Tag Archives for award availability.
United Airlines probably does the best job of making additional award space available to elite members (even Silver) along with cobrand credit card customers. That extra inventory is real.
What a lot of American AAdvantage members don’t realize is that Executive Platinum (and Concierge Key) members also have extra award availability.
I reached out to Hyatt when I couldn’t find a single standard room for the entirety of the next 13 months. Some properties ‘game the program’ with minimum stay requirements for a paid or award standard room so it was possible I wasn’t seeing space that was actually available. I wanted to know whether it was possible to get an free night award at this property, and if so how would one go about doing so?
Hyatt offered that the hotel is “in compliance with offering free night awards when standard rate rooms are available.” But here’s the trick they’re pulling simply not offering standard rooms for sale most of the time.
Qatar has one of the best business class product in the world in its ‘QSuites’. These are revolutionary suites with doors and movable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space.
Right now there’s fantastic award availability booking for 2023. You can use this for travel from the U.S. to Doha and beyond to the Mideast, India, the Maldives and elsewhere.
Delta business class award space between New York JFK and Frankfurt is reasonably available between May and December 7 at the saver level. You can book these seats right now for just 39,000 points each way.
Conrad Bora Nora Nui is one of Hilton’s most aspirational points redemptions, and free night awards can be extremely hard to get.
As of this writing though redemptions are available the first 10 days of December consecutively and the last 10 days of January And every day in March and April – as well as reasonable availability in other months.
Turkish Airlines offers great business class award space on most of its flights between the U.S. and Istanbul, even for four or more passengers, through end of schedule and especially end of 2022 and early 2023. Turkish serves more countries than any other airline they’re a great way to connect to see much of the world. Their Boeing 787s have their best business class product.
Iberia business class awards are wide open for two passengers between New York JFK and Madrid. There’s quite a bit of space in November and December, but things really open up for January and February 2023.
Two business class award seats are available a majority of days that the flight operates, between its launch October 5 and the end of the published schedule at the beginning of March.
Qantas business class awards are broadly available in November and December between Los Angeles and Melbourne. Getting business class awards US – Australia can be catch as catch can at best, and Qantas is notoriously stingy with space. That’s doubly true during the November – March period.
“Fifth freedom” routes are sometimes the easiest to book on miles, and the most fun to fly. Emirates, the Dubai-based carrier, actually operates two flights between the U.S. and Europe – New York JFK to Milan and Newark to Athens. And the Newark – Athens flight is wide open for awards in business class.
Moreover, while Emirates’ program often charges quite a lot of miles for first class, relatively short distances like U.S. – Europe in business class are quite reasonable. In fact this one is a steal at just 90,000 miles roundtrip and $220.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
