Overall trends: As I mention above, you'll be hard - pressed to find
business class award availability on Air France, though I was able to find a few seats here and there.
I can't emphasize enough how rare this amount of
business class award availability on American is.
Historically
business class award availability on Fiji Airways isn't especially good, though I've seen a good amount of space lately, especially if booking in advance.
Let's be clear, finding
business class award availability on Qantas will be tough.
Business class award availability on Qantas is very difficult to find, but not quite as difficult as first class award space.
There were two more things to consider at this point —
Business Class award availability on the return flights and the aircraft that British Airways was offering.
In order to upgrade using Avios there simply has to be
Business Class award availability on the flight in question....
Take a look a these screenshots from American Airlines — all show
Business Class award availability on non-stop flights between various US cities and London Heathrow:
BA.com showed
Business Class award availability on most Cathay Pacific flights between Tokyo and Hong Kong on my chosen date but, rather than just book the flight with the best timings, there was one last thing to take into consideration.
Not exact matches
Here we had a stroke of luck, depending
on how you look at it: while the direct service flight from Los Angeles did not show
availability for a
Business Class or First Class Saver Award on most dates, a mixed class award connecting through San Francisco was avail
Class or First
Class Saver Award on most dates, a mixed class award connecting through San Francisco was avail
Class Saver
Award on most dates, a mixed class award connecting through San Francisco was avail
Award on most dates, a mixed
class award connecting through San Francisco was avail
class award connecting through San Francisco was avail
award connecting through San Francisco was available.
When searching, it's best to select
Business or First
Class, even if you're primarily focused
on Economy
availability, as BA's
award engine.
Availability in the other direction (Auckland to Doha) is pretty good do and, in this case, there are actually 4
Business Class awards available
on the very first Qatar Airways non-stop flight between Auckland and Doha:
When I flew to Tokyo in January I had to position from London to Frankfurt to catch a JAL
Business Class award flight
on the 787 Dreamliner and when I had wanted to try out Cathay Pacific First
Class last year I had to position from London to Zurich to catch that
award flight — London isn't exactly awash with
award availability.
British Airways guarantees that it will release at least 2
Business Class seats
on every flight so, as this route has just be loaded in the past few hours,
award availability should be plentiful right now....
American Airlines appears to be more interested in discounting its
Business Class cabins (often to a great extent) than it is in opening up
award availability on a number of its routes....
Because it's not that rare to find
Business Class flights between the US and London coming in at under $ 2,000 and,
on top of that, if you're booking an
award you still have the issue of finding
availability... and that hasn't been easy in recent years.
As stated,
award availability for (saver)
business class to New Zealand
on United is not great and you'll need to book far in advance if you want to even have a chance to snag redemptions with
business class seats between the US and Australia / New Zealand.
OneMileAtATime has noticed that
award availability on this new route appears to be wide open with as many as 6
Business Class seats available
on some flights.
Secondly, this sees a significant decrease in the number of
Business Class seats available
on the route and that's not going to be good for upgrades or the already pathetic
award availability.
Korean Air has very popular First and
Business Class products and finding
award availability on Korean isn't nearly as challenging as it can be
on its transpacific competitors.
American Airlines charges 57,500 miles in each direction for a
Business Class award on airberlin (taxes and fees come to under $ 100) and, unlike not too long ago, you can now search for airberlin
award availability on AA.com.
I hardly found any Domestic
business class awards that are reasonably priced, Delta uses dynamic pricing based
on the demand,
availability for sky miles redemption.
While I wouldn't call
award availability on Thai's first international A350 route «wide open» it's definitely reasonably easy to find
Business Class award seats.
American Airlines AAdvantage miles are very hard to use economically thanks to the dearth of premium cabin SAAver
awards, United Miles are ok but 100,000 won't get you a roundtrip
Business Class award to any major long - haul destination (if you're heading east or west) while 100,000 Alaska Miles will get you some nice roundtrip redemptions
on Cathay Pacific and even American (subject to
award availability).
On top of this the A380 offers more
Business Class seating than the 777 (good for
award availability) and the Economy
Class product is more comfortable - its a win all round.
I tracked
award space
on British Airways and seat
availability in
business class (thanks, ExpertFlyer).
While a route serviced by an A350 should be an aircraft where premium
award seats can be made available, it's likely that
availability for
business class seats will be scarce so I wouldn't rely
on booking these seats with partners like United.
Getting two nonstop
business or first
class seats
on a non-stop flight to Paris during warm weather would not normally be an easy proposition, but the born - again Delta Airlines
award chart still shows awesome
availability to Paris and other European cities in the late summer 2015.
On the redemption side, the award chart to / from Europe isn't too bad (62,500 miles for a transatlantic one - way in business class) and you get access to much better availability on AF / KL's own flights that when booking with Delt
On the redemption side, the
award chart to / from Europe isn't too bad (62,500 miles for a transatlantic one - way in
business class) and you get access to much better
availability on AF / KL's own flights that when booking with Delt
on AF / KL's own flights that when booking with Delta.
After keeping a diligent eye
on award availability, I found us three
business -
class seats
on the same flight, departing just three days after our preferred date.
Unfortunately, you can't find Korean Air first -
class award availability on Delta.com since you can only redeem Delta miles for economy and
business -
class awards on partners, and Alaska does not let you redeem its miles for first -
class awards on Korean.
You'll want to book back - up flights, either using United but booking
on United or other Star Alliance partners that do offer advance
availability (or even Lufthansa
Business class awards for the flights you hope to get first
class on) OR use American AAdvantage or other miles to book backup flights.
American has excellent
award availability to London
on most of their routes, both in first and
business class.
The headline here is that there will be 9 fewer
business class seats available, which means there won't be quite the
award availability you may have hoped
on the new planes.
Delta is actually the best for booking Australia
business class awards, one of the toughest frequent flyer
awards out there, because of their partnership with Virgin Australia (which has the best
availability non-stop between the U.S. and Australia, especially
on their Los Angeles — Brisbane flight).
The
award space in
business class on Skyteam members Saudia (from Washington DC or New York, through Riyadh and Jeddah) and Aeroflot (a much better airline than you think, and with great
availability out of New York and DC through Moscow) is better than
on almost any airline.
There's Lufthansa first
class and
business class award space to Europe next summer, thanks to
availability on the new Toronto to Munich route.
Award availability became really outstanding when they put an Airbus A380
on the route, and the aircraft has a pretty good
business class product as well.
- Miles & More offers expanded
award availability on Lufthansa and Swiss
business and first
class.
I started keeping my eyes
on AA
business class award availability for that Thursday night.
While economy
award space
on American Airlines is still pretty good for many different routes, there has been a lot of grief lately over
business class availability at the SAAver level.
For instance, there is plenty of
award availability both
on United and other Star Alliance carriers between Melbourne and Los Angeles in both economy and
business class the last week in January...
Sometimes, a
business / first
class award only has
availability on one segment with the rest in economy.