Star Alliance – the first and biggest airline grouping

In cooperation with four other airlines, Lufthansa founded Star Alliance in 1997 for the purpose of providing customers with better service, worldwide. The alliance consists of 25 airlines offering 20,500 flights per day on fast and convenient connections to around 1,300 destinations in 190 countries.

Customers benefit immensely

To make air travel even easier, the member airlines have coordinated their schedules, which often shortens the overall journey time for passengers switching from one Star Alliance airline to another on connecting flights. Moreover, customers receive a boarding pass for onwards flights, even if they fly on with a different Star Alliance member.

As members of Star Alliance frequent flyer programmes, passengers can redeem mileage accruals across the entire alliance network. So they rise to a higher status essentially faster than they would in any individual frequent flyer programme. Star Alliance airlines benefit as well.

Their integration in a global network reduces their costs and enables them to harness synergies to further improve their customer services. The airlines are usually accommodated under one roof, for example, with common check-in facilities in the same terminal and mutual access to their lounges.

Growing list of awards

The Star Alliance is no stranger to kudos recognising its achievements. In 2008, it was the first airline alliance to land the Market Leadership Award from Air Transport World. In 2007, it was voted alliance of the year, three times. It has been singled out as “best alliance” eight times since 2002.