What's the best Star Alliance airline business class from Australian east coast to Vienna or Berlin?

Hi. Thoughts on best *A airline business class from Australian east coast to Vienna or Berlin. I'm *A Gold as well as Velocity Platinum.

Hi bmc. You don't really have a lot of choice, ex-Australia it's really Singapore Airlines or Thai, unless you want to head off in the 'wrong direction' with Air NZ and go via Auckland, and I'm not even going to mention United! Of the first two SQ has the better business class, although its new business class is only running to London right now. Your other choice would be Virgin (or Etihad as a VA partner, not Star member) to Abu Dhabi and then AirBerlin (also a Virgin and Etihad partner despite belonging to OneWorld!) to Berlin.

You can also do the Air China connection through to Swiss/Austrian.  These give you lie flat all the way through and a few good extra options, esp when the 777 is going to Sydney.

It's not exactly great from the Star perspective, but if I had to pick one, I'd go with Singapore Airlines via SIN and FRA: for instance, ex-SYD, take SQ 222 connecting to SQ 26. You'll leave Sydney in the afternoon and arrive in Singapore in the late evening, with a relatively short layover (aprox. two hours) before leaving Singapore just before midnight, arriving in Frankfurt in the early morning, whereupon you can hop straight onto a train from FRA airport to Vienna.

Alternatively, fly via SIN and Munich (MUC), then connect to a VIE flight on Lufthansa.

"whereupon you can hop straight onto a train from FRA airport to Vienna."

Yeah, good luck.  FRA-Vienna by train is in the range of 6-8 hours assuming you get a direct connection.  You're far better to fly FRA-VIE or fly into Munich or (best of all, of course) Vienna.

Yeah, I found that out shortly after. This makes the SYD-BKK-VIE option more appealing, though I still wouldn't fail the SYD-SIN-MUC-VIE option.

You're limited to Thai or Singapore for your first leg, but from that point onwards you have a few options including Swiss, Turkish, Lufthansa and Austrian.

It's complicated, because most of these airlines have several different business-class products depending on what plane you're on -- lie-flat vs non-lie-flat.

If it were me, I'd pick based on schedule first, and then making sure I got the best product on each leg. If I had my druthers I'd take Singapore and Swiss.

In all honesty, schedule isn't much of a difference apart from layover time - especially on the way out to VIE, because the vast majority of the flights from Asia to Europe leave just before midnight.

Another option is SYD-BKK on Thai, then BKK-VIE on Austrian. It will probably be angled-flat on the BKK leg, but it should be fully-flat to VIE.

Air China is alos a membr of Sar Alliance.   You can also fly Air China SYD - PEK - VIE in J for around $7,500.  Air China has lie-flat seats from SYD-PEK.  Not sure about business class product to Europe.

Air China do not currently operate PEK - VIE, they instead code share on Austrain's flight, who operate a staggered flat bed layout in business, similar to SWISS.

Air China's J cabin to Europe is lie-flat. They are in the process of making their international fleet uniformed. 

What, the FAs just dress in mufti now?

The fastest (22h 20m) is a Thai-Austrian mix there - you get a fully flat product with Eiskaffees etc on the Austrian 26 (Boeing 777-200) leg (23:55 - 05:25) but not so on the angled lie flat Thai 472 (Boeing 747) leg (17:05 - 22:35).

But your best choice lies on a 22h 50m mix, 30 minutes more than above, with fully flat beds all the way via Dubai. And I'm sorry to mention that Emirates, sadly, has been rejected on A380 offers to Vienna, so it's stuck with the 777-300ER angled lie flat product. Here we're talking about Austrian. To Dubai is the A380 Qantas Flight 1 (17:00 - 00:40) which connects to your Austrian 840 (Boeing 767) flight at 02:30, which arrives at 05:50.

Also to mention that both the Boeing 767 and Boeing 777-200 Austrian legs have the new Business Class.

This that I've said is all about from SYD. If you're from MEL or BNE or even CNS, both BKK and DXB have choices for you. However, I'm not getting into details here, MEL has a 23h bet on Qatar Airways via DOH, BNE is again the Austrian-Thai mix and I'm sorry to say that all BKK and DXB flights from CNS will go via Hong Kong and Brisbane respectively.

Also lies Berlin where your best choice is a mix between airberlin and Etihad via Abu Dhabi.