Star Alliance – Asiana or Thai Airways?

[mjipennington]

Hello – I am about to switch my Star Alliance program from TAP to either Asiana or Thai Airways since I recently lost status with TAP. The reason I am keen on Asiana or Thai Airways is the qualification period is 2 years rather than Gold which makes it a no brainer. It would be a second no brainer to go with Asiana over Thai Airways (lower Gold qualification requirement) if it wasn’t for the potential takeover by Korean Air (which may or may not succeed). My next Star Alliance flight is this Saturday with Air China. I will register for both Asiana and Thai Airways programs on Friday. I have two questions:

1) If I don’t record my program number on the boarding pass, can I still claim under either Asiana’s or Thai Airways’ programs after the fact? The timeline for both for claiming missing miles is clear, but what if my boarding pass doesn’t show the program nunber?

2) What is stopping me claiming under both programs? I assume perhaps Star Alliance airlines share details, but don’t know.

In short, I am looking to keep my options open for a long as possible as to which program I credit my upcoming flights to. If it becomes clear that the Korean Air takeover of Asiana will go ahead, I’ll go with Thai Airways. Otherwise, I’ll go with Asiana.

[John]

1 you are talking about two separate things, one is when you have chosen the FFP but the crediting didn’t work automatically, the other is retro crediting when you didn’t choose which FFP to credit to at the time of the flight. But the timescales should be the same

2 when you tell Air China which FFP to credit your miles to, it will record this and there will be some sort of internal payment to that programme, so if it later receives another request to credit miles this will be denied.

Doesn’t Turkish also have a 2-year status qualification period?

[mjipennington]

Hi John – my understanding is that Turkish has a 1 year initial qualification period but then status is valid for 2 years, and you have 2 years to renew your status.

So I don’t have to decide which of the programs to ask Air China to credit my miles to on this weekend’s flight? So long as I register for the two programs (Asiana and Thai Airways) before this weekend’s flight and then submit my missing miles request within the respective airlines period for applying retroactively for missing miles (Asiana is 1 year, Thai Airways is 180 days) then I should be fine. Is that correct?

What you said about not being to credit miles to two programs makes sense if every time they have to check with the airline you actually flew with. Thanks for clarifying that point.

[Blair Waldorf Salad]

I’d strongly advise you to make your decision before flying and attach a FF# to your reservation in manage my booking on Air China. Automatic crediting is so much more straightforward than retroactive crediting. I learned the hard way with a Qatar connecting flight India to UK which I had to retroactively credit. The process got delayed, I was asked for a scanned copy of the boarding passes but was away from home so further delayed matters, and then the flights credited on January 3rd of the following year, meaning I lost out on securing AA’s OneWorld sapphire equivalent.