Aegean Airlines’ Miles+Bonus frequent flyer program has historically been one of the most attractive Star Alliance frequent flyer programs, and one of the best programs for earning Star Alliance Gold status. Well, some major changes are coming to status qualification as of this summer.
In this post:
Aegean Miles+Bonus elite qualification changes 2023
Thanks to the global alliances, it’s not uncommon to have elite status with an airline you don’t actually frequently fly with. After all, there are pros and cons to different programs, and with reciprocal elite perks across airlines in an alliance, there are some arbitrage opportunities.
Aegean Miles+Bonus has historically been one of the most generous programs for earning Star Alliance Gold status, even if you never fly with Aegean. Unfortunately that will soon be changing.
Aegean isn’t changing elite requirements for those who fly a minimum number of segments per year on Aegean (two for Silver status, four for Gold status), but rather is greatly increasing elite requirements for those who only earn elite status through partners.
Here’s the old system of Aegean elite qualification, which applies through May 31, 2023:
- To earn Silver status, you need to fly Aegean at least twice per year and earn 12,000 elite miles, or you need to earn 24,000 elite miles, regardless of which airline you fly
- To retain Silver status, you need to fly Aegean at least twice per year and earn 8,000 elite miles, or you need to earn 16,000 elite miles, regardless of which airline you fly
- To upgrade from Silver to Gold status, you need to fly Aegean at least four times per year and earn 24,000 elite miles, or you need to earn 48,000 elite miles, regardless of which airline you fly
- To retain Gold status, you first need to retain Silver status, and then you need to fly Aegean at least four times per year and earn 12,000 elite miles, or you need to earn 24,000 elite miles, regardless of which airline you fly
Here’s the new system of Aegean elite qualification, which kicks in as of June 1, 2023:
- To earn Silver status, you need to fly Aegean at least twice per year and earn 12,000 elite miles, or you need to earn 35,000 elite miles, regardless of which airline you fly
- To retain Silver status, you need to fly Aegean at least twice per year and earn 8,000 elite miles, or you need to earn 35,000 elite miles, regardless of which airline you fly
- To upgrade from Silver to Gold status, you need to fly Aegean at least four times per year and earn 24,000 elite miles, or you need to earn 70,000 elite miles, regardless of which airline you fly
- To retain Gold status, you first need to retain Silver status, and then you need to fly Aegean at least four times per year and earn 12,000 elite miles, or you need to earn 70,000 elite miles, regardless of which airline you fly
As you can tell, the increases in qualification requirements here are drastic. For example, the Gold partner requalification requirement is increasing from 24,000 miles to 70,000 miles, representing a ~190% increase. Ouch.
What’s Aegean’s motive for this change?
For those exclusively earning elite status through Aegean, this isn’t just a minor increase to qualification requirements, but rather it’s quite drastic. Aegean is more or less saying that if you don’t take two or four flights per year with the airline, you should credit to a different program. That’s of course totally fair, and Aegean is hardly alone in having a requirement like this.
I suspect that Aegean is hoping to generate some incremental revenue from additional flight bookings. Those who are loyal to Aegean Miles+Bonus but don’t actually fly with Aegean might now have a reason to visit Greece and fly with Aegean. A frequent flyer program is largely about generating incremental business for the airline, and encouraging people to actually fly with the airline is one way to do that.
Second of all, I suspect that Aegean has crunched the numbers, and has simply decided that customers exclusively crediting flights from other airlines aren’t profitable to the airline anymore. Aegean gets some amount of revenue from partner carriers for the flights that are credited to Miles+Bonus, but then there are costs as well. Aegean is on the hook when you use your status to access partner lounges, and of course there’s the cost when you actually go to redeem your miles.
Bottom line
Aegean Miles+Bonus isn’t the Star Alliance sweet spot program that it once was. As of mid-2023, the program will be significantly increasing elite requirements for those who don’t credit a minimum number of Aegean flights to the program.
That’s fair enough, as it seems Aegean Miles+Bonus is no longer interested in being the Star Alliance program for those who exclusively fly with other airlines.
What do you make of these Aegean Miles+Bonus changes?
Even though bought this is the norm for many carriers. This a a sudden change for Aegean which makes it the least preferred star alliance program. Aegean probably has one of the lowest number of aircraft’s and flying routes. Also there are still other star alliance members that have a significantly lower qualification for gold. For this reason most people will drop the Aegean program.
The problem with Aegean's elite status is that other members offer very limited options, or none at all, for redemption on their flights (eg on Lufthansa's business/first class). On the other hand, Aegean's fleet is very poor and limited to small aircraft only, for somone to be able to enjoy quality gold privileges on board, also but also in the ground, as only in two, of the approximately 40 airports of Greece, have a lounge.
It’s not so much of a hardship to take a couple of connecting flights to somewhere in Greece once a year though is it, if you can swing it
Exactly. My upcoming BTS-ATH-SKG (booked because I want to go there, not to earn status) cost 150€ for a return ticket. If I was doing this as a mileage run, I'd probably have to add maybe 100€ for a night in SKG. So that's 250€ for *G. Not bad at all.
Ben could you please clarify “ To retain Gold status, you first need to retain Silver status, and then…” My understanding is that to retain Gold status, you are already Gold status, and therefore just have to meet the requirements to renew Gold status. You don’t need to hit the silver and the gold targets each year once you’ve attained Gold status, you just need to do the Gold target?
English is not my native language, but me too, I stumbled about the same part and I still don't get it, what OMAAT is exactly with this wording.
You're absolutely right. The article is imcorrect.
To retain gold, there's no such thing as "first retain silver".
If you're gold, you'll need 4 Aegean/Olympic segments + 12000 miles, or 70k miles.
Nothing else.
Obviously a negative change but this is one of the few situations where I can't really blame the airline at all. If Asiana changes their requirements I'm pretty screwed though.
Isn't Asiana dead and merging with KAL?
very soon
They will be eventually, which is why I'm hoping they won't bother to touch the frequent flyer program for the next few years.
Sorry, I can not help myself: it is a 190% increase, not -190% as posted.
Seems fair: United requires 4 flights on their metal for any status. Without those, no status, not even Silver - even if you fly hundreds of thousands of miles with partners.
British Airways has similar requirements to get/retain Bronze, Silver and Gold status, i.e.:
- 2 segments flown on BA (or another IAG Airline like IB) for Bronze;
- 4 segments for Silver and Gold.
No one likes it when any program makes a change for the worse, but this seems very reasonable to me. The only people affected are non-Aegean customers who are interested getting *G for lounge access that Aegean has to reimburse anyway. Even the new requirement is more or less on par with other airlines, especially considering there isn't a spending requirement so with some carefully-planned flights it can still be done on the cheap.
Reasonable? Wake up from
Your dream!!
To be clear, to earn the gold status, you have to first earn silver and then all your miles reset. Then you have one more year to get to either get the miles to retain silver or the miles to earn gold. So the system was never 24.000 miles for gold. It has always been a minimum of 36.000 to achieve the status. But many people seem not to realise that.
*'Then you have one more year to either get the miles'
Sorry. Added a 'to get' that was not intentional.
The points don’t reset until their 12 month anniversary after you’ve achieved Silver. Aegean actually has a “rolling” system for “tier” point expiration/reset. So if you can do it all in 12 months then it’s not 36k!
I think you are mistaking what happens when you go from nothing to silver versus when you drop from gold to silver.
If you start from scratch, when you get to silver, everything is reset. But if you are gold and get dropped to silver, the miles are rolling for 12 months, so you can maybe get back to gold quicker using some of the miles you had previously earnt.
It definitely didn’t get reset for me or the 3 accounts that I manage.