In the image below, you can see plenty
of Saver Award availability from IAH to CDG.
Not exact matches
Availability for those
saver - level
awards is usually plentiful, and, at peak summer travel season when cash prices are extremely high, that can get you a value
of more than 2 cents per SkyMile.
Simply looking at the United
award chart, things are already looking up: it takes just 40,000 miles each way on flights with Economy
Saver availability, adding up to a total requirement
of 80,000 miles.
For example, the United credit card allows access to additional
saver award availability and the AAdvantage card gives you 10 percent
of your redeemed miles back annually, up to 10,000 miles.
While I'm not holding my breath that these
awards will be anywhere near as generous or available as, say, American's off - peak flights to Europe, even an expansion
of regular
Saver availability would be excellent.
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.
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.
We have been using Ultimate Rewards the last couple
of trips, though think we got luck on UAL in 2015 when there was some 1st
Saver Award availability.
In the entire month
of October, I found one day with
availability on the LAX — JFK non-stop flight at the
saver award level.
I kept monitoring it to see how it trended as the dates got closer and although economy
award space still hasn't opened up I suddenly saw wide open
availability to Europe at
saver levels the entire months
of July and August: All summer!
It appears to be a commonly held belief that while Delta decimates the value
of SkyMiles on a quarterly basis and while American Airlines stubbornly refuses to make premium cabin
saver awards available,
award availability via United is quite good.
Finding
saver awards on American Airlines (the
awards you'll need to find to book this kind
of trip) is hard so, unless you can see
availability online right now, I wouldn't buy miles with the expectation
of booking this
award easily.
All
of that aside,
saver level
availability still exists, and Delta runs
award sales from time to time.
But here's the very important thing to know: Not all partners will show up on an airline's online
award booking — and the Big Three have some
of the worst
availability of Saver (low) level
awards of any airlines.
Searching
award availability to AMS / CDG / BCN for spring
of next year (just for fun) and there is NOTHING on AA at AA
saver rates.
There is more
saver award availability earlier in the month for SF > AKL than for DC > AKL so I'd like to try to use one
of those earlier dates.
If you're interested in visiting during April, you just need to find
saver award flight
availability from your city to Chicago (ORD) during one
of these dates.
At the time, there was a single date in all
of 2014 with first or business class
award availability at the
saver level.
A question on waiting to see
Saver Award availability: I booked 2 award tickets with Alaska to Hawaii for the last week of Dec 15 (11 months in adva
Award availability: I booked 2
award tickets with Alaska to Hawaii for the last week of Dec 15 (11 months in adva
award tickets with Alaska to Hawaii for the last week
of Dec 15 (11 months in advance).
But because some
of its
award seat prices exceeded the
saver - level
award price, the airline's
availability rating was listed at 87.1 %, not 100 %.
Switchfly's study calculated the
availability of saver award seats on the flights
of 25 airlines.
* You can also use Delta's website to search for
availability but keep in mind that in order to book a Delta flight with either
of the Ultimate Rewards Skyteam partners, there must be
award space available at the
saver level on Delta.
He also said that United plans to increase the
availability of Saver award seats by more than 10 percent in domestic and Canadian markets.