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Updated 1/29/16 to reflect new Aeroplan award prices effective for awards booked 12/15/15 or later.
Updated 10/6/15 to reflect new ANA award prices effective for awards booked 10/15/15 or later.
In the last few weeks, I have published some comparative charts of Star Alliance award charts. I’m putting all of those charts into this post for easier reference.
You can use any type of Star Alliance miles to book almost any Star Alliance flight. (Swiss, Lufthansa, and Singapore hold back some premium cabin award space for their own members. United gives extra award space to elites and United cardholders.) The 27-member alliance has more than a dozen frequent flyer programs, many of which offer good or great deals on some routes.
I’ve taken the time to make a comprehensive spread sheet of eight programs’ award prices from North America:
- United (on United flights and on partner flights)
- Copa
- Asiana
- Singapore (on Star Alliance partner flights)
- Avianca LifeMiles
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Lufthansa Miles & More
- ANA
These programs were chosen because they all have at least some awards that are really cheap. And other than Copa and LifeMiles, Americans can easily get all these miles through transferable points programs:
- United: Ultimate Rewards
- Copa: no easy way to get the miles yet, but the program is brand new
- Asiana: SPG
- Singapore: ThankYou Points, Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, SPG
- LifeMiles: buy miles for 1.5 cents each
- Aeroplan: Membership Rewards, SPG
- Lufthansa: SPG
- ANA: Membership Rewards, SPG
There are other Star Alliance programs into which Americans can transfer miles–Citi ThankYou Points transfer 1:1 to EVA and Thai miles–but their charts don’t offer any value compared to the eight I’ve selected.
Of course, the charts below only captures one part of an award: its mileage price. The routing rules and fuel surcharges matter too. Here are a few big things that applies to all charts:
- United, Copa, and LifeMiles never collect fuel surcharges. All the others collect fuel surcharges on most awards.
- All programs allow one way redemptions for the prices listed on the charts except ANA. It only allows roundtrip redemptions for double the price on the chart. I used its fictitious “one way price” that you can’t actually book just to more easily compare to the programs that do allow one way bookings.
For specific information on fuel surcharges to each region and other important routing rules, click on the individual posts where I really analyzed awards to each region.
- cheapest awards within the mainland USA, to Canada, to Hawaii, and to Alaska
- cheapest awards to Latin America and the Caribbean
- cheapest awards to Europe
- cheapest awards to Africa and the Middle East
- cheapest awards to North Asia
- cheapest awards to Southeast Asia
- cheapest to the Indian Subcontinent
- cheapest awards to Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania
Searching and Booking the Awards
A truism of miles is that–with few exceptions–award space is equally available to all partners. One corollary is that you can search any award search engine that displays an airline’s award space, and if space is there, you can book it with any partner.
All Star Alliance partner award space is searchable on aeroplan.com. Here’s how to search for award space on aeroplan.com. All the award space you find there is bookable with all the miles discussed in this post. Ignore the price quoted on aeroplan.com. You will pay the price on the award chart of the miles you’re using.
To book, call the airline whose miles you’re using (or go to their website to book online if you can.) Feed the agent the award space you found on aeroplan.com.
The Charts
Below the award charts show the one way price in thousands of miles from the United States mainland to the region listed for the eight types of miles listed. For information on slashes, click the links above to get more information.
Within Mainland United States and Canada
Alaska
Hawaii
Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean
Northern South America
Southern South America
Europe
Middle East
Africa
North Asia
Southeast Asia
Indian Subcontinent
Australia and New Zealand
Oceania
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Awesome summary! Besides UA, Singapore Airlines also have a chart for SQ only and one for containing a partner. Any notable difference?
Huge differences. Maybe I should have included SQ-metal chart on the comparisons of Europe, North Asia, and Southeast Asia.
This series of charts is exceptional. Would also love to see a chart that shows how much mileage credit foreign programs give to the various domestic fare classes. E.g., booked that A-class EWR-SFO-EUG flight, and would love to surmise the best place to credit it.
How much credit for United flights with all these programs? Hmmm that’s an interesting idea.
A chart would be better, but easy to construct sourcing this data
http://www.wheretocredit.com/
Hi, I’m Adam and I maintain Where to Credit. We recently added the ability to do just that!
http://www.wheretocredit.com/calculator#EWR-SFO-UA-A/SFO-EUG-UA-A
Enjoy 🙂
Hi Scott,
there’s a Lufthansa flight I found on the united.com that I am hoping to book, but since I am using my miles and more points, do I have to look at the Miles and more website instead?
Sorry Bit confused.
Thanks,
JR
If you are using your Miles & More miles for a Lufthansa flights, just book on miles-and-more.com. But be ready to pay fuel surcharges through the nose.
Every website I try to check for domestic flights, such has Lufthansa, Singapore, all give me an error. I must be doing something wrong in that I cannot find any way to see domestic flights other than united or aa.com.
Yes, you are doing something wrong. It was in every post of the series except this one, so I’ve added it to this one too: just because you can book certain flights with certain miles doesn’t mean that those flights will show up on the award search engine. For instance, most of these search engines are garbage. The only good ones are United, Aeroplan, ANA, and LifeMiles. Search on one of those sites, find the Saver award space, and call the airline whose miles you want to use to book the award.
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this is a great resource.
the ONLY tiny thing that would make it better would be an additional column of if the program allows one-ways or if awards must be r/t (like ANA? i think)
That’s on the pages for the individual regions
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Which airline transfer has the most value UAL SWA or delta
???? This question doesn’t make sense to me. What points transfer to all three of those airlines? None that I can think of.
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