I recently added Baby M to our summer award tickets to Germany so I thought I’d just share my experience in case it helps anyone. Adding an infant ticket to an award is always a little bit of a minefield and can be a huge hassle. Still, a lot of times you can benefit from the simple fact that most agents don’t really know what they’re doing. Anyway, here’s my experience (although it’s not quite complete); I’ll be sure to update as things further unfold!
The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part III: Know Your Airline Alliances and Partners
People have different opinions when it comes to booking award tickets with frequent flyer miles. I, for one, love booking award tickets and enjoy the challenge that comes with doing so. Booking award tickets are like puzzles to me and I love solving them. Other people hate booking award tickets, consider them too much of a hassle, or even go so far as to believing their frequent flyer miles are completely worthless. I’ve decided to put a guide together for those of you who fall in between – people who want to book award tickets themselves but feel like they need some pointers. This guide will assume some basic knowledge, namely, that you know how to log in to your frequent flyer account and check your mileage balance. Other than that, the guide is here to help you through the process – hope you find it useful! Feel free to refer to the index at the bottom of the page for other entries.
In Part III of the series, we’ll review what airline alliances and partnerships are and talk about why they are important to understand for award bookings. This is the last “background theory” post, after this we’ll get to some of the more practical tips, so if you’ve been bored just bear with one more post!
The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part II: Know Your Award Types and Charts
People have different opinions when it comes to booking award tickets with frequent flyer miles. I, for one, love booking award tickets and enjoy the challenge that comes with doing so. Booking award tickets are like puzzles to me and I love solving them. Other people hate booking award tickets, consider them too much of a hassle, or even go so far as to believing their frequent flyer miles are completely worthless. I’ve decided to put a guide together for those of you who fall in between – people who want to book award tickets themselves but feel like they need some pointers. This guide will assume some basic knowledge, namely, that you know how to log in to your frequent flyer account and check your mileage balance. Other than that, the guide is here to help you through the process – hope you find it useful! Feel free to refer to the index at the bottom of the page for other entries.
In this installment, we will take a look at the three main types of airline specific award miles you might have and get a better understanding of which types of miles are best for what situations. While this is by no means meant to be completely comprehensive, it should serve as a base to help you evaluate what type of miles you should use (or need to get) to find your perfect award redemption. I’ll also include some links to award charts to help you figure out which awards will cost what prices.
Sometimes it pays to be obsessive, or how I got two seats in Cathay Pacific first class
When I get the itch to book an award, I generally tend to get pretty obsessive about it. Since my family’s schedule doesn’t allow us to book tickets a few weeks before we travel or less, I’m often stuck booking tickets 11 months in advance (right before travel or super far out are the two best times for award availability, more on that later this week in Part II of my DIY Award Booking guide). Well, my obsession for the last two weeks has been getting my wife, daughter, and myself to Asia and back next Christmas holiday. And that obsession has paid off – in spades!
The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part I: Know Why Award Tickets Exist
People have different opinions when it comes to booking award tickets with frequent flyer miles. I, for one, love booking award tickets and enjoy the challenge that comes with doing so. Booking award tickets are like puzzles to me and I love solving them. Other people hate booking award tickets, consider them too much of a hassle, or even go so far as to believing their frequent flyer miles are completely worthless. I’ve decided to put a guide together for those of you who fall in between – people who want to book award tickets themselves but feel like they need some pointers. This guide will assume some basic knowledge, namely, that you know how to log in to your frequent flyer account and check your mileage balance. Other than that, the guide is here to help you through the process – hope you find it useful! Feel free to refer to the index at the bottom of the page for other entries.
In Part I of this guide, we will talk about the reasons why airlines offer frequent flyer miles and tickets. Though there is very limited practical information to go over at this point, understanding the business reasoning behind award tickets will help us to determine how to get the most value out of the system that airlines have created.
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