Transportes Aeromar, a Mexico City-based carrier that serves various cities in Mexico as well as McAllen, Texas, formed a partnership with Continental Airlines in 2010 and uses MileagePlus as its loyalty program. With about 100 flights a day within Mexico, the carrier fills a void in the United (and Star Alliance) route network and up until last week, MileagePlus award bookings on Aeromar were only bookable via phone. United has now introduced Aeromar booking space on united.com.
Aeromar has a fleet of 18 aircraft: 16 ATR-42s and 2 CRJ-200s and operates with a single class of service. The carrier does have lounges in:
- Aguascalientes
- Ciudad Victoria
- Colima
- Durango
- Jalapa
- Manzanillo
- Mc Allen
- Mexico City
- Tepic
- Saltillo
- Piedras Negras
Access is granted for Star Alliance Gold members, United Club members, and United passengers traveling on a connecting itinerary in business or first class.
There is a bit of an irregularity in the award chart, though it is as published, in that adding a Central America segment will save you some points if you are just traveling within Mexico:
Why? United prices Mexico-Central America as 10K one-way in economy class and Mexico-Mexico as 17.5K one-way in economy class.
More choices are good and booking online is so much easier than picking up the phone. Hopefully Shenzhen and EVA will soon be bookable online as well at united.com.
how easy is it to book EVA on phone with UA agents ? I ve signed on with EVA membership and search but they dont show how many seats are available. do you have any experience in this area ? Thanks
Cool, I never knew about it, thank you for the info!
@Choi L: It is not easy. UA must request the seats and they take some time to come back confirmed or denied.
Lucky did a good post on the topic:
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/onemileatatime/2012/12/11/how-to-redeem-united-miles-for-travel-on-eva-airways/