Which Star Alliance airlines fly First Class to Australia and Europe?

Frequent Flyer Programs
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Hi All,

Using the star alliance network, is anyone aware of which airline ( except thai airways) offers first class flights on award seats to any destination in:

  1. Asia
  2. Australaia
Also, has anyone booked an Etihad 1st class suit using points? If so, how many points and how was it booked
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Hey dojka - in answer to your second question, does this article help?

How to redeem your Velocity Points for Etihad’s new A380 Business Studios and First Apartments
I'm not sure about the answer to the first question, but I'm sure others on here are. :)
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To answer your second question, let’s not worry about award seats yet, just focus on which star alliance offer first class to Asia and Australia.

The latter, very easy, only Thai and Singapore. Singapore’s F is not open to any other star alliance partners. You can only redeem through KF. (But availability is quite good). That leaves you with Thai only. UA might still offer F but I know they are changing it to 787 which doesn’t have F. I can’t recall the exact date of the change over, but UA’s F is basically business class standard of some Asian airlines, so don’t waste your mile.

Asia, that’s a huge area and you need to be more specific. ANA has F from Tokyo of course, but mostly to USA and Europe. The only intra Asia F is Singapore and Tokyo. Award availability is excellent.

Asiana also has F but they are cutting it too. Mainly between Seoul and LAX/JFK. They have seasonal A380 flights to BKK but quite rare. The other F destination is Frankfurt but they are cutting it.

Other European Star members such as Lufthansa and Swiss have F to Tokyo but the awards are not open to partners generally (Lufthansa does open on the last 2 weeks but you can’t book with LM).

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Hi Dojka,

Regarding your second question, it would probably help the rest of the community in giving you a response if you could be a bit more specific with your details.

Are you asking generally about using ANY frequent flyer program miles to book Etihad A380 1st Apartment, or just Star Alliance programs?  If the latter, which programs do you have miles in (or could you transfer miles into).  That further information should help a lot.

For what it’s worth, I have successfully redeemed AAdvantage miles for Etihad A380 1st Class Apartments from SYD-AUH-LHR and return.

I have also had success using Velocity Points to book a reward seat in their normal 1st Class Suite on the Dreamliner 787-900 from Brisbane - Abu Dhabi, and also on their 777-300 from Abu-Dhabi to Melbourne.  There is no 1st Class Apartment on either of these planes.

It is definitely possible to redeem miles from AAdvantage and Velocity for reward seats on Etihad 1st Class but you must call their respective booking call centres to do this. It cannot be done online.  there are also some routing rules you need to be aware of (i.e. the SYD-AUH-LHR flight must be redeemed as 2 separate reward tickets when using AA miles).

If you want any further information about any of the above, let me know.

Jack

 

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