American Airlines Archives - Page 3 of 5

Aug 25 2014

Concerned about a British Airways Devaluation? Book these

Update: Since I typed this up, via PFD, BA has denied any changes are forthcoming on Twitter. But I think the information on these flights are useful so I’m posting this anyway. These are still good flights to book, and potential devaluations are always a nice reminder to earn and burn.

So, I was about to go to bed around midnight last night when I caught wind of a possible British Airways devaluation that can happen any minute. It’s not official, but it makes sense that it’s going to happen. The first people I saw write about were Free-quent Flyer, View from the Wing, Milenomics, and PFD (plus KennyBSAT on Twitter) – so you can read more about the details there.

Are these going away? (Image via @KennyBSAT/Miles4More)

Anyway, at times like these, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has the proper advice: Don’t Panic. Instead, book these great values just in case. I’ve included itinerary ideas, how to search, how to book, and how much it’ll cost you to cancel.

1. Short Haul AA/US flights in Economy (9000-25,000 Avios Round Trip)

As always, British Airways Avios short haul flights present the best value. If you know you have to take a trip – see if you can find space on AA or US and book the flights as an award. For example, a flight from Boston to JFK can put you back $300 in cash, or you can book it for 9000 Avios and $5.60. Here’s the award chart:

Avios award chart - not just good for British Airways flights! — Avios award chart (click to enlarge)

Anything under 650 miles (each way) for domestic AA or US flights is a great deal. Zone 2 is usually a pretty good to great deal, and you still should get a lot of value out of Zone 3 on AA/US domestic flights.

If you don’t want to do the research yourself, KennyBSAT has a nice series on Award Sweet Spots with Avios – East Coast, West Coast, Florida, and Dallas/Chicago.

How to search: You should search for both AA and US short haul flights online at aa.com. This post explains how to do it if you’re unsure. One thing to note – you must look for direct sAAver flights only – two segment flights are going to increase your price because Avios are distance-based. Non sAAver flights won’t be available to book on British Airways

How to book: Once you’ve found the flights, you can just book them on britishairways.com. Navigate to “Book Flights with Avios” and just search on your date, you should see the same flights you found on aa.com

Cost to cancel: I’ve never had personal experience with this, but the general consensus is British Airways charges $55 OR all the taxes and fees you were charged, whichever is lower. So your cancellation charge if necessary should be $5.60 – worth the speculative booking.

Avios are a great deal from the West Coast to Hawaii

2. West Coast to Hawaii in Economy (25,000 Avios Round Trip)

This is actually a specific short haul flight from #1, but merits its own mention because it’s the best value going to Hawaii. Any direct flight from the West Coast to Hawaii falls into Zone 3 and would only cost you 12,500 Avios and $5.60 each way.

How to search: Same as above, aa.com.

How to book: Same as above, britishairways.com

Cost to cancel: Same as above, $5.60 per segment

3. Boston to Dublin in Economy or Business on Aer Lingus (25,000 or 50,000 Avios Round Trip)

Using Avios, you can fly from Boston to Dublin for the same price as a domestic round trip. Or you can fly two people in Business class for 50,000 Avios each (100,000 total aka cheaper than almost everyone else’s transatlantic cost). Aer Lingus (a BA partner) has a direct flight (also one to Shannon) and it falls into Zone 3 – hence the awesome price.

The Cliffs of Moher are well worth a visit in Ireland

A friend said to me last month ago – “Shouldn’t I just be pounding the Boston to Dublin flight over and over to get to Europe?” Answer – yes. Being Boston based, this is my biggest worry about a British Airways devaluation. There is more risk for this flight (cancellation fees) but a potentially higher reward (you’ll be in Europe!).

How to search: Search for Aer Lingus flights on united.com. How to here. Aer Lingus is also a United partner so you can search there. Aer Lingus award space does not show on britishairways.com

How to book: Ugh, the worst. You have to call British Airways, wait on hold forever, then feed them your flights. It’s annoying but worth it. 1-800-452-1201 is the number to call.

Cancellation fee: This should cost you $55 to cancel and an extra $25 service fee – so you might want to be a little more sure when you book this one.

Final Thoughts

I really hope this doesn’t happen or British Airways at least gives some warning, but Iberia didn’t and I’m not holding my breath. I’m sure there will be some sweet spots in the new chart, but this is going to be a real loss. I would say – I’m fresh out of Avios and I’m not transferring from Chase or Membership Rewards to speculatively book – I wouldn’t do that unless you know you’re going somewhere. But that’s just me. Hope this was helpful!

Update: As I said above, British Airways says the devaluation isn’t happening but who knows. These are still great trips to book regardless!

Aug 06 2014

Taking AAdvantage of American’s Award Change Policies

American's new first class cabin — American’s new first class cabin

American Airlines is ripe for a devaluation, but in the meanwhile they remain one of the most lucrative award programs out there. I recently was helping a client get back from London to the United States using AAdvantage miles to fly British Airways first class. We finished ticketing but had to use British Airways which charges a ton of fuel surcharges – the taxes and fees were over $2500 for a family of four. Today, some space opened up on American Airlines. My client would still have to pay London taxes but stood to stand almost $1300 in fuel surcharges.

On an American Airlines award ticket you can switch between these two itineraries for no charge (gcmap.com)

That’s it. Which means, anything leftover will not be charged a fee. This includes:

– Changing date of travel (as long as origin/destination remain the same)

– Changing routing (as long as you don’t change the “type” of award)

– Changing to a higher class of service (this should trigger #3 but the fee is waived if you are going UP in class)

These “free” changes are pretty awesome. What that means is you can lock in a ticket and if later you find a better routing on the same dates you can change them for free. Or, if you decide to come home early or stay longer, you can change that for free too. Or, in my client’s case, if you find a ticket where you can save $1300, you can change to those flights and get your money refunded to you. You just need to complete travel within a year of ticketing.

Jess and I used this on our trip to Bora Bora – we ultimately decided we wanted to leave Boston a day later (because M was staying home) and once I found the flights we switched over at no charge. This is an amazing policy and one that you can really use to your advantage. You don’t have to wait for schedule changes or anything like that, if you see a better flight and/or routing, call up AA and change your award flights.

Flying to Tahiti is a good example. The best practice in my opinion is to book 11 months out – as soon as the schedule opens up. You likely will need a connecting flight to LAX. This far out, AA might not release domestic first class awards – just book economy for now and “upgrade” if/when space becomes available.

That’s just one of countless ways you could use these policies to your advantage: hopefully this is just a reminder for most of you. I honestly forget about this policy from time to time. Now is a great time to lock in AA awards – the impending devaluation + all those 100,000 mile bonuses people signed up for + these generous change policies create a perfect storm for award bookings.

If you have any questions about specific situations or the ins and outs of the policy I’d be happy to answer them in the comments or via e-mail at asthejoeflies@gmail.com. Have at it!

Aug 01 2014

The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part IX: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on ba.com

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.

If you want to search for this award seat you can't use aa.com — If you want to search for this award seat you can’t use aa.com

In my last entry in this series I talked about how to search for Oneworld award space on aa.com. Unfortunately, the American Airlines website doesn’t show all of its partners’ award space. I use ba.com for any searches not involving American, Air Berlin, British Airways, Finnair, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, or US Airways. The aa.com search engine is superior, so if you’re looking for British Airways space it’s actually better to look there. One of the quirks of award booking.

Searching for Oneworld award space on ba.com is pretty straightforward, it’s just clunky. For starters, you need a British Airways account so if you don’t have one sign up here. After logging in, you want to navigate the menus from Executive Club => Spending Avios => Book Flights with Avios.

After that, input your origin and destination, and search! Personally, I almost always restrict my searches to one ways to make things easier for myself. If the engine asks you whether you want to book a stopover just say no.

I like to search one ways only to keep my options open (click to enlarge)

The results you get are annoying because you have to click every time you want to look for space on a different day, but at the very least they are pretty accurate.

You have to click each day individually. On the plus side, if you live in San Francisco and feel like going to Hong Kong next week... (click to enlarge) — You have to click each day individually. On the plus side, if you live in San Francisco and feel like going to Hong Kong next week… (click to enlarge)

I’m sure I’m not blowing anyone’s mind for how to search for award space here, but here are some things I’ve learned that you may or may not know – I find them pretty useful.

1. I almost always search for one adult ONLY

Why? If you take a look at the image above, that was a search for one adult. British Airways has a nice feature of telling you exactly how many seats are still available – even if there are more than you asked for. But if I had searched for three seats in this particular search, it would have just come up “Not Available”.

Obviously this is useless if you are searching for three people, but say you wanted to fly a family of four and didn’t mind splitting into First and Business. If you see 2 seats available in each class, you know you can fly your family – something you wouldn’t have known if you had searched for four people. It’d be even easier than solving the Wolf and Ferry puzzle!

2. You rarely see itineraries longer than two legs

You may have been wondering why I always search one ways. The reality is British Airways rarely (if ever, I can’t remember an instance) displays itineraries longer than two legs. But three leg itineraries are legal in almost every circumstance so you’re losing out if you just limit yourself to what British Airways shows you.

British Airways doesn't show any space from LAX to Rome — British Airways doesn’t show any space from LAX to Rome (click to enlarge)

British Airways also will often not show you mixed cabin itineraries – so if you have a transatlantic leg in business and can connect to a short one hour intra Europe leg in economy you won’t see it on British Airways’ website.

Searching for your award segment by segment using one way searches solves this problem. It makes an already tedious search engine even more difficult but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. If you don’t have the time to search yourself you can always hire someone to do it for you (or me!).

3. It’s generally best to search for first class

When you search for first class, the British Airways website will generally show you availability in all classes below that. So I start my searches with first class. Of course, this backfires sometimes, for some reason there are times when the website won’t show economy as available when it actually is if you start by searching for first. So if I’m searching specifically for economy I’ll just search for that. Like I said, the British Airways website isn’t ideal – but I find searching for first class limits headaches more often than not in my personal searches.

4. When changing dates, the calendar is wonky

If you’ve started a search and want to change dates, when you click on the pop up calendar, the date will type in as the European system instead of the American one (i.e., DD/MM/YY). This will cause the British Airways website to search for space on the wrong date or more often than not, a date that doesn’t exist. To circumvent this I just type in the date myself. It’s just a little thing that can save you some time if you’re using the website heavily for searches.

If you look closely you'll see the mistake the calendar makes (click to enlarge) — If you look closely you’ll see the mistake the calendar makes (click to enlarge)

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this post has helped make the British Airways award search tool a little less painful. Remember, I’d recommend only using the website for partners American doesn’t cover. No need to bang your head against a wall when AA has a perfectly good search engine – if they picked up all Oneworld carriers I’d just say goodbye to ba.com forever. I’ll update this with any more tips I think of if necessary. In the meantime, happy booking and as always feel free to shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment if you have a question, I’m happy to help! And remember, just because you’re searching for award space on ba.com doesn’t mean you need to book it there.

Index

Part I: Know Why Award Tickets Exist

Part II: Know Your Award Types and Charts

Part III: Know Your Airline Alliances and Partners

Part IV: Using Wikipedia to Determine Alliance Partners

Part V: Using united.com to Search for Star Alliance Award Space

Part VI: Using ANA to Search for Star Alliance Space

Part VII: Searching for Award Space Segment by Segment

Part VIII: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on aa.com

Part IX: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on ba.com

Part X: Using Wikipedia to Determine Airline Routes

Part XI: Searching Skyteam Award Space using Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue Website

Part XII: Tips for Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com

Part XIII: Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com (Advanced Techniques)

Jul 25 2014

Save money on cash flights with 24 hour cancellation policies

Disclosure: I may receive a commission for some of the credit card links in this article

Some people aren’t aware that DOT Regulations mandate that airlines give you a 24 hour period after purchase in which to cancel your ticket with no penalties. What this means is that airlines have de facto 24 hour cancellation policies. I recently used this to my advantage to save some money on a cash ticket.

The Scenario

Jess and I are going to a wedding on the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend in Los Angeles, but we both need to be back at work on Tuesday. What that means is that we need to fly back on Monday, Labor Day itself, aka one of the busiest travel days of the year. For the outbound, I tacked on a reward flight to our current Germany trip as a free one way.

So I was only looking for a return flight. Although I have kept an eye on award tickets, unless the price was extravagant, I was going to limit myself mostly to cash (which I ended up doing). We also were leaning towards nonstop flights and wanted to avoid redeyes, although we were willing to forego those conditions for the right price.

Using American Airlines’ 24 hour hold policy

My original goal was to book one way flights on American Airlines. I have some e-certificates that I bought and was reimbursed for using the American Express Platinum Card’s airline benefit. To comply with the DOT regulations, AA allows you to place a ticket on hold for 24 hours before you purchase it, essentially locking in the price for a day.

I’ve been monitoring airfares over the last two months using Kayak, and there were a couple of one connection flights on AA that were close to $200 (which is the bar I mentally set for myself). Supposedly the lowest fares are generally around the 6-8 week mark, so I knew my best chance at a low fare would be on this trip.

The 24 hour hold is a great thing (click to enlarge)

Using the AA 24 hour hold is simple, you just go through like a normal booking and when it comes time to pick your payment option just select “24 hour hold.” It’s that simple. I put a couple of fares on hold over the last two weeks but for one reason or another never pulled the trigger. That ended up working out. Two things worth noting:

– Generally AA says that the hold is good until midnight Pacific time the next day (at least that’s the message I was getting)

– Once you buy the ticket, all cancellation fees are in effect. The 24 hour hold is in place of free cancellation. So don’t get that twisted.

Utilizing Delta’s 24 Hour Free Cancellation Policy

I never ended up pulling the trigger with AA and the prices started rising so I felt like I had lost out. But then last night I saw Delta had a fare for $249 per person, nonstop. At this point, flying home nonstop and getting home on time had become more important to us, so I pulled the trigger.

Canceling on Delta is super simple (click to enlarge)

What then happened was I woke up this morning and saw Delta had the same flight for $208! Instead of shaking my fist at the sky, I just calmly pulled up my reservation on delta.com, cancelled it, and rebooked with the lower fare. So I saved $82 in just a few clicks.

Why did that work? Because Delta allows you to cancel for free for 24 hours. So in the end, I saved a bunch of money, get to fly nonstop, and finally got to redeem my points from my Barclaycard Arrival Plus World MasterCard®. Huzzah.

24 hour Cancellation Policies can save you money

Hopefully my experience illustrates how some due diligence and knowing of the rules can save you some money. Obviously I just lucked out that Delta dropped the fare overnight (and I’m sure there’s some fare matching thing I could have done but it was just easier to cancel and rebook). But still, 24 hour cancellation policies can take a little bit of the sting out of the airfare guessing game.

Here are the policies of some of the major US airlines. Note these policies only apply to itineraries booked directly through the airline:

Alaska – free 24 hour cancellation

American – 24 hour HOLD before purchase

Delta – free 24 hour cancellation

Jetblue – free 24 hour cancellation (unless flight booked less than 7 days before departure)

Southwest – no change fees as far as I can tell, though does not apply for international travel

United – free 24 hour cancellation

US Airways – free 24 hour cancellation

Virgin America – can hold for 24 hours or free 24 hour cancellation

Final Thoughts

Don’t forget you have 24 hours to cancel a bad booking. Not only can this save you money on travel you have to take, it can also save money if you bought a flight impulsively! Or something. For me personally, it’s always nice to know I have that safety net. Happy flying!

Purchasing the second ticket may or may not have triggered a little mini-app-o-rama too... — Purchasing the second ticket may or may not have triggered a little mini-app-o-rama too…

Jul 21 2014

The Easiest Way to Prevent Miles from Expiring

File this under “things most people in the game know already”. Award Wallet recently sent me a reminder that Jess’ United miles are expiring soon, so I needed to do something to make sure they didn’t. I certainly wasn’t going to buy a plane ticket, but there is an easy way to keep your miles from expiring: sign up for dining programs.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it basically goes like this – you dine at a restaurant enrolled in the dining program and you get a few miles to pad your account. The restaurant drums up a little extra incentive for you to go, credit card companies give you a reason not to pay with cash, frequent flyer programs keep you on the hook, and you get a few miles. Everybody wins. Anyway, it took me fifteen minutes to stop Jess’ miles from expiring in three easy steps.

1) Sign Jess up for United’s Dining Program

2) Buy lunch

3) Profit

It would have taken less than fifteen minutes but I hit traffic. It really is that simple. Now, admittedly, I don’t do the administrative work necessary to keep up with this and make sure I get points for all my eligible dining transactions. With the amount of time I have these days, that’d probably be a penny wise pound foolish sort of thing if I tried it. But, when miles are expiring, I find this is the easiest way to keep them active. Oh, and please don’t ever let miles expire. Please. If I had missed this I might have taken drastic measures.

Mileage Plus Dining promotion — These kinds of promotions are always good when they’re running

Here’s links to the four main US Carrier’s dining programs – if you need to do this look for promotions sometimes you can squeeze an extra thousand or so miles out of the deal.

Anyone have even easier ways to keep miles from expiring?

P.S. – They’re all run by the same company so you can’t sign the same card up for four programs and quadruple dip – nice idea though!