For example, even though I used American Airlines miles to book Cathay Pacific first class flights, I didn't search for award availability on the AA website.
Not exact matches
All of these airlines can be
searched on delta.com
for award availability, however, results
for China Eastern and China Southern frequently display
award availability that isn't there (it will have an error if you try to purchase) and connecting itineraries often incorrectly price each segment additively rather than as a single one - way.
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.
However, Air France / KLM's ability to
search for SkyTeam partner
award space is better as Delta sometimes doesn't show
availability when it actually exists.
Until recently, Korean Air did
not provide a way to
search online
for award availability on any of its partner airlines.
Things didn't start well when BA.com refused to offer me ANY Iberia flights when I
searched for award availability on the one day I'm free to do this trip.
I
search for award availability past the dates I'm willing to travel so that my
award doesn't expire before Etihad has a chance to release inventory
If you
search for economy class by default on a carrier that has four cabins, you will
not see first class
award availability.
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.
Since other partner airlines aren't available to be booked online, it makes it difficult to
search for award availability.
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.
American Airlines charges 57,500 miles in each direction
for a Business Class
award on airberlin (taxes and fees come to under $ 100) and, unlike
not too long ago, you can now
search for airberlin
award availability on AA.com.
If you only
search on Aeroplan or ANA, you won't have a full picture of the Singapore Airlines
award availability for Singapore Airlines members.
A lot of alliance partners don't allow you to
search for award availability for other partners on their website and that's really annoying because that means you'll always have to call in to book and you're
not sure what that airline is seeing in terms of
award availability.
The United Airlines
award search tool on United.com is useful but flawed, because it does
not show
award availability for some partners.
You can
search one way or round trip, and don't forget to use their useful «View Calendar of BA
Availability» button to
search for the
award space you need.
In short, when
searching for award availability, the cost of interisland and North American round - trip tickets will be 2,500 to 5,000 miles less than HawaiianMiles members who don't have a co-branded card.
In my experience, customer service agents are
not very good at
searching partner
award availability so you want to rely on your own
searches for this to make the process as smooth as painless as possible.
British Airways is
not as easy to
search for flexible dates
for partner
award availability.
So a trick you can do is to
search for award availability on your route on a day you know BA doesn't have any
availability, and the site will ask you if you want to
search BA's partners as well.