Star Alliance, the world's first and largest airline alliance, headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, was founded in 1997 by five of the world's leading airlines Air Canada, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines, Thai Airways International and United Airlines to offer passengers worldwide reach and a smooth travel experience. It is the global leading airline network in terms of daily flights, destinations and countries flown to and the number of member airlines. At present, the network has a total of 27 airlines as its members. It has 4,023 aircrafts with more than 21,000 daily departures. The number of airports coming under the Star Alliance network is 1,160 and the number of lounges being over 970. Currently, 181 countries are being served by the member airlines of the network, with 603.8 million passengers combined using the member airlines’ services annually.

The Star Alliance has in its vast network some of the world’s most reputed airlines as its members, which includes Adria, Aegean, Air Canada, Air China, Air New Zealand, ANA, Asiana Airlines, Austrian, Blue1, bmi (British Midland International), Brussels Airlines, Continental Airlines, Croatia Airlines, Egypt Air, Polish Airlines, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, Spanair, Swiss, TAM, TAP Portugal, Thai, Turkish Airlines, United Airlines and US Airways.

To ensure that the passengers don’t have to face inconvenience like flight delays, the Star Alliance under its ‘Move Under One Roof’ initiative has been adapting airports to house all its member airlines in one terminal, under one roof thus ensuring faster transfer times.

This unique system gives automatic priority to the passengers flying Business or First Class by instantly recognizing them. The Star Alliance Gold members, however, get even quicker access via their own check-in zone.

With 970 lounges worldwide, Star Alliance has the world’s largest lounge network. Passengers traveling on first class or business class, along with a guest, will be provided access to the Star Alliance lounge network, irrespective of membership status, where they can unwind themselves before the start of their journey or while making a connection.

Though the Star Alliance network does not have its own frequent flyer program, but the passengers can earn and redeem miles and build on their status on any of the member airlines under their respective frequent flyer program. The passengers, in fact, need only one frequent flyer card, and they can accumulate miles from all of the member airlines they fly with.

With Star Alliance Upgrade Awards, the passengers would benefit by using their miles to upgrade one class of service when traveling on either of the 20 member airlines using the frequent flyer programs under the network. The other seven member airlines – Adria, Blue1, bmi, Croatia Airlines, Egypt Air, South African Airways and Spanair – will be joining the frequent flyer programs in the coming months.

When the passengers reach status levels under their respective frequent flyer program, they will qualify for the equivalent Gold or Silver Star Alliance status thus being entitled to a whole range of benefits including lounge access, extra baggage allowance and priority in boarding, standby status and reservations.

the Star Alliance network continues to grow promising to serve the passengers’ need for a smooth travel experience even better.