The phrase
"class award seats" refers to the availability of seats in a higher class of service, such as business or first class, that can be booked using rewards or points.
Full definition
The airline releases more business
class award seats at the saver redemption level than economy seats.
The award chart is somewhat competitive, and some
premium class award seats are made available to members while only being released two weeks in advance to partners.
And depending on how you like to use your miles and points, you can get terrific deals booking Business and First
Class award seats worth thousands of dollars.
I can find 3 Business
Class Award seats in both directions on all three new routes with relative ease:
Premium class award seats on Asiana flights and some Star Alliance partner flights are notably cheaper when bought with Asiana miles rather than United MileagePlus miles.
Many have complained about the lack of business
class award seats open on Finnair, so the offerings in J class may not be as solid as I first imagined.
Out of curiosity, I just priced the business
class award seat between India and Dubai, and shocked to find that it is 70k miles for one way.
The problem Cathay Pacific is experiencing is high demand for its first
class award seats from those with AAdvantage miles, with these seats often booked soon after the award calendar opens, leaving no award availability for its own Asia Miles frequent flyer members who may seek to book just a few months before the date of departure.
Domestic business awards are double the price of economy, so you could get one business
class award seat for 50,000 United miles.
If you're willing to use Avios points (see below) you could even score 3 first
class award seats Hong Kong to Boston after New Year's:
For example, I found a lot of business
class award seats with Asiana but the totals fees for one roundtrip ticket were $ 688.
Etihad also presents a wealth of opportunities, including Etihad's own first class redemptions, redemptions on American at the old, pre-devaluation levels, as well as the cheapest transatlantic business
class award seat redemption in the world.
A business
class award seat cost 72,250 miles and 68,000 miles from New York and L.A. respectively, so the difference is not that big.
However, I lucked out and was able to book two business -
class award seats using United Airlines MileagePlus miles.
If you are scrambling to lock in awards at old rates, you might be having trouble finding Etihad business / first
class award seats even though Etihad shows availability.
Availability: Typically Singapore only releases 1
suites class award seat in advance, although occasionally you'll see 2 award seats available close to the date of departure.
If you're flexible with dates and can stomach possibly getting your second first
class award seat just in the week prior to when you fly, I'd recommend American miles, which you can earn cheaply with Citi AAdvantage credit card signup bonuses and / or BankDirect.
Unfortunately, if you're looking to fly Air France First Class, you have no choice but to book these high rates through the Flying Blue program (since Air France makes First
Class award seats only available to Flying Blue elite members).
Even then, I'm not seeing much more than seven / eight - ish days out of the month with a First
Class award seat through January 2018.
On the United website I found business
class award seats at 130,000 miles available for my round - trip to Dublin.
Premium class award seats can be difficult to find on many airlines, particularly those offering exceptional services like Asiana's First Suite Class.
Saudia often has 7 or more business
class award seats open on a single flight, and availability like that seems to be the norm for most of their long haul flights.
They'll often release two business
class award seats between Atlanta and Amsterdam (they don't have first class), though rarely do they release space as liberally as Air France.
Let's assume you need two business
class award seats for a flight between Los Angeles and Paris — the most popular European travel destination.
Typically Cathay Pacific, for example, releases only ONE First
Class award seat per flight until a few days before the flight.
Since first
class award seats on Qantas between the U.S. and Australia are extremely hard to find, you may want to take advantage of this to snag one.
The first leg was in United economy as there was no domestic First
Class award seat available (I monitored award space but it never opened up — more on that in the Anatomy of an Award post).
Don't get bummed if you can't get a business
class award seat to your final destination there.
While many airlines greatly restrict the number of business
class award seats they make available on any given flight, we have seen pretty good availability recently on EVA Air.
In 2016 and 2017, Qantas seemed to release a chunk of first
class award seats all at once for dates 9 months away.
The key thing to note is that sometimes all of the economy saver awards sell out before all of the business saver awards do — and the price of the economy award tickets are then actually higher than a business
class award seat on the same flight.
You're probably wondering why we haven't included Qantas as one of the best options for booking their own first
class award seats.
A first
class award seat on Qantas isn't easy to find, but we'll show you how to give yourself the best chance and what to expect on this amazing flight.
Phrases with «class award seats»