Tag Archives for award availability.
Right now saver awards are available for Singapore Airlines new suites on the longest route where the airline operates the Airbus A380: London – Singapore Right now there are about 80 saver award seats between the two cities over a two month period.
Air France KLM is offering great award space between the U.S. and Europe for this coming summer. There are plenty of routes and dates where you can book business class awards for at least four passengers.
Often Air France and KLM awards can be booked using their own Flying Blue miles – easy to get, they’re a transfer partner of American Express, Chase, Citibank, and Capital One – however in this case most flights appear even to be bookable using Delta SkyMiles as well (Delta is an American Express transfer).
The ability to use American AAdvantage miles at the saver level without significant fuel surcharges is a relative rarity and worth jumping on.
oneworld carrier Iberia – owned by British Airways parent IAG – is starting new summer seasonal service between Washington Dulles and Madrid five times a week, effective May 1. The flight will be operated by an Airbus A330-300 with 29 business class, 21 premium economy, and 242 coach seats.
Business class saver awards can be a challenge using American AAdvantage miles. American rarely releases saver inventory on their own planes, and they don’t have as many partners as United does (Star Alliance is bigger than oneworld).
Finding business class awards for more than one or two people is even harder. So when there’s business class award space to Asia for a family of four that’s really notable.
The Hyatt Centric Waikiki says they have ‘fewer than 20’ standard rooms, which means that less than 9% of their rooms are standard rooms and eligible for World of Hyatt redemption. However I couldn’t find a single date where they were making rooms available at all.
I reached out to Hyatt to see whether the property was in compliance with program rules for making standard rooms available on points whenever they were offered on cash. I also asked whether Hyatt has rules for any minimum percentage of rooms that must be considered standard?
This is some amazing availability. In general it confirms my impressions that West Coast routes are hard (though look at Los Angeles!), and that non-daily routes to secondary cities are tough, but otherwise you’ll find better award space on BA than on most other airlines.
When US Airways management took over at American they brought with them a revenue management philosophy of making far less award space available. However they’ve made efforts to make more economy award space available, bidding for space based on a fare value of miles.
International business class is another matter, even on the most lightly booked of flights.
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 »
