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STAR ALLIANCE member review :  1 May 2008 by N Matias   (Luxembourg)

Member Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Silver

Product Consistency:

4/5

Airport facilities:

4/5

Booked flight from LUX-YYZ with Austrian returning on Swiss. As my flight from YYZ to ZRH is operated by Air Canada for Swiss, I cannot upgrade although the booking class would allow it and I have more than enough credit. What's the use of choosing to fly star alliance then?

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  30 April 2008 by T Larsen   (Denmark)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Gold

Product Consistency:

5/5

Airport facilities:

4/5

As a frequent traveller it is of great importance that the recognition of status works throughout the network. This week I experienced it at the newest member, Turkish Airlines. Although flying domestic economy class, check in at business class counters, access to lounge and separate security check was perfect. On a round-the-world-trip I have also experience excellent ground service in airports such as Los Angeles, Tahiti, Cook Islands, Auckland, Dunedin, Sydney and Singapore.

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  30 April 2008 by Steven Curfs   (Luxembourg)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Silver

Product Consistency:

4/5

Airport facilities:

4/5

Personally I believe this alliance to be the best one around these days - ease of use of all websites and consistency of service and status recognition. It is however very difficult if not impossible to use miles for flight awards if that does not happen with the cardholder's original carrier (in my case LH). As I fly mostly from/to LUX, this means I have to use Luxair, and whilst operating code-share flights with LH, award-booking in any class is nearly impossible. Even if booking with LH, direct routes are more the exception than the rule, weird stop-over routes via Dusseldorf, Warsaw or Stuttgart are routine.

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  30 January 2008 by A Davidson   (Canada)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Silver

Product Consistency:

1/5

Airport facilities:

4/5

As an Air Canada Aeroplan member since the early '80s, I am extremely disappointed in their apparent lack of ability to credit missing miles for flights taken with one of their Star Alliance Partners in June of 2007. Have submitted documentation three times over the past few months, made numerous telephone calls to their office with waiting times of 30+ minutes on each occassion and still no satisfaction!

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  24 January 2008 by Daryl Ward   (Germany)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Gold

Product Consistency:

2/5

Airport facilities:

5/5

The new upgrade system to allow upgrades over the full Star Alliance network is a disaster. I have travelled in expensive ticket classes (M with Singapore Airlines and Q with Air New Zealand) - not the "heavily discounted" classes that are excluded from upgrades - booking classes that accrue 100% miles. So far I have been unable to upgrade a single flight using my Lufthansa miles. It seems to be almost impossible to book a flight that is eligible for upgrading - and even if this is done the upgrade seats are not always available. It is also not possible to confirm the upgrade before buying a ticket with a partner airline.

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  13 January 2008 by Nuno Monteiro   (Portugal)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Silver

Product Consistency:

4/5

Airport facilities:

5/5

I used to travel quite a lot between Newark and Lisbon or Porto, and after becoming a frequent flyer from TAP Portugal (Victoria Program) in 2001 (back then Qualiflyer in venture with Swissair), I was able to get many upgrades to business class, not only with TAP, but also with Lufthansa, when the plane is full, which was always nice. Now I travel quite a lot between Germany and Porto with Lufthansa or few times with TAP, and I do accumulate the same milages that I would with TAP, so for me the program works very well. The Business Lounge at Lisbon Airport is ok, I guess, needs a big improvement if they want to compete with one in Porto, which is amazing. The one in Newark, depending on the gates you depart, you either go to the SAS Lounge, very good and comfortable or the Lufthansa lounge, which is quite nice. In Frankfurt, the Lufthansa Lounge is enormous and it has everything that is needed to wait for a flight. With other airlines belonging to Star Alliance nothing to complaining. One flight from New York to Frankfurt and return was good, with priority for have a Silver card and the flights with United Airlines in United Sates and the one from Washington Dulles to Munich and return were also good. South African Airways also gave me priority to do the check-in in Johannesburg and Cape Town with the possibility to use their lounge in Johannesburg, while waiting for the flight to Cape Town. SAS, also no problem at all. The ticketing also works very well when booking through Star Alliance.

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  13 January 2008 by Mike Simpson   (New Zealand)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Gold

Product Consistency:

4/5

Airport facilities:

5/5

I find that Star Alliance network works extremely well. within New zealand I have access to all the Air NZ Koru Lounges. I agree with the comments about Air Canada they seem to not recognise tier status and often have to remind them of the Star Alliance entitlements before they grant me access to the lounge. However I rarely travel economy so the gold status is wasted except when travelling with Lufthansa.

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  30 December 2007  by Lawrence Nkemdirim   (Canada)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Gold

Product Consistency:

5/5

Airport facilities:

3/5

Some members of the Star Alliance are drastically reducing benefits to their best customers. Air Canada, for example has done the following over the last three years: (1) raised the mileage required for threshold upgrade certificates from 15, 000 to 20,000; (2) Withdrawn eligibility for upgrade to Business Class with System-wide certificates with any fare other than full economy fare. Previously, qualification is triggered by about half the full fare; (3) Raised the mileage requirement for the award of Special System-wide threshold upgrade certificate from 45, 000 to 75, 000. I suspect that they have eliminated that benefit altogether in the 2008 program; (4) Reduced the 10,000 Status Mile option in the list of selected benefits to 2,500; (6) imposed expiry dates on accumulated mileage. The list of reduced benefits goes on and on. It is unfortunate that customers have no organization capable of challenging the Airline especially in countries like Canada where there is only one airline offering similar loyalty programs and where the market place is ineffective in regulating the power of the Airline over such matters.

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  23 December 2007  by Quan Shen   (Austria)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Silver

Product Consistency:

5/5

Airport facilities:

5/5

On 12.12/57 I tried Shanghai Airlines with surprise as it became one of the member. Now all members can generate Status miles through the Chinese network. While Star Alliance can offer more connection possibilities for travellers in within and through China I still consider whether the 2 new carriers especially Air China can keep their service level up to other members. Air China has not very good reputation as I heard many times from relatives, friends and business partners. Also Air China for example has a much lower required mileage programme for star alliance gold equivalent. There are also a variety of confusions between different frequent flyer programs due to high complexity.

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  23 December 2007  by O Johansen   (Norway)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Gold

Product Consistency:

4/5

Airport facilities:

4/5

What is happening to the Star Alliance idea? I wish someone could explain the real benefits of using the airlines of Star Alliance, in addition to getting hold of mileage point on all flights. Recently I tried to book a flight from Oslo to Jakarta, going there by THAI, and coming home by Lufthansa. Impossible, because the two Star Alliance airlines have no ticket cooperation, I was told my travel office. Are the effiency of Star Alliance only for those buying full fare business class tickets...?

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  2 November 2007  by Oddvar Johansen   (Norway)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Gold

Product Consistency:

4/5

Airport facilities:

5/5

Star Alliance is great when having one ticket, but if you should have two different tickets on their network, be aware! My wife travelled from Oslo to Manila. As she was travelling on a THAI bonus ticket, she had to buy an additional ticket Oslo-Stockholm. She could not buy a throught ticket as she then would not be able to travel Economy Premium. However, this was not as easy as assumed. THAI is no longer allowing SAS to enter their reservation-system. That ment she had to check out - and in again (!) in Stockholm, which was rather complicated! There was no benefint of being a Star Alliance member at all! This is really going tens of years back in time, and is a drawback to the Star Alliance service.

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  2 November 2007  by Teresa Tyler   (UK)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Silver

Product Consistency:

4/5

Airport facilities:

----

We are fairly new to the Star Alliance scheme but having clocked up a lot of mileage last year on airlines that all belonged to it, we quickly became frequent fliers. For us the proof of the pudding was in using some of our miles to buy flights, and this was simplicity itself and worked well. We are thinking of using some more miles next year to upgrade a flight and will be interested to see if this works well too.

STAR ALLIANCE member review :  18 October 2007  by Peter Bedson   (UK)

Customer Satisfaction :

Tier Status:

Gold

Product Consistency:

3/5

Airport facilities:

4/5

If you travel a lot you need to do some research on how easy it is to get/maintain gold status as it varies a lot between the carriers in the alliance. BD seems to be fairly easy to reach gold status and have a reasonable programme. Some of the carriers will only let you in the business lounge and not their gold lounge if you are a "foreigner" in terms of your frequent flyer card. Award flights seem to be a lot easier to book than with One World - maybe because there are more options for routings especially to the far east/australasia. Downside of the large alliance is that in some places the lounges get very crowded and at Changi they would only let me take one child into the SQ Lounge - though I have never had a problem anywhere else.