Make
low level awards so scare a customer is happy to find even a mid level award.
Not exact matches
This part was easy, since there was
low -
level award availability on American Airlines through Chicago,
so I booked 2 tickets for 12,000 British Airways Avios and $ 5 each.
I would have said Delta, but they recently made their program
so confusing that they deleted
award charts,
so you can't see what's
low -
level and what's not.
So the results of a recent study by consulting firm IdeaWorks, which ranks airlines by
award availability should come as no surprise — it shows that Delta ranked last (23rd out of 23) with the fewest
low -
level award seats available based on the nearly 7,000 queries it conducted.
The program is notorious for releasing few
low -
level awards,
so it's best to book those seats as far in advance as possible.
But in addition to the «
low» -
level award inventory travel hackers love
so dearly, American, United, and Alaska Airlines also offer more expensive
awards that escape most capacity controls.
This 10k MQM bonus will push you to 77k MQM and Platinum status, which offers
so much more than Gold — like free
award changes and redeposits — a huge benefit give how hard it can be to get
low level awards on Delta.
AAnytime
awards are now split into three
levels,
so if you can get one at the
lowest level, it's a decent value, but avoid any AAnytime
awards beyond that.
So in this example, under the old structure, you would hit 25,000 miles — the
lowest level to redeem for an
award ticket — after a little more than five of those flights, which cost a total of $ 2,000.
Low level saver
award is usually 35,000 originating from the USA but it wasn't available,
so I had to settle for the medium
level award which was 47,500.
So in this case, Delta has made more
award space available at its
lowest levels (plural), but nothing at its
lowest level.
Overall, this partnership is good news because Virgin Atlantic is a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest,
so there are now more options to book Delta flights without having SkyMiles (though partners like Virgin Atlantic only get access to
low -
level awards, meaning availability can be slim on certain routes).