Taiwan’s self-proclaimed “luxurious airline” is increasing as soon as once more within the U.S.
This time, Starlux Airways is including service to Southern California’s Ontario Worldwide Airport (ONT) from its hub at Taiwan Taoyuan Worldwide Airport (TPE). 4-times-weekly service begins June 2, and flights are already out there on the market.
Westbound flights depart Ontario at 11:10 p.m. and arrive two days later at 4:15 a.m., all instances native. The flights from Taipei to Ontario take off at 8:05 p.m. and land at 5:05 p.m. on the identical day.
Starlux will function this new route on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
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Introductory round-trip fares for the brand new route begin at round $1,300 in financial system and climb to just about $6,000 for a business-class seat.
Nonetheless, some early movers had been in a position to save severe cash through the use of mileage redemptions as quickly because the flights had been loaded into the schedules. Starlux launched saver award availability in enterprise class on this new route, and — for a time — there have been as much as two seats out there from July via October in every route.
The supply has since dwindled, however for the following time such a possibility arises, know that the easiest way to guide Starlux awards is by way of the Alaska Airways Mileage Plan program, which fees simply 75,000 miles for a one-way transpacific saver Starlux redemption. Observe that you may switch factors from Bilt Rewards and Marriott Bonvoy to Alaska Airways, and you may not directly ship American Categorical Membership Rewards factors to Alaska Airways by way of the HawaiianMiles program.
Starlux will deploy its Airbus A350-900 plane, which options 4 first-class suites, 26 business-class pods, 36 premium financial system recliners and 240 customary financial system seats, on the brand new route.
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I had the chance to fly on Starlux’s A350 for its inaugural U.S. departure from Los Angeles, and the expertise was actually a minimize above most different transpacific business-class choices. The seat is among the many finest within the sky, and mixed with Starlux’s above-average catering and facilities, I had a improbable flight.
Starlux already flies from Taipei to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Ontario, California, may not’ve been town that you simply’d anticipate Starlux to launch subsequent, particularly for the reason that airline’s CEO has beforehand teased longer-haul routes to New York and Chicago as doable future contenders.
That mentioned, Ontario is already properly related to Taipei with a China Airways flight that even received upgraded to every day service again in April 2023, Cirium schedules present. (Ontario does not have another service to Asia, per Cirium.)
Southern California has an enormous Taiwanese inhabitants, so this new route is probably going designed to faucet into the point-to-point site visitors heading to Taiwan.
In fact, Starlux additionally operates an enormous hub in Taipei, so flyers can join onward to loads of locations all through Asia.
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