Tag Archives for award availability.
Delta Air Lines is offering generous business class saver award availability on its New York JFK – Zurich flight in November. Here’s availability for four passengers using 50,000 Virgin Atlantic miles apiece to take this Delta flight.
Etihad business class award space has opened wide up. Etihad has business class award space broadly available from New York JFK, Chicago O’Hare, and Washington Dulles to their Abu Dhabi hub. You can use that to get to India, the Maldives, the Mideast or really much of where you’d want to go.
More space is bookable via Air Canada than American AAdvantage or Etihad’s own program at the saver level.
United Airlines hasn’t been showing award seats that are being offered by their Star Alliance airline partner Air New Zealand. Air New Zealand publishes the award availability, and it can be seen by other airlines. But you won’t find the seats at United.com and the airline’s agents will tell you there’s nothing available.
Fortunately United claims this is a glitch, rather than intentional, and one they hope to resolve quickly.
Australia business class awards are some of the toughest around. That was true before the pandemic. It’s even more true now, with flights full generally and with not all service restored yet. For instance, American Airlines isn’t flying to Sydney again yet. Add in that Australians were banned from even leaving their country for a year and a half, and demand has been unprecedented.
I managed to score Air Canada business class saver seats for my trip Down Under in June, but that was one of a couple of times when availability seemed to pop up as a glitch. If you want to travel in a premium cabin to Australia it is very very hard right now. But there is one way. And some of you will find this amazing.
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 at the end of the booking window. You can use this for travel from the U.S. to Doha and beyond to the Mideast, India, the Maldives and even to Africa. And you can book it with American and Alaska miles or points transferred from American Express, Chase, Capital One, Citibank or Bilt.
Singapore Airlines doesn’t just fly to Singapore. They have two routes that operate between the U.S. and Europe (offering continuing service to Singapore, but you can use these flights to travel on a top-notch carrier just to Europe if you wish)
Hyatt’s Hôtel du Louvre in Paris all of a sudden stopped offering free night awards on points. Searching for stays, it appears the King Standard Room was gone entirely, and all rooms at the hotel that were for sale came with views. And those rooms aren’t standard rooms eligible for redemption. I reached out to Hyatt to see what was going on, and whether the hotel was compliant with Hyatt’s rules since I wasn’t able to find a single free night award in the coming year. Up until the end of May awards were easy to come by. Hyatt shares that the issue is the hotel’s renovation, specifically affecting the base level rooms at the hotel. [S]tandard rooms are more limited right now as many have been removed from inventory during some external renovations to…
Point.me lets you search award space across pretty much every airline, shows you the best way to book a flight, with the lowest prices, and which points to use, and even walks you through the process – click by click – of transferring points and creating your booking (this is the past I like the best).
Singapore Airlines saver award space is wide open for those who want to travel business class between the U.S. and Europe. It’s available starting August and running all the way through end of schedule in June 2023. And it’s available on both transatlantic routes that Singapore Airlines flies.
With flights selling out it’s tough to get awards, especially in business class and especially for more than a passenger or two. That’s why it’s such a great time to book any winter Europe travel. It may be off-season but it’s also when destinations aren’t overrun with European tourists.
Star Alliance award space for four or more passengers is widely available between New York and several cities in Europe for January through March.
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 »
