Searching for Star Alliance award availability can be difficult, given the alliance’s 25 member airlines (plus one joining in 2025) and different loyalty programs. Each airline operates its own website and frequent flyer system, making it challenging to compare redemption options across partners. Fortunately, AwardFares simplifies this process by aggregating results from multiple Star Alliance airlines into one platform. This guide will walk you through the steps to efficiently find and book award flights, helping you maximize both your time and miles. Let’s dive in!

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What’s New With Star Alliance in 2025?

  • ITA Airways Joins Star Alliance: After leaving SkyTeam in 2024, ITA Airways officially joined Star Alliance in early 2025, enhancing connectivity between Europe and South America.
  • Expanded Sustainable Travel Initiatives: Star Alliance members like Lufthansa Group and Singapore Airlines have ramped up investments in Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), winning awards at industry conferences.
  • Improved Seat Availability Display: As of January 2025, Star Alliance airlines offer improved availability transparency on award seats for business and first class travel.
  • New Lounge in Guangzhou: Star Alliance unveiled its first lounge in Asia at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, China, enhancing the travel experience for passengers in the region.

How to Find Star Alliance Award Flights (Step-by-Step)

Learn how to quickly search for Star Alliance award availability using AwardFares.

Step 1: Visit AwardFares

Sign up for a free Basic account to access search results from other users. Upgrade to Gold or Diamond to perform live searches for any route. ➡️ Sign up here.

Step 2: Filter by Star Alliance Airlines

Use the Airlines filter and select Star Alliance only to display results from Star Alliance partners.

Select Star Alliance in the AwardFares airlines filter

Step 3: Choose a Frequent Flyer Program

As there’s no unified loyalty program for Star Alliance, each member airline has its own loyalty program that you can use to earn points and redeem for award flights. In the Loyalty Program field, select one of the member airline programs to search, such as:

Select a Star Alliance frequent flyer program

Step 4: Add Your Route

Enter your departure and arrival airports in the Origin and Destination fields. For example, to search for flights between San Francisco (SFO) and London (LHR), input these cities.

Select departure and destination

Step 5: Select Travel Dates

Add a travel date using the Calendar field.

Select travel date

Then, AwardFares will search for available flights on that day, showing the results in a list below.

List view results

Expand any flight to view seat availability, taxes, and detailed seat maps.

Detailed view

In addition, you can use the Timeline View to explore the availability for multiple days simultaneously if you don’t have a set travel date. The bars show different classes in different colors.

Timeline view

Step 6: Sort by Price

AwardFares allows you to sort search results by price and class. Use the Eco, Prem, Biz, or First header tags to search for the cheapest options across dates, routes, and airlines.

For example, here’s the same list sorted by the prices in Economy Class:

Sorted by Economy Class price

Now sorted by the prices in Premium Economy:

Sorted by Premium Economy Class price

And finally, sorted by the prices in Business Classs:

Sorted by Business Class price

Step 7: Apply Additional Filters (Optional)

Apply additional filters to tailor your search, including Number of Stops (e.g., direct flights only), Passengers, Aircraft Type, Layover Airports, and even Maximum Price your are willing to pay for.

Additional filters

Step 8: Book Your Flight

Click the Book button to be redirected to the airline’s website with your search details pre-filled.

Book button in AwardFares

AwardFares will open the airline’s booking page where you can finalize your reservation.

Airline booking page

Finding First Class Award Flights on Star Alliance

Securing first-class award seats within the Star Alliance network can be challenging due to limited availability and high demand. However, with strategic planning and the right frequent flyer programs, you can enhance your chances of experiencing luxury travel.

Some of our preferred programs for booking First Class on Star Alliance partners in 2025 (and yes, we’ll miss SAS EuroBonus) are:

  1. Air Canada Aeroplan: Access to all Star Alliance members and additional partners like Emirates. Offers stopovers for 5,000 extra points.
  2. United MileagePlus: User-friendly search engine and competitive upgrades. Extensive Star Alliance network.

Why Is AwardFares the Best Tool for Star Alliance Awards?

Searching across multiple SkyTeam partner airlines like United, Air Canada, or Turkish Airlines can be complicated and involve multiple manual searches, which means it can take hours or days until you find a good redemption. With AwardFares, you get a fast, streamlined experience, saving hours of manual work.

Top Benefits of AwardFares:

  1. Integrated Search Across Star Alliance Search multiple loyalty programs in one go, eliminating the need to visit separate websites.

  2. User-Friendly Design Intuitively filter results by airline, cabin class, and other preferences.

  3. Real-Time Award Availability Access accurate availability data to avoid wasted efforts on phantom awards.

  4. Mobile Access Search and manage alerts directly from your smartphone or tablet.

  5. Custom Alerts Receive notifications when award seats become available on your preferred routes.

Maximizing the Value of Your Miles

Imagine flying to Paris in a lie-flat business class seat for the price of an economy ticket. On average, AwardFares premium users get 3x-7x more value from their points, regularly booking $5,000+ flights at a fraction of the cost.

AwardFares is the easiest way to find the cheapest and most convenient award flights across multiple frequent flyer programs. It takes just seconds and a few clicks to get started. You can create an account and try it for free here.

For access to even more powerful features like unlimited daily searches, alerts, seat maps, and flight schedules, explore our Gold and Diamond membership tiers here.

Read More

Discover more tips and strategies to optimize your award travel with these guides: