In Chapter 5 we discussed the three global airline alliances and techniques for finding and
booking award tickets on each.
Before you attempt to
book an award ticket with credit card points, do your homework to determine the best airline transfer partners and their associated rules.
In this case, it sometimes still makes sense to
book your award ticket in business, depending on the type of savings you are getting.
You can also
book award tickets by calling their customer service, but it costs extra and it's much easier / faster online.
The second option is to transfer these points to one of the partner airlines to
book award tickets at that airline.
People
who book award tickets for a living say they occasionally see award seats added the week before the flight.
If you prefer to transfer points to an airline instead of
booking an award ticket directly through Starpoints, complete the steps above until you get to the page of travel options.
As far
as booking an award ticket on a partner flight goes, let's clear something up: If you want to use Flying Blue Miles to fly to Hawaii on Delta Airlines, you would transfer your UR points to the Flying Blue program, NOT Delta's, and then call Air France or use their website to book the partner flight on Delta.
The FlexPerks Visa is a great card to have as a backup for those who
often book award tickets using traditional airline miles.
What's the point of flying 100,000 + miles a year plus spending a minimum of $ 10,000 a year if you can't
even book an award ticket if you want one?
The Mabuhay Miles program has some attractive earning and redemption options, but is hampered by the poor website and call center service — you ca
n't book award tickets online and booking it through the call center can take a lot of time!
The best process for
booking award tickets via Asiana depends on if you want to fly on Asiana metal or if you want to book a partner award.
To make sure it's still possible to book this amazing award, I also called Etihad to be sure U.S. residents could
still book award tickets on Brussels Airlines, and the agent confirmed that we can.
So while there are a lot of things we do not know about fuel surcharges, there are some things we do know that can help you choose wisely and save hundreds of
dollars booking your award ticket.
Any change after we have
booked your award ticket costs $ 75 per ticket per change, assuming no change to the hotel and cruise bookings for the trip, in addition to any change fees and difference in mileage amounts imposed by the airline.
Once we found the flights we wanted we transferred them over and booked the award via phone with United and got them to waive the phone fee since their website is very broken for
actually booking award tickets.
ANA Mileage Club does pass on carrier - imposed surcharges when
booking award tickets with many partners, but not on flights with United Airlines, so you won't have to worry about that when flying to London.