, airport fast tracks, checked bags and other perks on all journeys, even if flying economy. Aegean Miles+Bonus is a particularly good program for all flyers based on the ease of attaining Star Alliance Gold, but it’s even better for U.S. flyers. Domestic U.S. travelers with Star Alliance Gold earned via United MileagePlus somehow don’t get entry to lounges on domestic flights, whereas the same travelers flying United using a foreign status, such as Aegean do.
If you can manage to fly six segments on Aegean, you only need a total of 36,000 miles for Star Alliance Gold. Given the generously high earning rates mentioned above, that’s a fraction of what other airlines require. If you can’t manage six segments on Aegean during your travels in Europe, the Mediterranean or Middle East, you’ll still need a mere 48,000 miles in a year for Star Alliance Gold. Again, it could be more advantageous for U.S. based flyers, even those who fly exclusively on United, to earn with Aegean instead, unless they reach the highest United tier.
At 200% earning or better on even the most discount of business class tickets, a single long haul journey could put you right in the crosshairs of a year or more of Star Alliance Gold, with even easier criterion for maintaining it after the first year! 20,000 flown (real) miles in business would put you at the 40,000 mile threshold, quite near the finish line. A full list of Aegean Star Alliance Gold benefits can be found here.
When it comes to the big “honey pot”, redeeming points side of things, it helps if you can transfer points from other places into your airline program to boost the tally. While Aegean is not currently a transfer partner of Citi, Chase or Amex, it is a partner of Marriott Rewards. Anyone with big fat points balances from SPG or Marriott Rewards can push points into Aegean to top off for a great redemption. With any luck, they’ll become a credit card transfer partner one day too…
If this is all sounding pretty great, fear not – that won’t stop here. Aegean offers some world class redemption opportunities, in part because it hasn’t made its points “too” easy to acquire. Here are a few redemptions which are instantly impressive. Oh and one ways are just half…
90,000 Points Round Trip Business Class – U.S. To Europe Or Israel.
150,000 Points Round Trip Business Class – Europe to Australia & New Zealand.
80,000 Points Round Trip First Class – Asia To Asia
25,000 Points Round Trip Economy – Intra Australia & New Zealand.
42,000 Points Round Trip Business – Intra U.S. Flights, including Transcontinental.
There are plenty more, but you’ll have to check out their chart for yourself. With all these factors combined, there’s no doubt that Aegean is one of the most overlooked Star Alliance airline loyalty programs, with great rates and opportunities from front end to back end. If you value Gold status benefits from Star Alliance and dependable miles, which are unlikely to devalue, this is a gem.
Has this article impacted your travel loyalty thought process?
Featured image courtesy of Star Alliance Gold Lounge LAX.
What about fuel surcharges?
same question as Christian, fuel charge and typical tax on redemption?
Varies by carrier. AC, United, etc low. The usual high surcharge airlines, high.
Aegean miles have limited use since they cannot be redeemed for flights with more than one connection.
Good article. Great for ppl travelling around Greece as well, esp with island hopping.
Or, as GSTP has mentioned before, if you are going to be in South East Asia (SEA) and have 2 days to spare, get an amex platinum card well before travelling. Get status upgrade with Shangri-la via the platinum card and run a status challenge for krisflyer (Star alliance) gold.
In SEA, u can get really cheap tickets on SQ metal, esp for non SIN departures where SQ competes with the others.
Easily achieve star alliance gold status for under 650 GBP considering amex fees and cheap SQ tickets. Also don’t forget the additional benefits of amex platinum including sign up bonus points which will definitely offset some if not all of the 450 gbp
This maybe achievable in the EU as well (for more money) if flying 5th freedom SQ metal (Russia/Germany/Stockholm)
The part of the article about earning the Gold status is correct. However, during the last year, thebterms and conditions for redeeming miles for award tickets has detiriorated significantly. Not only is it almost impossible to find a direct flight, the amount of miles has gone up and so have the taxes. Sometimes it is more interesting to buy a new ticket than redeem miles.for thebl same destination..