In other words, you'll never get a great or terrible
deal on an award flight because you'll always pay the market value.
Only cardholders can get the best
deals on award flights.
Not exact matches
Similarly, for customers needing more than 1
award seat
on a particular
flight (maybe a family of 4), booking requires a great
deal more points and more work to find multiple
award seats.
Again, because there's no strict
award chart, the cost in miles will depend
on how good of a
deal you can find
on flights.
Any long - haul economy redemption
on the EarlyReturns
award chart is a good
deal, but
flights to Costa Rica are particularly valuable.
I find Delta to be one of the least transparent airlines so when it comes to planning domestic
award trips, I'm not sure that I'd count
on Delta to be offering great
deals, but stumbling upon such cheap
award flights would always be a tempting option for me if it actually worked with my schedule.
So, while the minimum cost of a North American
award flight on other major airlines is 25,000 miles (no matter what the city pairs are), if you use Avios and the distance of your
flight does not exceed 2,000 miles, you can get a great
deal.
There are multiple levels of
awards: classic (that's what we will be focusing
on) and flex (which usually cost double the price of classic
awards and aren't a good
deal unless you need to get
on a specific
flight).
Their
award chart is distance - based, which makes for some awesome
deals on short - haul
flights.
An
award on the LA to London route (for example) is an even worse
deal thanks to the huge number of Avios needed for such a
flight.
When you participate in SPG's Nights and
Flights deal, you get a discount
on a 5 night Category 3 or 4 hotel
award stay combined with the transfer bonus to an airline partner (at the 1:1 transfer rate only).
I was browsing the Singapore website, to try to decide whether to switch up my Maldives
award tickets after Singapore gets rid of fuel surcharges
on their own
flights, when I saw this sign - up
deal.
As well as that, any airline or alliance that I choose to fly also needs to be one that regularly offers good
deals on the routes I want to fly — as the airlines around the world gradually increase the cost of
award travel it's becoming increasingly important, for those of us with a healthy aversion to Economy Class, to be able to find great value Business Class fares to keep our
flights comfortable.
As shown
on their Star Alliance partner
award chart,
flights from North America to Europe can be booked as low as 55,000 miles, but partner airlines are not given the 15 % discount and the redemption rates are higher, so the
deal is not to sweet (though still decent).
Since you'll never find
award availability
on that route, the best
deal is for
flights between Australia and New Zealand.
With a few exceptions which we'll
deal with later, United
flights booked through the airline's website will earn
award miles based
on the price of the ticket and your elite status.
By focusing
on partner
flights,
award chart sweet spots, and other exceptional
deals, your AAdvantage miles may be able to take you farther than you thought.
-LSB-...] Etihad miles offer poor value redeeming
on their own
flights, there are some great
deals using Etihad miles to book partner
awards.