Business Class on Lufthansa or Austrian?

hi

Using miles to get a almost free:D business class ticket on a star alliance airline from lon to del. Anyone had any experience of these two airlines and which one would you choose? I would prefer flying VS;), its timings to del are excellent, only european carrier arriving mid morning and leaving mid afternoon unlike all other european carriers arriving near midnight and leaving at 3 am! But those star alliance miles have to be used.........

Gurmstar

Which Star Alliance airline are the miles with? Bear in mind BMI miles can be used for award Virgin flights. Redemption rates are 50k, 75k and 100k miles for Economy, PE and UC to DEL respectively.

Other *A carriers may have deals with Virgin too, but i'm not entirely sure.

Hi

The miles are with BMI, I have enough miles for 1.5 PE tickets but thats not good enough if two want to travel:)

VS LHR-DEL route uses a343-300 and i feel that the PE on this plane is not worth spending the miles for.

Also for a bit of cash i could fly biz on LH or OS with 30kg allowance, instead of 20kg in PE and a dedicated cabin with its own loos! hence my reasoning for going star alliance to spend the miles!

Did ask BMI Flying club to ask VS whether I could use thier companion fare offer and get an extra ticket with miles but BMI got back to me and said that they only would redeem the miles as per BMI programme. This is despite what VS customer reservations (alison ext. 301 if i remember correctly) said i could use my BMI miles for a companion fare but had to book via BMI has the miles are with them.

Please feel free to correct me or let me know of any other deals!

I have miles to use will some airline(pref vs) take them off me:D


Gurmstar

I've flown Lufthansa in business from London to Bangalore (via Frankfurt). A bit difficult to describe, everything was OK. Nothing was bad, but nothing was great or memorable.

Seat is comfy but a couple of inches too short, food is alright, plane was newish, service was fairly typical Lufthansa - very efficient but not what you'd call friendly. They certainly don't have anything like the Freedom menu!

I've done UK to India with a few carriers, my main memory of all the flights has been the volume (in both senses of the word) of children flying in Business. Before anyone jumps I'm not having a go, they are quite entitled to be there, but ear plugs are an absolute must if you want to sleep.

VSlf