Welcome to part 3 of my series of posts about the Star Alliance Gold Status. If you missed part 1 “Star Alliance Gold – Introduction“, you can read it here. Or want to read my article about the different member airline benefits?

In this article I will reveal how to get the Star Alliance Gold status with a long-haul round-trip ticket or in other words with 20,000 status miles.

Have you ever heard about the Greece based airline “Aegean Airlines”? I guess you didn’t. Even in Europe most people outside of Greece don’t know it.
But the important point here is, it’s part of the Star Alliance. Which means you can accrual miles on their frequent traveller program, even if you’re based in Australia or other countries.

Aegean has only 3 status tiers.  No status,  Miles & Bonus Blue and Miles & Bonus Gold. For Blue you need 4,000 miles. Blue status has basically no benefits outside of Greece, except for priority waitlist if you missed your flight.

Now to the good part.

After you achieved Blue you only need 16,000 miles to get “Miles & Bonus Gold“, which equals Star Alliance Gold.
4,000 miles + 16,000 miles = 20,000 miles

20,000 status miles sounds awesome, right? Let’s make it even better: Aegean Airlines has currently a promotion. Sign up for their frequent traveler program and get 1,000 status miles as a bonus. That means, you only need to accrual 19,000 status miles.

Eligible miles

I achieved my Star Alliance Gold status with one round-trip ticket from Frankfurt, Germany to Auckland, New Zealand on Singapore Airlines. (11 614 status miles for each direction)

The distance between Sydney / Kingsford Smith (SYD) and London/Heathrow (LHR) is 10576 miles (via Singapore). That means, you can collect 21152 status miles on a round trip ticket when flying economy class.

Have a look at the “Earning miles” list at http://en.aegeanair.com/milesandbonus/program-description/earn-miles/#linkTop
When booking your flight, make sure to book a fare that has at least 100% accrual factor.

In general, the cheapest booking classes are not eligible for miles accrual.
The difference between the cheapest fare and booking class W on Singapore Airlines for my flights between Europe and New Zealand was just 200 bucks.
[note color=”#FFCC00″]Info: Not sure about fare class when booking a flight? Send me an email or contact me on Facebook. I’m happy to help![/note]

Benefits of Star Alliance Gold

Holders of this status (like me) enjoy the following Star Alliance benefits:

• Priority reservations waitlisting No seats left on your preferred flight? this will give you priority over others if a seat becomes available.
• Priority airport stand-by  Missed your flight? even if the next flight is fully booked, you get priority.
• Priority boarding Board the plane at the same time with business and first class passengers (if available)
• Priority airport check-in You can check-in at the business class or first class counter (depending on the airline)
• Priority baggage handling Sick of waiting for your bags at the baggage claim? Your luggage gets a special tag and will be among the first unloaded.
• Additional checked luggage allowance of 20 kg (or one extra piece where the piece concept applies)
• Airport lounge access to designated Star Alliance Gold lounges (over 950 worldwide)

Web links:

• Signup page
• Qualifying fares list