Oneworld Archives - asthejoeflies

Aug 08 2014

The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part X: Using Wikipedia to Determine Airline Routes

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.

Did you know DPS Airport in Bali was a hub for Garuda? I certainly didn't but Wikipedia did — Did you know DPS Airport in Bali was a hub for Garuda? I certainly didn’t but Wikipedia did

I realized while starting another post that I missed one of the key skills necessary for booking your own awards. It’s a pretty simple concept and one many of you are likely familiar with so hopefully this one won’t be too long. Whenever you are booking awards and hopefully searching segment by segment, the challenge lies in answering this simple question: “Who flies where?”

Being able to answer that question gives an award booker a lot of power and flexibility to create great itineraries. Luckily, it’s a lot easier to figure that out when you think. You just need to return to our old friend, Wikipedia. Here’s a simple guide for how to figure out which airlines fly between which airports.

1. Search Wikipedia for the airport you are looking for

Let’s say you want to fly somewhere relatively difficult, like Bali. A simple google search should help you find this Wikipedia page for Bali’s airport (DPS).

2. Click “airlines and destinations” (or whatever looks most like that) to get a full list of the airlines that fly to that airport

Clicking airlines and destination will not only get you a list of airlines that fly to DPS, but it will also get you a list of the airports that these airlines fly to as well. Suddenly you know all the airports that fly into Bali and you know which airlines are just absolutely not an option.

Why look at all those airlines and destinations! (click to enlarge)

3. Double check the list of airlines with the list of alliance partners to determine whether you can book the tickets

Bali is a good example because there are a bunch of airlines that fly there that aren’t part of the three major alliances. So you have to search the list and know which airlines are partners of Star Alliance, Oneworld, or Skyteam (if you are using those miles to book).

That’s it! Honestly, learning to do this quickly and efficiently is one of the most important things you can do if you want to book your own awards. Once you get comfortable with this, you can start building your itineraries backwards segment by segment. For example, the Bali airport’s Wikipedia page tells me Cathay Pacific flies to Hong Kong. I then search Hong Kong’s airport and see Cathay flies to Chicago. Now I know a possible itinerary I can be looking for to get from the US to Bali – Chicago to Hong Kong to Bali on Cathay. This really helps you come up with ideas as you search for your award segment by segment. For the record, I find it as useful on domestic tickets as I do international.

Wikipedia will help you confirm this is a possible route you could take to Bali

Final Thoughts

Searching Wikipedia for airline destinations and routes is a simple but powerful tool that will help you a lot as you book your own awards. Know who flies where – that way you know where to search to get to where you want to go. Remember, when booking award tickets, the straightest path isn’t always a line – using Wikipedia to determine airline routes can be the difference between taking a slight detour or just staying home altogether.

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)

Aug 01 2014

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

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 14 2014

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

British Airways Dreamliner — If you want to search for British Airways award space, aa.com is the way to go

We’ve already reviewed how to search for Star Alliance space, so now it’s time to look at your options when it comes to booking Oneworld award space. This might be old hat for some of you but hopefully you can find something useful in it (or contribute useful information I missed in the comments!). Before we start – remember, you can use miles in any Oneworld partner to book award travel on any other partner; e.g., you could use AA miles to book on British Airways and vice versa. Just make sure you know your alliances and partners. Then you just gotta figure out how to search for space!

I generally use two websites when searching for Oneworld award space (for free) – aa.com and britishairways.com. Qantas has the most comprehensive search engine, but I really don’t like it so I’m not going to talk about it here, but know that it is an option.

American Airline’s website shows availability for the following Oneworld airlines – American, Air Berlin, British Airways, Finnair, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, and US Airways. It will also show you availability for Alaska and Hawaiian although those are not Oneworld (but Alaska and British Airways are partners). Searching for award space on aa.com is fairly straightforward – you don’t even have to leave the homepage.

Searching for AA award space online — Click redeem miles and you can search for one way or roundtrip award space right from the homepage (click to enlarge)

Everything from there is pretty straightforward, though I would note two things in particular. First, in like 90% of cases, you only want to look for sAAver space. There will always be AAnytime space if there is a seat available on the flight but generally the value is AAwful. It might help out in a pinch, but after AA introduced tiered AAnytime awards the value proposition is even worse, since during peak times its likely AAnytime awards will be priced at the most expensive tier. I can only see AAnytime awards saving money MAYBE if you need to fly last minute for an emergency.

Secondly, though it’s right there, just in case you’re unaware there’s a feature where you can see a whole month of award space at once. Pretty useful.

American Airlines Award search calendar — Being able to search an entire month at once is very useful (click to enlarge)

aa.com is super straightforward and easy to use. The problem – and it’s a big one – is that it doesn’t cover all of Oneworld. That stinks for two reasons.

1) The best online search engine won’t find all the flights available to you

2) You can’t book flights you can’t find online with AA, and it’ll cost you money to book it over the phone

That’s really too bad. To search for award space on the Oneworld partners not searchable on aa.com, I like to use britishairways.com. It’s clunky, but I still think it’s the best option. We’ll take a look at that next time. Until then, if you’re serious about booking your own awards, I recommend trying to put some dummy awards together: practice makes perfect!

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