You might not be familiar with Aircalin, but that's a good
thing for award availability.
Not exact matches
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.
The month of January seems a bit sparse
for award availability (at least compared to early December and what has so far been made available in February) but this may be down to any number of
things.
If you're trying to find
award availability on a OneWorld airline BritishAirways.com is the best place to start — the airline may be pretty useless at most
things but its site is great
for OneWorld
award searches.
The only
thing we can hope
for is that it improves
award availability but, although there was good
availability when the flights we're first loaded into the reservations system, there doesn't seem to be that much out there now.
Fares
for flights to Frankfurt were coming in at prices I wasn't prepared to pay (over $ 175) and, to make
things worse, there was no
award availability either.
With Ft. Lauderdale's proximity to Miami and most other
things South Florida offers this route is a nice bonus
for Avios collectors — we suddenly have a lot more premium cabin space flying in / out of the Miami metropolitan area and that should be good
for fares and
award availability (hopefully!)
Last week I posted about the first routes that Thai Airways A350 will be flying and I discussed how, as
things stand, there's some great
award availability for both the short crew orientation flights as well as
for the first international route on which Thai Airways will operate the A350 — Bangkok to Melbourne.
The
award nights can not be booked online and in most cases you can't even check
award availability online (one of the many
things I'm hoping Marriott takes cares of when it has time to get around to it) so you'll have to call up the SPG customer care center
for all of that.
Delta,
for example, will sometimes set the
availability of
awards seats to zero on certain dates, even when there is no official blackout, which amounts to the same
thing.
Its a great
thing to be aware and share the sweet spots on
award charts but its really not that cut and dry IMHO
For example Alaska is not a One World partner and while they certainly make some
availability available to Alaska its a much smaller pool of inventory and frequently only available close to departure to book Added to that you can not mix any other One World partner on the itinerary making it not the sweet spot its made out to be when you have to book yet another
award that would be included otherwise with a One World partner booking using Cathay
I'm currently trying to find Air New Zealand
award availability on the United site too
for January 2017 and can't find a
thing!