As a Star Alliance partner, it's possible to earn miles with United on
this Aegean flight, or to work your way toward status in Aegean's own program, one of the easiest in which to gain Star Alliance status quickly.
From there, Liza and Pepe were able to book
an Aegean flight from Athens to Thessaloniki for ~ 9,900 miles per person one - way in economy.
Not exact matches
A number of carriers, including
Aegean, Alitalia, EasyJet and Vueling make this nonstop
flight from Athens to Rome.
Searching with Kayak, I found a
flight on
Aegean nonstop from Istanbul to Athens for $ 113.
The qualification period is a rolling 12 months, so since this year is almost over, credit the rest of your
flights this year, and early next year as well to
Aegean.
Nestled on the scenic south - west coast of Turkey, where the Mediterranean meets the
Aegean Sea, it is just a short transfer from the nearest airport and is only a 4 - hour
flight from the UK, so you could be soaking up the Turkish sun in no time at all.
You need to fly at least 48,000 miles (or 24,000 miles with four of those
flights being on
Aegean or Olympic Air) to qualify for Gold Elite (Star Alliance) status.
Latest
flight checks in: All Airlines... Adria Airways
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To keep it, you have to fly 24,000 miles (or 12,000 with four of those
flights on
Aegean or Olympic Air).
Aegean airlines have direct
flights to Chania departing Athens daily.
Additionally, MileagePlus members receive the following benefits on
Aegean - operated
flights:
Aegean will connect Manchester Airport to Athens International airport with bi-weekly
flights, on Saturdays and Mondays.
As part of ongoing route expansion, the Greek airline will operate the scheduled route twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays, starting on June 10th and September 13th and from September 20th to October 25th,
Aegean will operate one weekly Saturday
flight.
Aegean already has three daily
flights from London Heathrow to Athens so the introduction of these
flights from Stansted enables them to increase capacity on the route and also offer more affordable prices.
It's worth noting that
Aegean will charge fuel surcharges on award
flights (but then so will British Airways, for example).
The Miles & Bonus loyalty program is based on distance flown for
flights on
Aegean and Olympic while Star Alliance Awards are region - based.
This might not be as many as you'd earn if you credited your
flight to
Aegean Miles + Bonus or SAS EuroBonus, but Asiana's award chart makes it worth it.
Publicly listed
Aegean Airlines began operations some 11 years ago and now operates a fleet of 30 aircraft covering a total of 54 domestic and international routes on more than 150 daily
flights.
I was thinking about crediting those
flights to A3 [
Aegean] to work towards Star Gold.
The second risk is that he'll be crediting his
flights to
Aegean, where he might find them more difficult to redeem for awards.
In all fare categories on
flights operated by
Aegean, domestic
flights are priced at a fixed rate regardless of destination, while international
flights are priced according to distance traveled, beginning at 56,000 miles in the Go Light category.
But if you're saving up for a once - in - a-lifetime vacation, its worth funneling miles from other Star Alliance
flights to
Aegean.
If the carrier of your choice, for example United, is a Star Alliance member, you can credit your revenue
flights to another Star member, such as
Aegean Airlines, which, arguably, has the most generous elite benefits program of them all.
As you can see, most of these are useful if you're actually flying
Aegean as opposed to crediting partner
flights to them.
Furthermore, the Star Alliance has an incredible route network and strong award availability within Europe, and you can choose from
flights on Lufthansa, Swiss, LOT Polish, TAP Air Portugal, Turkish, Adria Airways,
Aegean Airlines, Austrian, Brussels, Croatia and Scandinavian.
To requalify you'd need 24K miles with fewer than four
flights on
Aegean, OR 12K miles plus four
flights with
Aegean.
Agean used to allow Gold members to access the Greek lounges regardless if they travel on
Aegean or Star alliance
flight.
Spend your miles for
flights on
Aegean and Olympic Air, or reach hundreds of worldwide destinations, with our Star Alliance partners.
I would only recommend going this route if you have some paid
flights planned on
Aegean or Olympic, and even then it might not be worthwhile.
Besides for the nonstop
flights from North America there are many options via Europe in coach, business, and first class worth looking into including Swiss via Zurich, Lufthansa via Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, and Munich, Brussels via Brussels, Austrian via Vienna, Turkish via Istanbul, SAS via Copenhagen, Singapore via Frankfurt,
Aegean via Athens, LOT via Warsaw, or a mix of carriers like United from Newark to one of dozens of European cities and a European carrier to Tel Aviv.
The new program started Nov. 24 and now, the path to Star Alliance Gold through Miles + Bonus includes not only more elite qualifying miles at 24,000 compared to 20,000, but at least four of those have to be on
Aegean or Olympic
flights — that, or you'll need 48,000 miles to achieve the status.
You are still paying for whatever
flights you credit to
Aegean's program or for the elite status with United that you present for your Turkish status match.