Travellers sitting on American Airlines miles could soon have a much better use for them. Starlux, Taiwan's boutique long-haul carrier, says a frequent flyer partnership with American is in the works, covering both earning AAdvantage miles on paid flights and burning them on award tickets. The catch: award redemptions come later than the rest of the tie-up, and no date has been announced yet.
The first step lands on September 30, when the two airlines launch a codeshare. That means American will put its flight numbers on Starlux's Taipei routes from Los Angeles, Ontario, San Francisco and Seattle, while Starlux codeshares on 26 American domestic routes through Los Angeles and Phoenix, reaching 20 US cities including New York JFK, Chicago, Dallas and Miami. Interestingly, Phoenix-Taipei is missing from the American-coded list even though the reverse is covered. Starlux already works with Alaska Airlines, so this isn't its first US alliance.
Why should points collectors care? Starlux's A350 business class is genuinely one of the better ways to cross the Pacific: flat beds, direct aisle access and sliding doors. If it prices on American's current partner award chart, a business class seat from the US to Taipei — including onward connections across Southeast Asia — would run 70,000 miles each way under the 'US-Asia 2' band. That's a decade-old price, though, and American has form when it comes to devaluations, so the eventual award pricing is an open question. It's also unclear whether first class will be bookable or whether paid Starlux flights will earn Loyalty Points toward status.
There's alliance drama in the background, too. Starlux wants to join oneworld, but Cathay Pacific is pushing back — chairman Chang Kuo-wei acknowledged the opposition at the company's shareholder meeting in late May and expects membership is still possible eventually. Cathay competes directly with Starlux for connecting traffic through Asia, and political considerations around Taiwan add another layer. Meanwhile Starlux is negotiating bilateral deals airline by airline, which is slower but gets results like this American partnership.
For now, the practical takeaway is simple: if you hoard AAdvantage miles and want a flat bed to Asia, keep an eye on this. Until award space opens up, the Philippine Airlines option on American miles remains far easier to actually book, as Starlux redemptions — once live — may already be scarce. But a codeshare is usually the runway to a full partnership, and a competitive business class product to Taipei at 70,000 miles would be one of the better redemptions in the program.
There's also a good story behind the airline itself. Founder Chang Kuo-wei, a pilot and son of EVA Air's late founder, was pushed out of the family business in an inheritance fight with his half-siblings — he famously wasn't even allowed to fly his own plane home from Singapore. Starlux is, by many accounts, his answer to that.
