New Star Alliance small business scheme launched

A lot of Head for Points readers will be familiar with the British Airways On Business programme for small companies.  It effectively allows you to double-dip, earning both Avios points for yourself and On Business points for your company, which can also be redeemed for free flights.

Star Alliance has a similar scheme called Star Alliance Company Plus, aimed at companies in the UK and Ireland.

As of Monday, this has been relaunched as PartnerPlusBenefit, which was already the ‘trading name’ of the scheme.

What is new?

Well, there is a more modern website for a start, which you will find here.  The real change, though, is that you will now earn points for ALL flights you take. 

Historically, Star Alliance Company Plus did not award points on discounted tickets.  With more and more companies now making their staff travel on the cheapest possible fare – even at the loss of flexibility – the scheme was becoming irrelevant.  PartnerPlusBenefit should change that.

What makes PartnerPlusBenefit more powerful than BA’s On Business is that flights from 11 airlines earn points.  The participating airlines are Air Canada, germanwings, LOT, Lufthansa, SAS, Austrian, ANA, Swiss, Brussels Airlines, United and TAP Portugal

There is also a wider range of redemption options than On Business offers.  As well as flight redemptions and upgrades, you can also redeem for good old fashioned cash, Orbitz giftcards for hotel bookings and Heathrow Express tickets.

If you not already a member of Star Alliance Company Plus, I would wait a while before signing up for PartnerPlusBenefit.  There may well be a generous signing up offer made available.  There is a generic offer of ‘up to 1,500 points’ for signing up which is always available, but hopefully something more generous will appear.  I also do not understand how the ‘up to 1,500 points’ works – it isn’t clear before you sign-up.  If anyone knows the terms of the sign-up bonus, please let me know!