If you get a stubborn agent who only wants to
look for award availability, hang up and call again.
To change your award to another legal routing, simply let me know what your preferred flights on and I'll take
a look for award availability and contact the airline on your behalf to switch your tickets.
You've started to
look for award availability, and you see something that might work.
You will need to use Alaska's website to
look for award availability (American's will work, too) and then call British Airways to book the award, telling the call center agent which flights you want.
When
looking for award availability, do you recommend using expertflyer?
Not exact matches
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.
If you are
looking at one you will not see
award availability for the other.
One interesting feature of Aeroplan's website is that you can search
for award availability to multiple destinations at once, similar to how you can enter multiple destinations when
looking for paid tickets with ITA Matrix.
If
availability for this flight were to dry up between now and when Elena books,
looking at flights to JFK, MIA, DFW or ORD instead of all the way to MSP would again be a good option, opting to pay a very small amount
for a domestic one - way as opposed to skipping out on the transatlantic
award altogether.
Here we had a stroke of luck, depending on how you
look at it: while the direct service flight from Los Angeles did not show
availability for a Business Class or First Class Saver
Award on most dates, a mixed class award connecting through San Francisco was avail
Award on most dates, a mixed class
award connecting through San Francisco was avail
award connecting through San Francisco was available.
If you are
looking for a flight and the search engines say there is no low level
award availability, there are ways to be creative and check some alternative routes.
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.
It
looks to me like Lufthansa has just recently released quite a bit of partner
award availability for travel from the US to Europe this summer in Business Class.
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.
I wanted to get a sense of what
award availability looked like from BOS — MUC in summer months
for * next * year so I'd been keeping an eye on
award space to Europe on Lufthansa * this * year.
If you're
looking for summer
award availability to Europe in business class you may want to check out this United route.
I've had a quick
look on BA.com and there seems to be a very good amount of
availability (probably why this promotion is on in the first place) but, if you think would work
for you don't wait too long to book as there may be a lot of people after these
awards once the word is out.
They provide a good resource
for looking up
award availability on many carriers that are also partners of Alaska Airlines and American Airlines, and British Airways also runs a decent loyalty program, Executive Club, which may be of interest to people who live outside of the United Kingdom.
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).
American's website often routes many customers
looking for an
award to this flight since it has really great
award availability.
I've taken a
look at the
award calendar
for the entire booking period (June — October) and, right now, there isn't a single day with MilesSAAver
award availability — in either direction.
Etihad
award space is available on its own website;
look for «Guest Seat»
availability to find
award space made available to partners.
Delta doesn't publish
award charts so you will want to
look for «LOWEST FARE»
availability similar to what's shown below.
You can also
look for award space on Korean Air's Asian partners
for additional
availability, especially during peak periods when
awards on Korean Air increase in price.
The flights I was
looking for were shown on united.com (not on the BA
award search, as mentioned in the previous post, since it's only
for BA and not partners), but in my exploring, I did discover the Avios.com site that would seem to have the ability to search all Avios
award availability.
While the American Airlines fares may
look enticing it's worth remembering that
award availability is noting short of terrible on American Airlines these days so don't go buying miles unless you're 100 % sure there's something
for you to book.
If you're not sure where you'd like to visit or if it isn't certain that the hotel you're
looking at will have
award availability for the dates you want to visit then keep your money in your wallet and wait
for a better time.
If you're
looking to redeem frequent flyer miles, there are several new routes to take note of
for potential
award availability.
The ultimate winners could be travelers
looking to burn their AAdvantage miles as I can already see pretty good
award availability for next year... I'm even tempted to book an
award for myself
Saver
award availability for this route at 37,500
looks tough to come by but you can probably find open Standard
awards for 70,000 miles one - way.
But with that said, it has become standard procedure
for me to once again check SkyMiles
availability when
looking for an
award ticket (and to not
look so shocked when I find some).
You will need to use American to
look for nonstop
award availability on Alaska or American Airlines (ignore any results on Hawaiian Airlines because you can not book those with Avios).
After a few days home to decompress, I'm back to
looking for deals and checking
for award availability like always!
After skimming this article, I started
looking for BCN - > SEA on Condor (Condor's own web site shows
availability), but can only turn up
award availability on BA via Alaska's site (which leads me to believe that this * should * be possible...), which with their ridiculously high fuel surcharges isn't optimal.
So if you're
looking for flights outside the US (He gave examples of Frankfurt - Rome or Singapore - Tokyo), you'll often see a TON of
award availability.
Hi, I was
looking for award space on Air New Zealand form either SYD or AKL to NAN — but united.com isn't showing any
availability at all.
When I
look at the
award chart
availability from BOS to DUB
for a specific date that I want (on Qantas and BAEC), nothing shows up.
If I manage to find
award availability on Alaska Airlines
for each of those segments, my one - way trip I would book on Alaska Airlines would
look like this: New York to Seattle (stopover
for a few months), Seattle to San Francisco.
Availability is out of this world good, at least if you're
looking for two (and not more than two) business class
award seats.
Once I found the
award availability I was
looking for, I then called AA at 1-800-882-8880 and spoon fed them the flights.
Second, the site makes you
look day by day
for awards rather than offering a handy
availability calendar.
Hi, I'm trying to
look for availability for BA
awards from SFO to MIA (on AA planes), and no matter what dates I set, it keeps saying there aren't any available.