Alaska MileagePlan does
offer cheaper award redemptions to Japan when you opt to fly American, Hainan, or Cathay Pacific business class.
American Airlines doesn't even
offer the cheapest award to reach this tropical paradise.
This is a welcome change considering that Delta, United, and Alaska already
offer cheaper awards on short or intra-state flights (Delta is recent, and the other two have been around for years).
The biggest carrier in the oneworld alliance is American Airlines; however, they may not
offer the cheapest award.
Which airline
offers the cheaper award redemptions for your chose cabin and the time of year you want to fly?
SkyMiles
offer the cheapest award seats in economy at 80,000 miles, but using AAdvantage miles will get you the cheapest business class tickets.
Below is a list of the frequent flyer programs
offering the cheapest award flights.
Not exact matches
When we briefly reminded Femi about the debate spearheaded by Samuel L Jackson that argued black British actors are cast because they are
cheaper than their US counterparts, the actor — who has four black British students and clients with a Bafta
Award under their belt — did not respond directly to Samuel's comments, but focused on
offering a different perspective.
We found that a trip between New York and London was among the
cheapest award flights that Virgin Atlantic
offered.
When miles are too
cheap, regardless of how many are being issued, it may no longer be affordable for the airline to
offer award space.
While you can simply search for
award flights and see the resulting prices for available flights, you may want to scan the partner
award charts and search specifically for the carriers that
offer the
cheapest flights to your destination.
Those are the
cheapest awards offered by Spirit and the most valuable.
For flights to Korea, Asiana does not
offer any savings in economy, but relatively
cheap awards are available in both business and first class.
Other
award charts
offer saver
awards which while much
cheaper, are also harder to book due to limited availability.
I find Delta to be one of the least transparent airlines so when it comes to planning domestic
award trips, I'm not sure that I'd count on Delta to be
offering great deals, but stumbling upon such
cheap award flights would always be a tempting option for me if it actually worked with my schedule.
For example, Hyatt has
cheaper awards on average and especially at the higher end, but Starwood
offers the fifth night free.
Unfortunately the airlines
offering the
cheapest flights, ANA and JAL, also
offer co-branded cards with very small sign - up bonuses, making them very undesirable for earning an
award ticket quickly.
What makes this promotion even more attractive is that not only are
award night rates reduced by 35 % but the «5th night fee»
offer can be used here too — that makes it even «
cheaper».
British Airways is one of my favorite transfer options here since, at just 25,000 avios, they
offer about the
cheapest awards possible from the west coast to Hawaii.
My family's favorite vacation destination is Hawaii, and via their own version of a «Cyber Monday»
offering, United is making it 20 %
cheaper to get there on miles if you book a roundtrip economy saver
award by December 8th and travel between January 7 — March 10, 2018.
Avios
offers some of the
cheapest awards you will find anywhere for travel under 3,000 miles.
So how do
award tickets work now that airlines
offer a category of fares
cheaper than regular economy?
AAdvantage miles
offer the
cheapest rates for economy and premium class
award seats to Tasmania.
Different transfer partners
offer more value than others, usually because they have
cheaper awards, lower fees, or better
award availability.
Avios
offers several ways to get around the globe for
cheap when utilizing distance - based
award charts.
With the introduction of so many different
award classes, the miles needed for an
award have changed drastically: Some of the «Standard»
awards have dropped by more than 20 % — that was to be expected as all the routes in question have
offered very
cheap economy fares over the last year, making a redemption on these routes generally unattractive.
Aeroplan, for example,
offers much
cheaper award travel in first class on Star Alliance members when compared to using United MileagePlus (and United isn't a Membership Rewards partner, which could make getting those miles are the more difficult).
On the redemption side, the program
offers very
cheap short - haul
awards (as low as 4,500 miles in economy or 9,000 in business class), thus perfect for domestic flights within Japan (with no taxes!)
If you are looking to fly on an airline whose program doesn't
offer one way
awards then paying with points might be
cheaper.
Alaska Mileage Plan ran an
award sale starting Aug. 30 through Oct. 31,
offering deals as
cheap as 5,000 miles one - way on select domestic routes such as San Diego to Salt Lake City.
Sprint, which
offers cheaper unlimited plans, fails to win the
award due to its less extensive LTE network and far slower data speeds.