asiana club's mileage redemptions aren't too bad

i use asiana's asiana club as my star alliance frequent flyer program of choice. i do this because it makes star gold status easily attainable at 40,000 miles over two years. most frequent flyer programs offer star gold status at 50,000 miles per year. the downside is that the benefits pretty much stop at star gold status. but if the alternative is star silver, or worse, nothing, then i'd rather take this.

it's often said that the cost of award redemption on asiana is quite high. it's harder to earn miles on (i.e., lack of generous bonus miles for top tier members compared to the american based programs), and the redemption options themselves are quite pricey.

they used to have a distance based award chart for star alliance partners, but this has now changed to zones as of june 5, 2014. i was browsing through the potential options and found that some are actually quite good for a north american traveler.

• trips to hawaii cost 35,000 in economy and just 55,000 in business (compared to 45,000 and 80,000 on air canada, respectively).
• trips to northeast asia and southeast asia in business class are 120,000 and 135,000 miles, respectively (compared to 150,000 and 155,000 miles on air canada, respectively)
• trips to europe are 50,000 and 80,000 in economy and business class, respectively (compared to 60,000-75,000 and 90,000-105,000 miles on air canada, respectively)

on top of these slight savings, there are incredible opportunities for stopovers with asiana. the rules, as per their website, state that you may have up to 8 segments in your entire itinerary (e.g., YVR-SIN via LAX and HKG count as 4 segments). you are also allowed to have up to 7 stopovers greater than 24 hours. the old rules stated that you could only have one stopover per country, which greatly limited the utility of the stopover rule. however, that rule appears to have disappeared.

other benefits include 50% miles for one-way trips, and, as of june 5, 2014, the ability to book some reward flights online.

it makes me feel better that the miles that i've accumulated for the sake of star alliance status aren't going to be of a poor value after all!