Tagging Miles

The Basics of Searching for Award Space

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It is very easy to get into intermediate and expert territory when it comes to finding award space and booking awards. That can sometimes be intimidating. This is my attempt at boiling down the very basics of searching for award space

I’ll start with a couple of assumptions:

  • You know where you want to go, at least roughly.
  • You have sufficient miles.
  • I’ll use Chicago, O’Hare to Bali, Indonesia (a nice aspirational destination) as the example.

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 1 – Know what airlines fly to your destination

Identify the airlines that fly to your desired destination. You’d be amazed at how many times I decide to go to a particular place, only to find out that while I wanted to fly on a particular airline (or miles), they prove to be difficult because either (a) the partner airline that flies charges fuel surcharges, or (b) no partner airlines release space, or (c) no partner airlines fly to that particular airport / city (like Star Alliance abandoning Cambodia)

To identify what airlines fly to your desired destination, I recommend using OpenFlights, which I’ve written about before, but be aware that it may not make the distinction between seasonal and regular flights (or what specific days an airline flies).

Below, you can see, for example, all of the routes that you can take to get to Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia:

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Routes to/from Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia, courtesy of OpenFlights.org

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 2 – Know what airlines fly from home (or close by)

You’re probably noticing the trend here. I always recommend that you break your award search into each leg. The key to any award travel search is to break a trip up into its component pieces, assuming you cannot fly non-stop. Then I usually search for the over water portion first. Now this logic may not necessarily work when booking on some airline sites, like United’s new routing rules and engine. But for the most part, you’ll notice that overwater flights are the hardest to find.

So for getting from Chicago to Indonesia, you will for the most part be looking for TransPacific (TPAC) flights. 

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Trans Pacific (TPAC) options via gcmap.com

 

The exception, of course is United, which might come up with an option via Europe.

Basics of searching for award travel

United via Europe Option

Your chosen airline or alliance will limit your options—unless you have plenty of miles in various transferrable currencies). 

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 3 – Connecting the Dots

So now you know how you can get from Chicago to Asia, and you know what options you can connect onward to Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia.

The most logical option, if you have the flexibility, would be to focus on those one-stop itineraries, which would be:

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Chicago to Denpasar with different alliances: Blue: OneWorld, Red: Star Alliance, Gold: SkyTeam

Now, logically that’s easiest to work with. If you have to work with connections, well, now you start to run up against the risk of agents telling you that what you want is a multiple award trip. That would be leaning more toward an intermediate level. So, we’ll go ahead and leave things here.

Please, share your questions – how can I improve this first level basics of searching for awards?

PSA: Always book one-way awards

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I'll be flying this baby soon enough!

I’ll be flying this baby soon enough!

This may come as a surprise to some, and be common sense to others, but I thought I’d share a brief post about the benefits of one-way awards.

You see, the benefit of one-way awards is that you can change the outbound without changing the inbound and vice versa. Sometimes, when you try to change one direction of a round trip, you have to release your seat on the direction you aren’t changing, which incurs risk that said seat / award availability may in fact either get scooped up or not go back into inventory in time for you to scoop it back up.

There are some airlines that only allow round trip awards, and for those, you really don’t have a choice. But for airlines like American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, the price is the same whether you book it as two one-way awards or a round trip award (other than perhaps any ticketing fees that American Airlines wants to throw at you).

There are also some airlines that give you additional benefits if you do a round trip, like United on their awards. If you plan to leverage those benefits (like stopovers), then by all means, book a round trip, but beware of the risks, if you plan to tweak your reservation in the future.

The Bottom Line

If you think you might make changes to an award trip, then try to book your trip as one-way awards, unless you’re leveraging something only available for round trip awards. Reason being, is that you can tweak one direction without putting the other direction at risk. It keeps things simple.

Book these US Airways Awards before 28 Feb

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New American

Its approaching the end of February, and lets be honest, we all have a bit of that dread, as we await the merging of two great programs: American AAdvantage, and US Airways Dividend Miles. Whether or not we have any reason to protest this matrimony of frequent flier programs is immaterial at this point, the Department of Justice gave its blessing, and we must live with that. Its not bad, and it might be good. But, let us take a moment to consider what awards are just too good to last.

Miles Remaining has a great post on some of US Airways’ Award Sweet Spots. In fact, it was this post that made me think that there might be some other routes worth looking at.

Perhaps the best US Airways award Caribbean to South and Central Asia

Caribbean to South Asia

You could fly from the Caribbean to South and Central Asia (which includes Afghanistan–a garden destination if ever there was one–, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Chagos-??–India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, or Vietnam). So, yeah the map only shows Bangkok, Thailand, but you could get a lot out of a ticket from the Caribbean to South or Central Asia. Last I checked you could even get a stopover at a OneWorld hub, either in the US (essentially getting a second vacation if you can leverage miles or a one-way fare to the Caribbean), or enroute, perhaps in Hong Kong for example.

The miles required (round trip) are:

  • 60k Economy vs. 70k on the AA Chart
  • 90k Business vs. 110k on the AA Chart
  • 120k First vs. 135k on the AA Chart

If you’re able to fly on long haul Cathay Pacific, then that extra 30k for First Class round trip is probably worth it. Although I hear their business class is just as good. As far as other partners, I’d avoid Japan Airlines’ 787 in business until they roll out their new fully lay flat product. Right now I think their 787 product (even to the US on long haul flights) is comparable to what I flew from Japan to Beijing.

South Pacific to South Pacific

According to Drew at Travel is Free, you could theoretically start in Guam and fly to somewhere like Auckland, routing via Asia with a stop-over, something like this:

South Pacific

Now I haven’t flown this type of route myself, but, it looks interesting enough.

The miles required (round trip) are:

  • 25k Economy vs. 40k on the AA Chart
  • 30k Business vs. 60k on the AA Chart
  • 40k First vs. 85k on the AA Chart

The one caveat is that there isn’t a whole lot of first class metal available. Last I checked, for example, both Qantas and Cathay Pacific flew only business class from Hong Kong to Sydney. It does look like Japan Airlines operates a 777-300ER aircraft with first – in fact, from Seat Guru it looks like a nice first class with only 1-1-1 as opposed to the usual 1-2-1 that most airlines do.

Around the Middle East

Perhaps you’re looking for something fun in the Middle East. Well, you could fly, for example, from Cairo, Egypt, to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and have a stopover in either Amman, Jordan, or Doha, Qatar (the two OneWorld hubs). Award space is generally easier to find on Royal Jordanian, just hope your flight is better than Lucky’s.

Middle East

This is a veritable steal, compared to American. Especially when you look at the marginal costs from Economy to Business (assuming you can find it), or First. Further, for a routing like Doha to Cairo, if you choose your flights right you can fly on layflats on Qatar’s 777-300ERs. You could even fly on the 787 from Doha to Dubai–although that’s just an hour flight.

The miles required (round trip) are:

  • 30k Economy vs. 35k on the AA Chart
  • 35k Business vs. 50k on the AA Chart
  • 45k First vs. 70k on the AA Chart

Off Peak fares

You can book fares between the Continental U.S. (including Alaska) or Canada to the Caribbean.

US Airways Off Peak Caribbean

Conclusion

There are some great sweet spots on the US Airways chart, while it lasts. And while many of these look pretty cool, the real sweet spot is when you can make an award work for you. Hopefully some can work for you.

Are there any sweet spots you’re taking advantage of before Dividend Miles and AAdvantage merge?

Note: All maps are generated from www.gcmap.com

Grabbing the Brass Ring

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Brass Ring

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have learned many lessons in life. I’ve learned many lessons from my father. But the most important lesson that I’ve learned from my father, is to always grab the brass ring – the idea that if there’s an opportunity, you need to grab it, because you don’t know when you’ll have that opportunity again. Many of my posts on this blog are my way of sharing those “brass rings” if you will.

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