[Anonymous]

[Swissdiver]

Registering to Aegean Miles & Bonus is free and gives full Star Alliance privileges. So far so good. Now Silver threshold is … 4’000 miles (no, I didn’t miss a 0) and Gold’s, … another 16’000. So one can become a Gold Star Alliance member for 20’000 miles while 100’000 is required in Miles and More. Is it too good to be true? Where is the trick? I could not find it so far…

[TimFitzgeraldTC]

Another member on this forum has tried this trick with a flight booked through me and apparently the Gold Card is in the post to him.

I think I might have seen somewhere that someone wrote that some arilines won’t give Star benefits if on Aegean FF membership but I couldn’t verify that. If it works seems worth it.

[Swissdiver]

Thanks, Tim. There is though a caveat: miles accrual. When flying on LH for instance:
“Booking Classes not eligible for accrual: O, I, X, R, N, L, T, E, K, P”.

Details are available on http://en.aegeanair.com/milesandbonus/program-description/earn-miles/

[EU_Flyer]

I can also attest that they don’t give miles for many booking classes on other Star airlines. I flew with them on LH and recieved no points at all.

[ZKSmith]

Know a few colleagues who have Star Gold with Aegean. Gold perks seem to work fine with all airlines. They have reported some difficulty purchasing upgrades using their miles with many Star Alliance airlines, although I don’t think it’s significantly worse than trying to upgrade with any other FF programme.

Regarding LH and not receiving miles, seems a common problem unless you’re a Miles&More member. I’m an Air New Zealand Airpoints card holder and regularly don’t get credit when flying LH, not just on cut price fares but even on some semi-flexible tickets

[Str8Talking]

I second what has already been said above.

It is worth remembering that Aegean is a small regional airline with their longest flight at less than 2000 miles. The airline therefore can’t expect its customers to earn masses of miles each year in order to gain status. Equally they don’t want lose their FFP members to other Star Alliance airlines. The pay back for that is fairly poor earn/burn opportunities.

[Ab0dache]

Hello Swissdiver,

It seems more to be related to LH than Aegean.

There were also a lot of booking LH classes without miles accrual in the bmi diamond club.

To be fair, it was a lot of low fares paid by my company. And always the first trip would gain miles – no more than 150- but the return part of the trip would never gain me miles. But the fare was so low that it maked sense to me.

[MartinJ]

The trick is to foresee when Aegean go bust (not unrealistic given the current economic climate in Greece) and stop crediting to Miles&Bonus before it is too late. 🙂

[Yorgo51]

LH will go bust before Aegean MartinJ

[LeTigre]

Aegean have appeared to manage the crisis very well. They increased niche routes from Greek islands, increased capacity to lucrative Russian markets and set up hubs in more developing parts of Greece. I believe they are currently profitable.

I must admit to being a fan of their scheme. Any FFP that nets you star alliance gold after only one SQ LHR-SYD economy return is surely worth it.

On the other hand, Miles&More is such a rip off, just a mechanism to earn the airline profit and not easy to use.

[MartinJ]

LeTigre, don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of Miles&Bonus as well and this year I decided to shed my Senator status that is now ridiculously diffcult to achieve in favour of Miles&Bonus Gold. Very similar benefits at a fraction of the cost in miles. At the same time I know those too-good-to-be-true perks might not last forever and I enjoy them while I can.

[Swissdiver]

Well, the risk is limited to 20’000 miles… Sounds to be a good option to me as the 100’000 of M&M is quite difficult to achieve for one who want to maintain Gold elsewhere…

[Swissdiver]

Talking about Miles & More rip of, have a look at http://www.businesstraveller.com/discussion/topic/Miles-and-More,-or-probably-the-only-program-giving-more-miles-in-Eco-than-in-Business

[Swissdiver]

OK, I am now a Silver Star Alliance member (again since I was already with M&M) with Aegean Miles and Bonus. It took me … one flight! On my way to Gold… While there is no upgrades possible on LX or LH with this program, I can go to Greece for 22’000 miles which is not bad (although connecting to an island would require an additional 12’500 – details on http://en.aegeanair.com/milesandbonus/program-description/spend-miles/).

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