Whether you're working toward a revenue requirement for elite airline status or you can't
find award availability for your travel dates, sometimes you have to pay for a ticket with cash rather than miles or points.
It's not the easiest route to
find award availability for, though.
You may be able to
find award availability for those airlines on the Flying Blue website (the KLM and Air France frequent flyer program) or by calling Delta Reservations.
Check out the following articles for further assistance on
finding award availability for Star Alliance flights.
For the purposes of this blog post I just checked random 5 - night date ranges in December, February, April, June and August and
found award availability for every night.
Not to mention
finding award availability for all those segments would be quite a chore.
Furthermore, your chances of
finding award availability for the dates you want are much better if you book early.
Not exact matches
Since United is the only US - based carrier in Star Alliance, you will have the best chance to
find award seat
availability for your area with this airline.
Availability can be tough to find for many of these routes, but Air New Zealand domestic and Australia flights have decent award a
Availability can be tough to
find for many of these routes, but Air New Zealand domestic and Australia flights have decent
award availabilityavailability.
Because of the Barclay Arrival Plus MasterCard's easy - to - use miles program, you don't have to worry about saving up enough miles
for a particular redemption or trying to
find award availability.
Before you transfer your points to a partner, we always recommend you
find availability for the
award.
Option # 5: Look
for awards travel on partner airlines; some of them may end up being cheaper than flights on Delta, and you may
find better
availability.
You might
find it helpful to begin by searching
for one - way flights and only later attempt to make a round - trip or multi-city reservation once you know all the dates that have
award availability.
We would also get the other legs (one YHZ - YYZ and one YYZ - YHZ) available
for use when we can
find much more
award availability.
The
award calendar is useful
for finding awards on a specific airline because it shows the cheapest price on every day of the month that has
availability.
Before you transfer your points to a partner, we always recommend you
find availability for the
award.
First, by carrying a Chase United card (even the fee - free version) you have access to more saver level domestic Economy
award availability (HT: bluecat who correctly points out the
availability extends to international flights on United metal) I haven't
found the difference that noticeable
for the most part, but while doing some research
for an upcoming Brandon Asks post I noticed it was quite useful
for positioning flights.
I don't know where you're flying from, but I searched
availability in July — a peak travel time — from Chicago to Honolulu, and
found award tickets typically available
for between 60,000 and 70,000 miles round - trip.
Because of the Barclay Arrival Plus MasterCard's easy - to - use miles program, you don't have to worry about saving up enough miles
for a particular redemption or trying to
find award availability.
In reality, I'd been looking at
award availability for both trips concurrently, knowing that
award flights to Anchorage may be difficult to
find at the very height of Alaska's short annual window of pleasant weather.
You'd never be want to pay
for those seats using Flexperks or Arrival points as you'd have to spend ungodly amounts to cover the cash cost of the tickets) To me, the flexibility to book seats I want, when I want, vastly outweighs maximizing the value I could theoretically obtain IF I could
find availability using «optimal»
award programs.
Searching with flexible dates allows you to
find the best
availability of Saver
Awards, which are typically available
for half of the miles a Standard
Award requires.
Availability can be tough to
find, but
for one of the best
award flight deals, it's definitely worth the patience!
Finding availability for award flights
for British Airways Avios
awards and AAdvantage
awards is the same process.
I'll only look
for one person in order to increase my chances of
finding award availability, but I'll stick to June 1.
Option # 5: Look
for awards travel on partner airlines; some of them may end up being cheaper than flights on Delta, and you may
find better
availability.
Finding seats can be extremely difficult of course, but we do the legwork
for you on a search
for award availability.
A lot of people prefer the in - air product of Jet Blue over Southwest
for longer flights since it has tv's, free wifi, more leg room, business / first class «Mint» cabins, allows you to pick your seat, etc. but both airlines constantly rate among the best
for award availability, making them both solid choices
for getting around the country, in terms of
finding award seats.
A 2014 study ranked US Airways 24th out of 25 airlines worldwide
for lowest - level
award availability, and
found that
award flights on US Airways required more miles on average than any other major U.S. or Canadian airline.
If you like to travel during peak travel times, waiting until a couple of weeks or months before your travel date is a recipe
for not
finding the
award flights or hotel nights that you want since
availability is limited.
American Airlines
awards are valid
for up to a year from the date of purchase so, if you can't
find award availability on the dates you're prepared to travel, this is what you can do:
If you're trying to
find award availability on a OneWorld airline BritishAirways.com is the best place to start — the airline may be pretty useless at most things but its site is great
for OneWorld
award searches.
Finding Saver
Award availability with Delta is always an adventure, especially during the summer, so don't get upset if you cant
find anything
for the dates you want.
On many of United's premium routes (routes that you may wish to burn miles on)
award availability is scarce and you simply won't be able to
find the flights you want on dates that work
for you — miles aren't very flexible like that as you're at the mercy of the airlines.
When I searched
for availability from the US to Auckland with United on Aeroplan's website, I
found a lot of United
award availability for flights 5 + months out and decent
availability for flights only a couple of months out but it wasn't the kind of
availability I liked.
Note: To
find Etihad
awards that are available to book using AAdvantage Miles you need to look out
for Etihad Guest
availability (the first column in any results from an
award search).
Further, this
award is notorious
for being difficult to land because phone agents can rarely
find availability to score this golden ticket.
Not only that but you can't even book an
award night online... you have to call up to
find out just how many Starpoints they want to gouge you
for and to
find if there is any
availability — welcome to the 1990's.
If you ever manage to
find low - level
award availability with Delta, you could make a killing redeeming cheaply - earned Virgin Atlantic miles
for that
award, though I certainly wouldn't hold my breath.
Last, search
for award availability on the route (s) that you
found in an airline search engine that provides the best results.
Etihad
award space is available on its own website; look
for «Guest Seat»
availability to
find award space made available to partners.
I recommend checking ITA Flight Matrix and calling the airline, after you've
found award availability, to ask
for an estimate of the fuel surcharges.
Availability can be tough to find for many of these routes, but Air New Zealand domestic and Australia flights have decent award a
Availability can be tough to
find for many of these routes, but Air New Zealand domestic and Australia flights have decent
award availabilityavailability.
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.
Those aren't terrible prices to pay
for premium cabins on the likes of JAL or Cathay Pacific but, once again there's no guarantee you'll
find award availability on dates where cash fares are higher than that cost.
These can be as low as 20,000 miles each way
for a Super Saver
award, but you will
find much better
availability at the Saver level
for 30,000 miles.
Buying miles to book SAAver
awards for flights on American Airlines is a bad idea because you'll
find that
availability is nearly impossible to
find.
To redeem miles
for award flights, you need to
find award availability.
I guess I could transfer across some Starpoints to Elevate (the transfer ratio is 1:1) but I have those Starpoints earmarked
for a trip next spring... and it's not like Virgin Australia
award availability to / from the US is all that easy to
find either.
Purchasing 20,000 Starpoints is enough
for a couple free nights depending on the hotel — particularly if you
find some good cash and points
award availability.