Using Miles Archives - asthejoeflies

Apr 26 2016

Award Booking Tips overheard at FT4RL

So I made a rookie mistake presenting at FT4RL – too many slides! I had to rush through a few of my points on booking awards so I thought I’d share some of them here, along with a few other tips shared by the group. Nothing earth shattering here, but some good tips nonetheless.

There is coach award space to Europe still available this summer

I didn’t do an exhaustive search, but as far as I could tell there is quite a bit of award space available to Europe this summer. I searched the three main legacy carriers for four people to/from various US cities to various European cities and there was quite a bit of coach availability.

My main point here is this: if you want to travel to Europe this summer with a family, coach is your best bet. People write about flying in the front cabin all the time (guilty) but if you want to travel coach can get you there just fine.

There is even some coach award space to Asia

I searched (again, not exhaustively) flights to Taipei and Hong Kong and I found assorted coach award space for four people at low level award prices. Cool.

Delta is still the best option if you want to fly business class

I’ve spoken about this ad nauseum. Nobody cares, that’s cool. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for a heck of a lot more people than care to admit it.

Got a stockpile of Membership Rewards? Believe me about the Delta space?

Then when you find it, transfer your miles over to Air France and book. I think it was Richard Kerr (@thepointsjock) who shared that AF will wait with you online while you transfer miles so you don’t need to worry about the award space from disappearing from under you (Delta will do that too and they eliminated their phone booking fees). Transfer to AF and avoid the pesky excise fee.

Alaska Airlines is good for more than just showers

If you are flying roundtrip, you can use Alaska miles to book that Delta award space. Or book American Airlines coach space. Or book award space on a host of carriers in coach (and sometimes even in business). You might have Alaska miles leftover if you were holding out for Emirates first – no problem! Now you can fly to visit your friends on the other side of the country instead. Or to Europe.

Korean Air is a great option to Asia

OK, so they are adding change and redeposit fees in August 2017. Boohoo. Korean Air has great award space to Asia and you don’t even have to fly in first class. They have coach and business class seats too if you’re short on miles! There are enough seats for your family and they are an Ultimate Rewards transfer partner and they got rid of most of their fees. You can even fly to Mongolia from Seoul to be like milestomemories!

Be creative – lots of award programs have cool little niches

The aforementioned Richard Kerr shared some cool stuff about booking with Etihad miles but I think he’s going to write about that so I’ll just say here that…there is some cool stuff you can do. But the bottom line is, play around with some award searches or read up on some programs and you can find some pretty neat things.

You can use cash to buy tickets

Seriously! And this isn’t an option for all families, but you could always book two award tickets and two tickets with cash. There have been a lot of good deals in coach for this summer, just follow any of the big fare deal sites (airfarewatchdog, The Flight Deal, etc.) and then see if they work for you. You can even offset the overall cost with award tickets if they match up to the same flights.

Hat tip to milenomics for this huge breaking news!

You can use cash to hire someone to do all this work for you

A lot of my talk was about finding balance in our lives as our families get bigger. If I want quality time with my family that means less time running out to various stores, less time blogging, and less time searching for award space (my favorite thing to do).

If you don’t have the time, there’s no shame in paying someone to do the work for you. Go spend an hour playing with your kids instead!

Final Thoughts

I think I will write an entire post on why FT4RL was so freaking fun. But these are just some random award booking tips from the conference. None are game changing, but they all served as nice reminders to me – especially the ones I thought of myself. Always good to go back to the basics…

P.S. – I apologize for all the exclamation marks I am still on a conference high. I will do better next time.

Oct 16 2015

Family Travel for My Real Life – Splitting the Team

I had originally planned to attend FT4RL3, but unfortunately I’m not going to make it due to real life circumstances. Instead, our family is going to embark on a new adventure – splitting the team. I thought I’d share some of my thought process and how this illustrates my evolving view of my points and miles.

Actually going to FT4RL3 was always a longshot – I bought the ticket before H was even born and once I found out I was going to Las Vegas sans wife and kids I knew another trip was probably not going to happen. Still, I had a cheap flight booked for 4500 Avios outbound and held onto it for awhile. But then about six weeks ago I decided I definitely wasn’t going to attend so I cancelled that flight. That was a mistake, which I’ll get into later.

In the meanwhile, Jess decided she wanted to go to Charlotte to visit her sister that same weekend (apparently she likes to go to Charlotte on weekends that coincide with FT4RLs). Since her and H are pretty much attached at the hip at the moment, that meant a weekend at home alone with M.

I bought Jess’ ticket using Citi Thank You points, so it only ended up costing around 12,000 points with the 1.6 cents per point you get for AA flights (Prestige cardholders). I have over 100K Thank You points that I never use – yet I still debated just paying in cash. But ultimately, I asked myself, what am I saving these points for? I have them for this exact reason to save money on travel – so I used the points instead of the cash.

Anyway, so M and I were stuck at home until I got to thinking – what if we took a trip somewhere? So I started looking into ticket prices for one stop destinations, though I was basically focused on D.C. I knew I wouldn’t make it to FT4RL especially as a solo parent, but there are some friends I’d love to see in D.C. and I love free museums.

Tickets were cost prohibitive for that weekend – I’m not sure what’s going on but the cheapest non-stops were pricing at like $200 and the cheapest non-stops that were practical for a toddler were more like $300.

Enter US Bank Flexperks. I’ve been earning about 20,000 points per month, or enough for an (up to) $400 ticket. So I had enough to buy tickets for both M and myself and not worry about the price. Again, I considered saving it for something else, but ultimately decided – what is the point? These points are to decrease travel costs and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

So next weekend we’re splitting the team. Both of us are taking our first solo flight with the kids and H is taking his first flight ever. Should be a ton of fun!

Jan 10 2015

Some Delta Skymiles 2015 Award Booking Beta Testing: Good and Bad

It's slightly easier to get into these now that Skymiles 2015 is here — It’s slightly easier to get into these now that Skymiles 2015 is here

A couple of things conspired to get me to dust off my old Delta Skymiles login. First, I was searching for award space for a client. It just so happened the day I started, don’t call the airline pointed out that Delta was releasing a surprising amount of partner award space. I’m not sure whether the latter is still going on, though in my research I did see more space than I had in the past. Thirdly, I’ve actually been stockpiling Delta Skymiles in anticipation of 2015 – I’ve never had problem finding space and I wanted the new one way flexibility. Here are some things I’ve learned poking around the website (and calling a few agents) award booking wise for the new Delta.

One piece of good news is that there definitely seem to be more lowest level award seats floating around out there. I found what felt like a lot more than I had found in the past. Which brings me to the other good news – it’s been reported elsewhere but I’ve finally seen it firsthand for myself – the award search engine…works now! There are some crazy things I’ve noticed (crazy because they are functional).

For starters, the website is pretty snappy and responsive which was downright shocking to me. But more importantly, it does a much better job of finding routings and displaying available low award space. If you search flexible dates, you get a nice calendar highlighting the miles required on each day. I’m still kind of amazed having used it myself, Delta used to be so broken. Here’s a 5 week search for LAX-LHR in Business class.

What I’ve found to be unfortunate is Delta is now enforcing routing rules which really restrict your ability to use your miles. In the past, as long as there was low level award space, you could pretty much string together any legs you wanted to get to your final destination. This is no longer the case. Let’s say you wanted to go from LAX to CDG, for example. There is a lot of low level space, even over the summer, to LHR from LAX. Like these flights on 7/14:

For one person it's not too hard to get to LHR from LAX in business class this summer — For one person it’s not too hard to get to LHR from LAX in business class this summer

If you take that top flight, a Virgin Atlantic flight, you could theoretically get to Paris with just one more hop. Doing a quick search for LHR-CDG on 7/15 (first leg is a redeye) yields a ton of award space:

There's also award space on LHR-CDG — There’s also award space on LHR-CDG

In the past, you would be able to string these two flights together in a multi-city search and book the award as one ticket, for 62,500 miles total (low level business award space all the way). However, when I was trying to do that, I kept getting an error message:

delta.com won't do the multi-city search — delta.com won’t do the multi-city search

Finally I called a few times to try to get an agent to ticket the award as one itinerary. I was then informed that Delta has changed its routing rules – you can only route through certain cities to get to certain destinations, and LHR is not an acceptable transit city between LAX and CDG. I wasn’t sure if the agent was making up rules or not, so I decided to do some digging. Unfortunately, it does seem like this statement in Delta’s award rules gives them the right to deny you based on routing:

Boo.

If you don’t feel like clicking to enlarge, it says “Valid routings vary based on the operating carriers of the Award Ticket.” Anyway, not that I’m totally surprised, but this is kind of consumer unfriendly. If there is award space and you’re not like stringing together 6+ legs or something exorbitant, I feel like you should be able to put together itineraries that have low level space on them. I mean, Delta already took away stopovers, but this is essentially taking away layovers. So I was really disappointed to discover this. It seems like to London you need to connect through a Delta hub – ATL, MSP, and SEA all worked.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m glad to see that there seems to be more low level space available (even, shockingly, on Delta metal), but losing the ability to create your own routing is pretty big. It’s another instance of Delta giveth and Delta taketh away. Still, I think Delta miles can be very useful, especially to Europe (and especially from Boston – that BOS-AMS flight we took last year seems to have a lot of space). People can keep calling them Skypesos if they’d like, I’ll just keep finding ways to use them. Hopefully my experiences can help some of you out there – let me know in the comments if you’ve found anything else out because I’ve only just started playing with the new system!

Sep 16 2014

How to Plan Travel for Summer 2015 – Part 1

I try to avoid Asia in the summer - this picture doesn't indicate how ridiculously hot Hong Kong is — I try to avoid Asia in the summer – this picture doesn’t indicate how ridiculously hot Hong Kong is

It’s the time of the year to start planning our summer travels. Actually, you could say it’s even a little late for that, depending on your definition of summer. We usually travel in July so we’re a bit behind. Remember, most airlines open their schedules up 330 days in advance, so I can book travel up through August 11th right now on most programs. This post will outline my thought process for booking travel and hopefully give you some ideas for how you want to use your hard earned miles next summer! If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you’re likely not ready to book yet…get crackin!

Question 0: Cash or Miles?

If the answer to Question 0 is cash, you can pretty much skip the rest of this post. Right now is NOT the best time to buy cash tickets – prices will definitely drop some time in the next eleven months. If you don’t have enough miles to book that summer trip right now, you can build up those balances – chances are more than decent that space will open up closer in.

Question 1: When can you travel?

I find for most people this is the biggest determinant. Summer is usually a little better because people are more free to leave on Tuesdays and random things like that. Obviously, the more flexible you can be the better. Since award space is a function of airlines trying to fill every last seat, you’ll see the most availability on low travel days – Tuesdays and Saturdays for example.

The weather's a lot cooler in Peru — The weather’s a lot cooler in Peru

If you don’t have the flexibility and need to leave on weekends, it’s imperative that you make decisions sooner rather than later (or wait until the last minute next year, but then this article isn’t for you). Airlines are releasing less and less award space 330 days out, so you should try to be ready to go once your desired dates hit the 330 mark.

For us, we’re pretty flexible, if we can find anything for a 2 week trip in July we should be good to go. It’s Question 2 that is a bigger source of stress for us.

Question 2: How many in your party?

Oh, to return to the days when we were only looking for two seats. Little M will be two next year so she’ll no longer be flying on our laps in first. The added mileage cost plus the relative difficulty of finding three seats in first means we’ll probably be flying business next year – that’s if we’re lucky. It isn’t too hard to find 3 coach seats this far out, but a lot of airlines will only release two business class seats.

Another option we (and your family) could consider is splitting up the family by cabin. For example, a family of four could snag two seats in business and two in coach relatively easily and just switch off on the outbound and return (or however they like). Or if you’re particularly brave, one in business and three in coach. Of course that depends on the age of the children.

A third option for families with older children is splitting up the itinerary altogether – parent + child 1 on Flight 1 and parent + child 2 on Flight 2. I don’t really prefer this option because it’s a lot of moving parts (and we’re not there yet size/age wise), but it definitely makes finding award space a lot easier!

Question 3: What programs do you have miles in?

Obviously this question is going to go a long way to dictate where you will be going. If you have a ton of SPG points, the world is pretty much your oyster since you can transfer to programs in every major alliance. If you are rich in Ultimate Rewards, you are likely flying Southwest or United, etc. etc.

If you have a ton of miles in a specific program, then you’re locked into booking flights with that airline and its partners. Hopefully you have a large portfolio with decent balances spread across different programs, this will maximize the options available to you.

Lufthansa first class is probably too expensive these days - too bad — Lufthansa first class is probably too expensive these days – too bad

In our case, we have a ton of AA/US miles and a bunch of Membership Rewards and Delta Skymiles, so we are pretty limited. All our other balances are in recovery – we are slowly working to build them back to levels where we can use them to book for everyone. I find that it goes in cycles – you burn all your points in one program and then rely on other programs while you slowly rebuild your balance in the first. It’s like leaving a field fallow for a year so you can grow better crops the next year…or something.

Question 4: Where do you want to go – domestic or international?

In my thinking, where to go is the fourth thing I ask myself. The benefit of miles is you can get places in comfort while saving a lot of money – the drawback is if you’re dead set on a certain location you might find yourself out of luck. Miles are best used when you are flexible.

I always start by considering whether I want the family to go domestic or international. This is a question I am personally struggling with right now. In a lot of ways, going domestic is easier – shorter flights, less miles, etc., but going international is what I love to do. Depending on your answer to this question, you’ll start zeroing in more on what miles you should be using.

If you want to go domestic, the best value can be found in distance based sweet spots. KennyBSAT has an amazing primer (with routes) on these sweet spots, so check them out and see if you fall into any of them. If I can’t find a distance based sweet spot, I personally would rather pay cash and fly coach and save my miles for an international trip in a premium cabin.

The reason why I’m struggling this year is because the cost of international travel (in business) is a lot more now that we have to pay for our daughter – and who knows what she’ll be like as a 2.5 year old. I’m still leaning international though…

Question 5: What continent/state do you want to visit?

Once you’ve decided international or domestic, you kind of need to zero in on a certain region. With domestic it’s a little easier, you can just start your search by looking for award space on sweet spot routes from your hometown.

You don't get castles like this in the States — You don’t get castles like this in the States

For international, the continents you can travel to are going to be limited by your miles balances and the cost of travel. Since we have so many US/AA miles, our family can technically travel to any continent next year. Still, if we go abroad, we’ll probably stick to Europe due to the shorter flights (and the extreme heat in Asia). We’re not going to take Little M on a safari while she’s still prey sized and we’d want to do that if we went to Africa so we eliminated that.

Question 6: Where’s the availability?

Searching for availability is a post in and of itself, so I’ll hit on that next time. In the meanwhile, you might get lucky with the AA space KennyBSAT pointed out last week – I know I have a flight on hold!

Final Thoughts

If you want to travel on miles, start booking now! Hopefully seeing my thought process helps you crystallize yours – burn those miles and enjoy!

Aug 10 2014

Searching and Booking Garuda Airlines Award Flights within Asia

Garuda joining Skyteam means more options

Garuda Airlines recently joined Skyteam and thus is now a new travel partner for big mileage programs like Delta and Air France. I wasn’t planning on doing too much research on the matter but then realized it would be useful for clients trying to get around Asia. It just so happened that I was working with someone trying to go to Bali – we ended up booking Cathay First to Hong Kong, then Garuda from Hong Kong to Bali to Tokyo, and then United returning from Tokyo. Here’s what I found out about Garuda.

Searching for Award Space

You can’t use delta.com to search for Garuda award space (and why would you want to), so the best thing to do is to search Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue website. If you don’t have an account you can sign up for Air France here or for KLM here; they’re essentially the same program.

Nothing too earth shattering about Flying Blue's award search — Nothing too earth shattering about Flying Blue’s award search

After that searching for award space is pretty straightforward, just navigate to “Book an Award Ticket” or “Book a Flight with Miles” (it depends what portion of the website you’re at but you can find it!). Then it’s just a matter of searching each segment as a one way and knowing where Garuda flies to/from. Remember, Wikipedia is your best source for the latter information.

One of Garuda’s hubs is Denpassar in Bali (DPS). Looking at Wikipedia, they fly direct to DPS from both Hong Kong and Tokyo, exactly what we were looking for. To search for the award space, I did two simple one way searches using the Flying Blue website. Flying Blue creates a nice calendar of all the award space available.

Since Garuda is a partner airline, if it’s bookable on Flying Blue (and thus on the calendar) then it’s bookable with Delta (or any other Skyteam partner). There was tons of business class award space for two (but not economy strangely enough) on both HKG-DPS and DPS-NRT throughout the entire month of August. Remember, once you find flights you want the best practice is to write the flight number, time, and date down. Arm yourself with that information before you book.

Deciding whether to use Delta or Air France

My client had the luxury of having a very diverse portfolio of points and miles. He had enough miles in Delta to cover the trip and enough Membership Rewards points to transfer to Air France. Since Delta allows open jaws, HKG-DPS-NRT is a legal routing. I called Delta and the itinerary priced out to 50,000 miles and about $45 in taxes and fees per person (and remember, no one way awards until 2015). Meanwhile, Air France wanted to charge 75,000 miles and ~$220 in taxes and fees per person. Both prices were for the same business class seats. This is the very definition of a “no brainer”, and a reminder that having a diversified points portfolio opens up these kinds of opportunities.

These business class seats look pretty nice but aren't on all of Garuda's flights — These business class seats look pretty nice but aren’t on all of Garuda’s flights

Booking the Garuda Award

If you want to use Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue, you should just be able to book the award online, although it’s worth noting I received errors every time I tried to do this. My hypothesis is because I didn’t have enough miles in the account but I’m not sure. You could always call, but that’ll add to your fees.

With Delta, you must call to book this award since the space is not searchable or bookable online. I asked the agent to waive the phone fee due to that very fact and was successful. You can call Delta’s main number at 1-800-323-2323. Wow for the first time I just realized how easy that is to memorize! I digress…

Final Thoughts

Garuda Indonesia is a useful addition to Skyteam since it now allows you to book intra-Asia flights. Search for award space on Air France but try to book through Delta to avoid high taxes and surcharges. Of course if you are connecting them to an award from North America you can use Garuda to get you where you want to go (Skyteam now has another option to Bali that has tons of award space). Those Skymiles you have lying around just found another use!