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.
Not exact matches
The next time you search for business
class award space to Seoul, South Korea on Korean Air's site, you'll notice they
even let you know how many
seats are available to be booked with Korean SkyPass miles.
But under a flexible
award chart, that same business -
class seat to Europe is only 125,000 miles, or
even less with some airlines.
Since business travel plummets during holiday weeks, airlines often make first -
class awards available at the saver
award level
even when economy
seats are selling like hotcakes.
Though Delta isn't known for offering a generous amount of
award space to its partners, I was able to find four first -
class award seats available in August from Denver to Maui via Los Angeles and Seattle using the online
award search engine for Alaska Airlines, which you don't
even need an account to use.
Even better, the
award seats were in business
class.
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.
In some limited circumstances, it might make sense to book an
award seat on a Star Alliance partner in business or
even first
class.
I think for many routes Qatar opens up four business
class seats for
awards but
even with this limitation, I found plenty of flights with open
seats between American cities and DOH and between DOH and JNB.
Flying first
class is a great way to begin your honeymoon, and several airline first
class seats work very well with couples,
even though it can be tough to get two first
class award seats on the bsame flight unless you plan far in advance.
While airlines are raising the price of their first
class award redemptions (United announced a recent hike from 160,000 to a whopping 280,000 miles for first
class from the US to the Middle East on its partners, and Delta will not
even allow fliers to cash in miles for international first
class seats), there are still some good deals out there.
If I can get a first
class award on United,
even without first
class seats for US to Australia (perhaps using a three - cabin first
class flight domestically, or because first
class was available in one direction) then I can waitlist for the segments I don't have in first.
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.
When January rolled around, I saw on united.com that United had released a good amount of non-stop LAX and San Francisco to Sydney / Melbourne
award seats, so I decided to rebook in first
class,
even though it required 30,000 additional miles.
A related risk,
even if you do have some date flexibility, is finding a future date when there are two Lufthansa First
Class award seats.
Even on dates with 5
award seats on Etihad's Jet Airways configured 777 - 300ER flights (which are a rather poor first
class product, hence the lower demand for them) there's no A380
award availability.