Booking Award Travel with Points

[NMTraveller]

I have been trying to see how many points it would cost me for a flight from DPS to LAX.  When I try to book using the apps and the latest date 330 days out, I am not seeing much award availablility.  I am trying to book on Cathay Pacific or American Airlines.  American Airlines used to have pages and pages of flights available for award travel.  Any idea what the issue is?  I don't need to book now, just trying to figure out what airline to book in January and to make sure that I have the points.  American Airlines only had several flights that were overly long.  When I try to book Cathay Pacific and American with cash all kinds of flights show up.

 

Now on the other hand I do find United Flights that I can book and that have availability with points.

[CruiserBruce]

Each airline program has its idiosyncratic properties. The restrictions and limitations due to Covid don't help...as airlines have not returned to full capacities, and thus some are not making as many options available as they did in the past.

 

Just booked a one way SFO-AMS, and a CDG-SFO return for wife and I next June, on United. There were pages and pages of options, although many were far less than desirable, due to multiple connections or long layovers. So the choices were there, although I did notice fewer on United partner airlines.

[FlyerTalker]

OK...time to give away a few secrets and help out.  This may run a bit long, but it will be worth it.

 

One of the first things necessary before any kind of award searching is to lay out the parameters.  This includes:

 

Possible origin cities (such as when you live between Philadelphia and Washington)

Possible destination cities (such as wanting to go to Frankfurt, but where else would be OK)

Range of flight dates

Acceptable number and length of connections

and the most important - What travel "currencies" do you have to work with

 

Why the last one?  Because it only works if you have currencies that can buy you a ticket.  It seems that the OP has AA Advantage miles.  Those won't work to buy a ticket on an ANA flight to Asia.  Same with UA Mileage Plus miles - those won't get you onto Cathay.  On the other hand, "convertible currencies" take on higher value because you can transfer them to multiple possible programs.  American Express, Chase, Citi, Capital One and Marriott points all can be transferred into tens of programs.  One big caveat - once you transfer those points out of Amex et al, you can't move them back in - so be sure you have an award before you make the move.

 

Acceptable number of connections -- how willing are you to be inconvenienced along the way?  Is getting the award worth the that extra time?  I have an award ticket that adds about 4 thousand miles to the overall trip - is it worth it?  Yes - because I am in a good business class seat with an awesome airline lounge in the middle for 8 hours.  Where I will dine quite well, have a spa massage, shower and nap.  In some ways, that's better than a shorter trip.

 

Range of flight dates - you will find much better availability if you are flexible.  Fact of life.  Wanting a flight on a single specific date kills many opportunities.

 

Choice of cities - here it is critical to open your thinking.  For the OP's example - would you be willing to fly into SFO and get another ticket down to LAX?  How about departing from Jakarta rather than DPS?  Or Kuala Lumpur?  Often you need to consider a short positioning flight to get you to your long haul routing.

 

Now that you have your parameters set, decide how much you want to invest in your search.  There are a number of paid tools that can help you.  Expert Flyer, Award Nexus, KVS and PointMe to name a few.  But none of them are just point and click - you need to know what you are doing and how each tool can help.  I subscribe to them all and use them in combination.

 

Now, a few reality checks.  First is that airlines are moving away from fixed award charts to dynamic pricing of awards.  So this can hurt for knowing "how many miles will I need".  Turns out, you will need whatever they say you will need at that time.  Time to look at airlines still with charts, such as Alaska, ANA, Avianca and other foreign carriers.  Which is why convertible currencies are valuable - you can take advantage of their charts, which you can't if you are redeeming from UA or AA or DL.

 

Next is that award inventory is not just dumped on the first day out.  That too has gone dynamic - no longer is it a race to grab the seats as soon as the schedule is loaded.  Airlines use their revenue management programs to allocate award seats as they determine they are unlikely to be sold for cash.  So your search timing has gone from 330 out to now a daily process.  Which is why tools can help.

 

Another gotcha is married segments.  In years gone by, if you found availability for each separate leg of a trip, you could patch them together into one award.  Now, those same revenue management programs sometime implement "married segments", which means that you need to have availability for the combined routing.  Or vice versa.  For example -- I found award availability for Tahiti to Los Angeles via SFO.  However, that same flight from just PPT to SFO had no availability.  Why?  Because the programs determined that they were more likely to sell the nonstop segment than the PPT-SFO-LAX connection, so they made the connect available but not the nonstop.  Seems illogical but there is is.  (BTW, the flight PPT-SFO-LAX priced out for less cash than just PPT-SFO, so there was some rational basis at work)

 

Other cases are that partner award seats don't show up in searches on the airline website.  This is VERY big with Delta - the inventory is there, but they don't show it.  Why?  Because DL wants to push their own flights with their corresponding high redemption costs.  An example -- flying between LAX and MEX, you will often only see awards on DL metal when searching on the DL website.  But the awards show up on the Aeromexico site, and in some of the tools.  They are bookable with SkyPesos at a low rate, but only if you call to ask for the inventory and booking, not through the website.  Alaska Airlines does not show Cathay awards on their website, even though they are bookable by phone.  So you need to be a detective rather than just going to AA.com (or similar)

 

Another case is the issue of finding more than one seat for an award.  Sometimes that just never can happen.  For example, Cathay never released more than one first class seat for award between LAX and HKG.  So Mrs FT and I booked on separate flights.  Other times, we flew on subsequent days, so that each could get a premium award seat.  I'd meet her at the airport when she got in the next day.  So what if we are apart for some hours.  Be flexible in whether you MUST travel together.

 

Finally, if you don't want to go through this process, you can always hire a booking service that will do the legwork for you.

 

Bottom line -- it takes work.  Rarely will you just click and get your optimum routing and best pricing.

 

If anyone has specific questions, please feel free to ask.

 

 

[fbgd]

1 hour ago, FlyerTalker said:

Finally, if you don't want to go through this process, you can always hire a booking service that will do the legwork for you.

 

Bottom line -- it takes work.  Rarely will you just click and get your optimum routing and best pricing.

 

Excellent summary but this is worth quoting...

 

I consider myself above average in terms of my knowledge of frequent flyer programs, miles etc. but I have used a booking service a couple of times because frankly I value my time and at a certain point it's easier to hand things off to someone who knows what they are doing, not only for searching initially but "servicing the itinerary". On one of my trips the person running the service spotted availability that showed up and proactively rebooked my flights within minutes whilst I was asleep (I was in Hong Kong and they were in Southern California).  

 

I've used the booking services when the wife and I have had millions of miles/points across multiple sets of transferrable currencies and when going on much longer trips (NYC to SE Asia) where the options can be many in terms direction, airlines, stopovers, etc. Keeping completely abreast of all the sweetspots in terms of rules and such can be horribly time consuming.

Edited August 17, 2022 by fbgd

[FlyerTalker]

Yes, you are absolutely correct.  That's another one of those parameters that I probably should have mentioned at the start.  It's all part of the tradeoffs you have to consider - for some, we have the time and interest to put in that effort.  For others, such as yourself, the value in that effort sometimes isn't worth the corresponding costs.  And that decision varies for each individual AND each circumstance.

 

As an old economics professor of mine once said "All life is a continuing series of cost/benefit decisions in an environment of scarcity".  Pretty much sums it up when you think about it.

[GeezerCouple]

7 hours ago, fbgd said:

 

Excellent summary but this is worth quoting...

 

I consider myself above average in terms of my knowledge of frequent flyer programs, miles etc. but I have used a booking service a couple of times because frankly I value my time and at a certain point it's easier to hand things off to someone who knows what they are doing, not only for searching initially but "servicing the itinerary". On one of my trips the person running the service spotted availability that showed up and proactively rebooked my flights within minutes whilst I was asleep (I was in Hong Kong and they were in Southern California).  

 

I've used the booking services when the wife and I have had millions of miles/points across multiple sets of transferrable currencies and when going on much longer trips (NYC to SE Asia) where the options can be many in terms direction, airlines, stopovers, etc. Keeping completely abreast of all the sweetspots in terms of rules and such can be horribly time consuming.

 

This ^^

 

We now use a service all the time. 

Not only is it "easier", but it turned out that he was able to find some airlines and routes that we never would have thought of.

We've had wonderful awards flights on JAL, FX, CX, BA, and other major international airlines in F, and J (business class) in even more airlines, some of which have no first class at all (so it wasn't a matter of "availability").

 

We found out about him on www.FlyerTalk.com.  We had used a different awards service once, the first time, and it worked okay.  The second time we tried to useu them, it was a disaster... unpleasant and we never did get any seats.

So we switched to a new service that had better reviews on FT.

 

And it turned out that he's also a regular travel agent, so he's started making some of our hotel reservations as well.  He can get perks for us at some luxury hotels that are similar to the Amex Plat perks... similar but not identical.

(We even had the good fortune to meet him in person early on.  That helped a lot, learning that he wasn't a bot, etc. 😉   Because he was helping us with hotels, too, he knew where we'd be and that he'd be in the same city for a couple of overlapping days.)

 

The fee is very modest in our minds, for the level of comfort we get for what could be many, many hours of travel.

 

By now, he has our account numbers, both for awards and for charge cards, plus our Frequent Flyer/Awards numbers for the programs.

He also knows what types of seats or airlines we want, or in some cases, that we absolutely do NOT want.

So... given that some of those precious seats can vanish quickly, when we are working on a specific itinerary, we give him some alternates (e.g., one day later is okay, but not one day earlier), we'll just tell him, "If you can get something we'd want, just GET THEM please!"  if he can't reach us.

(The very worst case would be that we'd have to pay some change or re-banking fees, but that's never happened.)

 

He's also occasionally discussed some alternative routes/airlines, to ask if they'd be acceptable if available.  Sometimes those worked out to be terrific trips; other times, we said "thanks, but absolutely no".

 

Thus far, there hasn't been a single trip that he couldn't work his magic on for us!

 

By the way, the history of our use of awards services was sort of funny.  For our first major trip using "points", I was able to get us 2 F seats to Tokyo on my first search.

"Hey, THIS IS EASY!" I thought to myself.  HA!  The joke was on me.  I had NO luck finding the return tickets.  Zippo.  And we did want to return home, at least eventually.......

 

Those seats are so special for us, and we would *not* fly ultra long haul in anything other than flat bed, except in an emergency.  (When we were younger, it never occurred to us to fly in the "back of the plane".  Now, life is different, as are our aging bodies...)  So now we automatically send our requests to him, and he may have some other questions or suggestions.  And then we wait, usually not long at all...

 

Happy Travels!!

 

GC

[NMTraveller]

On 8/17/2022 at 6:49 AM, FlyerTalker said:

OK...time to give away a few secrets and help out.  This may run a bit long, but it will be worth it.

 

One of the first things necessary before any kind of award searching is to lay out the parameters.  This includes:

 

Possible origin cities (such as when you live between Philadelphia and Washington)

Possible destination cities (such as wanting to go to Frankfurt, but where else would be OK)

Range of flight dates

Acceptable number and length of connections

and the most important - What travel "currencies" do you have to work with

 

Why the last one?  Because it only works if you have currencies that can buy you a ticket.  It seems that the OP has AA Advantage miles.  Those won't work to buy a ticket on an ANA flight to Asia.  Same with UA Mileage Plus miles - those won't get you onto Cathay.  On the other hand, "convertible currencies" take on higher value because you can transfer them to multiple possible programs.  American Express, Chase, Citi, Capital One and Marriott points all can be transferred into tens of programs.  One big caveat - once you transfer those points out of Amex et al, you can't move them back in - so be sure you have an award before you make the move.

 

Acceptable number of connections -- how willing are you to be inconvenienced along the way?  Is getting the award worth the that extra time?  I have an award ticket that adds about 4 thousand miles to the overall trip - is it worth it?  Yes - because I am in a good business class seat with an awesome airline lounge in the middle for 8 hours.  Where I will dine quite well, have a spa massage, shower and nap.  In some ways, that's better than a shorter trip.

 

Range of flight dates - you will find much better availability if you are flexible.  Fact of life.  Wanting a flight on a single specific date kills many opportunities.

 

Choice of cities - here it is critical to open your thinking.  For the OP's example - would you be willing to fly into SFO and get another ticket down to LAX?  How about departing from Jakarta rather than DPS?  Or Kuala Lumpur?  Often you need to consider a short positioning flight to get you to your long haul routing.

 

Now that you have your parameters set, decide how much you want to invest in your search.  There are a number of paid tools that can help you.  Expert Flyer, Award Nexus, KVS and PointMe to name a few.  But none of them are just point and click - you need to know what you are doing and how each tool can help.  I subscribe to them all and use them in combination.

 

Now, a few reality checks.  First is that airlines are moving away from fixed award charts to dynamic pricing of awards.  So this can hurt for knowing "how many miles will I need".  Turns out, you will need whatever they say you will need at that time.  Time to look at airlines still with charts, such as Alaska, ANA, Avianca and other foreign carriers.  Which is why convertible currencies are valuable - you can take advantage of their charts, which you can't if you are redeeming from UA or AA or DL.

 

Next is that award inventory is not just dumped on the first day out.  That too has gone dynamic - no longer is it a race to grab the seats as soon as the schedule is loaded.  Airlines use their revenue management programs to allocate award seats as they determine they are unlikely to be sold for cash.  So your search timing has gone from 330 out to now a daily process.  Which is why tools can help.

 

Another gotcha is married segments.  In years gone by, if you found availability for each separate leg of a trip, you could patch them together into one award.  Now, those same revenue management programs sometime implement "married segments", which means that you need to have availability for the combined routing.  Or vice versa.  For example -- I found award availability for Tahiti to Los Angeles via SFO.  However, that same flight from just PPT to SFO had no availability.  Why?  Because the programs determined that they were more likely to sell the nonstop segment than the PPT-SFO-LAX connection, so they made the connect available but not the nonstop.  Seems illogical but there is is.  (BTW, the flight PPT-SFO-LAX priced out for less cash than just PPT-SFO, so there was some rational basis at work)

 

Other cases are that partner award seats don't show up in searches on the airline website.  This is VERY big with Delta - the inventory is there, but they don't show it.  Why?  Because DL wants to push their own flights with their corresponding high redemption costs.  An example -- flying between LAX and MEX, you will often only see awards on DL metal when searching on the DL website.  But the awards show up on the Aeromexico site, and in some of the tools.  They are bookable with SkyPesos at a low rate, but only if you call to ask for the inventory and booking, not through the website.  Alaska Airlines does not show Cathay awards on their website, even though they are bookable by phone.  So you need to be a detective rather than just going to AA.com (or similar)

 

Another case is the issue of finding more than one seat for an award.  Sometimes that just never can happen.  For example, Cathay never released more than one first class seat for award between LAX and HKG.  So Mrs FT and I booked on separate flights.  Other times, we flew on subsequent days, so that each could get a premium award seat.  I'd meet her at the airport when she got in the next day.  So what if we are apart for some hours.  Be flexible in whether you MUST travel together.

 

Finally, if you don't want to go through this process, you can always hire a booking service that will do the legwork for you.

 

Bottom line -- it takes work.  Rarely will you just click and get your optimum routing and best pricing.

 

If anyone has specific questions, please feel free to ask.

 

 

Thanks.  I will take a look at some of the paid tools and see how they can help.

 

Also I was not aware that they had booking services using frequent flier miles.  Any recommendations on which ones to use or how to find one?  Perhaps a rough idea of how much they charge?

[NMTraveller]

I have an Expert Flyer question now.  When I log in to Expert Flyer I see a flight that would be fairly good.

However when I use the AA app to try to book it, it does not show up.  The flight is a fly in in the evening and take the remaining flight out the next day.  Is this still bookable with AA?  Do I need to call vs book with the app?  Do I need to book using separate flights?

[Bo1953]

On 8/17/2022 at 9:49 AM, FlyerTalker said:

OK...time to give away a few secrets and help out.  This may run a bit long, but it will be worth it.

 

One of the first things necessary before any kind of award searching is to lay out the parameters.  This includes:

 

Possible origin cities (such as when you live between Philadelphia and Washington)

Possible destination cities (such as wanting to go to Frankfurt, but where else would be OK)

Range of flight dates

Acceptable number and length of connections

and the most important - What travel "currencies" do you have to work with

 

Why the last one?  Because it only works if you have currencies that can buy you a ticket.  It seems that the OP has AA Advantage miles.  Those won't work to buy a ticket on an ANA flight to Asia.  Same with UA Mileage Plus miles - those won't get you onto Cathay.  On the other hand, "convertible currencies" take on higher value because you can transfer them to multiple possible programs.  American Express, Chase, Citi, Capital One and Marriott points all can be transferred into tens of programs.  One big caveat - once you transfer those points out of Amex et al, you can't move them back in - so be sure you have an award before you make the move.

 

Acceptable number of connections -- how willing are you to be inconvenienced along the way?  Is getting the award worth the that extra time?  I have an award ticket that adds about 4 thousand miles to the overall trip - is it worth it?  Yes - because I am in a good business class seat with an awesome airline lounge in the middle for 8 hours.  Where I will dine quite well, have a spa massage, shower and nap.  In some ways, that's better than a shorter trip.

 

Range of flight dates - you will find much better availability if you are flexible.  Fact of life.  Wanting a flight on a single specific date kills many opportunities.

 

Choice of cities - here it is critical to open your thinking.  For the OP's example - would you be willing to fly into SFO and get another ticket down to LAX?  How about departing from Jakarta rather than DPS?  Or Kuala Lumpur?  Often you need to consider a short positioning flight to get you to your long haul routing.

 

Now that you have your parameters set, decide how much you want to invest in your search.  There are a number of paid tools that can help you.  Expert Flyer, Award Nexus, KVS and PointMe to name a few.  But none of them are just point and click - you need to know what you are doing and how each tool can help.  I subscribe to them all and use them in combination.

 

Now, a few reality checks.  First is that airlines are moving away from fixed award charts to dynamic pricing of awards.  So this can hurt for knowing "how many miles will I need".  Turns out, you will need whatever they say you will need at that time.  Time to look at airlines still with charts, such as Alaska, ANA, Avianca and other foreign carriers.  Which is why convertible currencies are valuable - you can take advantage of their charts, which you can't if you are redeeming from UA or AA or DL.

 

Next is that award inventory is not just dumped on the first day out.  That too has gone dynamic - no longer is it a race to grab the seats as soon as the schedule is loaded.  Airlines use their revenue management programs to allocate award seats as they determine they are unlikely to be sold for cash.  So your search timing has gone from 330 out to now a daily process.  Which is why tools can help.

 

Another gotcha is married segments.  In years gone by, if you found availability for each separate leg of a trip, you could patch them together into one award.  Now, those same revenue management programs sometime implement "married segments", which means that you need to have availability for the combined routing.  Or vice versa.  For example -- I found award availability for Tahiti to Los Angeles via SFO.  However, that same flight from just PPT to SFO had no availability.  Why?  Because the programs determined that they were more likely to sell the nonstop segment than the PPT-SFO-LAX connection, so they made the connect available but not the nonstop.  Seems illogical but there is is.  (BTW, the flight PPT-SFO-LAX priced out for less cash than just PPT-SFO, so there was some rational basis at work)

 

Other cases are that partner award seats don't show up in searches on the airline website.  This is VERY big with Delta - the inventory is there, but they don't show it.  Why?  Because DL wants to push their own flights with their corresponding high redemption costs.  An example -- flying between LAX and MEX, you will often only see awards on DL metal when searching on the DL website.  But the awards show up on the Aeromexico site, and in some of the tools.  They are bookable with SkyPesos at a low rate, but only if you call to ask for the inventory and booking, not through the website.  Alaska Airlines does not show Cathay awards on their website, even though they are bookable by phone.  So you need to be a detective rather than just going to AA.com (or similar)

 

Another case is the issue of finding more than one seat for an award.  Sometimes that just never can happen.  For example, Cathay never released more than one first class seat for award between LAX and HKG.  So Mrs FT and I booked on separate flights.  Other times, we flew on subsequent days, so that each could get a premium award seat.  I'd meet her at the airport when she got in the next day.  So what if we are apart for some hours.  Be flexible in whether you MUST travel together.

 

Finally, if you don't want to go through this process, you can always hire a booking service that will do the legwork for you.

 

Bottom line -- it takes work.  Rarely will you just click and get your optimum routing and best pricing.

 

If anyone has specific questions, please feel free to ask.

ft - when shall I forward my info for you to do a search and booking for us??? 😎

 

Thank you and bon voyage

[FlyerTalker]

10 hours ago, NMTraveller said:

I have an Expert Flyer question now.  When I log in to Expert Flyer I see a flight that would be fairly good.

However when I use the AA app to try to book it, it does not show up.  The flight is a fly in in the evening and take the remaining flight out the next day.  Is this still bookable with AA?  Do I need to call vs book with the app?  Do I need to book using separate flights?

 

If you can give me some specifics, I can try and track it down for you.  There may be an issue with married segments, or with the forced overnight.  And FWIW, it seems to me that the AA app is not as comprehensive as the website, so you might get better results that way.  Personally, I never book a trip (award or revenue) through an airline phone/tablet app.  Always do it from a computer and the airline website - unless I'm mid-trip and facing irops for a rebooking.

[FlyerTalker]

50 minutes ago, Bo1953 said:

ft - when shall I forward my info for you to do a search and booking for us??? 😎

 

For you, I'll drop my usual fee from $5000 per booking to only $2000.  🙂

 

Where you going?  I can pass along thoughts.

 

 

 

[Bo1953]

18 minutes ago, FlyerTalker said:

 

For you, I'll drop my usual fee from $5000 per booking to only $2000.  🙂

 

Where you going?  I can pass along thoughts.

ft - thank you so much for your generosity and sage input, yet our travel time is a ways off and would be PHL or BWI to BCN return ROM to PHL or BWI.

 

Dates 30 Aug 2023 - 14 Sep 2023.

 

Any information to help me prepare and I think I could save enough using you vs doing it myself.... LOL

 

bon voyage

Edited August 19, 2022 by Bo1953

[FlyerTalker]

Bo -- it's too early to be looking, as schedules aren't out.

 

First off....what kind of "currency" do you have? 

 

Now, to some options:  The AA nonstop from PHL will probably have minimal to no seats available, as revenue pax have a greater demand for that.  OTOH, you may find better inventory through JFK or MIA with Iberia.  Iberia will sometimes have award sales to MAD or BCN, but you will need to have Avios to redeem.  Also, you will want to have an existing BA account AND an IB account to facilitate the transfers into Avios.  You will need those to be "active" for a while before attempting transfers.  And know that Avios are transferable between BA and IB, so you can use them wherever you get the best bang.

 

As mentioned, you should also look at awards into MAD - if you can't get to BCN (especially around "cruise day") consider MAD and either a positioning flight or the train.  Another thought - taking TAP through Lisbon.  They are part of Star, whereas IB and BA are in OneWorld.

 

Of course, the currencies you have available are a big driver of where you should look.  If you have DL SkyPesos, be prepared for high redemption costs, and probable flights with AF or KL.

 

More thoughts as you get into the actual booking windows.

 

[NMTraveller]

On 8/19/2022 at 7:01 AM, FlyerTalker said:

 

If you can give me some specifics, I can try and track it down for you.  There may be an issue with married segments, or with the forced overnight.  And FWIW, it seems to me that the AA app is not as comprehensive as the website, so you might get better results that way.  Personally, I never book a trip (award or revenue) through an airline phone/tablet app.  Always do it from a computer and the airline website - unless I'm mid-trip and facing irops for a rebooking.

DPS to LAX or SFO.  Either would be fine.

 

OK.  I took a look today at Expert Flyer and whatever I saw the day before was gone.  So I don't have an example.  

 

I have points on AA ( a bunch), Cathay Pacific (some I would really like to burn before I have to use them up in a silly way), some on Qantas (not enough for their high redemption prices for this flight), some on Delta (but do not want to fly on China Airlines or to China), some on Singapore Airlines (enough for the flight out but could accumulate some more for a flight back), none on United but I could get some for the flight.

 

My criteria is shortest flight is best.  I can find flights that should be 21 hours but are 28 hours or longer due to stopovers in places that are out of the way.  I would do a fly in the night before for a positioning flight.  I am just dummy booking now to figure out where I need to accumulate points.

 

Right now the best flights (shortest) with points rewards are on United/Singapore air as far as what I am able to see or know where to look.

 

Any other recommendations on where to look?

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by NMTraveller

[Bo1953]

On 8/19/2022 at 7:10 PM, FlyerTalker said:

Bo -- it's too early to be looking, as schedules aren't out.

 

First off....what kind of "currency" do you have? 

 

Now, to some options:  The AA nonstop from PHL will probably have minimal to no seats available, as revenue pax have a greater demand for that.  OTOH, you may find better inventory through JFK or MIA with Iberia.  Iberia will sometimes have award sales to MAD or BCN, but you will need to have Avios to redeem.  Also, you will want to have an existing BA account AND an IB account to facilitate the transfers into Avios.  You will need those to be "active" for a while before attempting transfers.  And know that Avios are transferable between BA and IB, so you can use them wherever you get the best bang.

 

As mentioned, you should also look at awards into MAD - if you can't get to BCN (especially around "cruise day") consider MAD and either a positioning flight or the train.  Another thought - taking TAP through Lisbon.  They are part of Star, whereas IB and BA are in OneWorld.

 

Of course, the currencies you have available are a big driver of where you should look.  If you have DL SkyPesos, be prepared for high redemption costs, and probable flights with AF or KL.

 

More thoughts as you get into the actual booking windows.

 

FT - the currencies I have at the moment are Chase Sapphire and BofA travel card...

 

Which can be transferred, yet do I need to have points in any of the accounts cited, how long must the account be opened before transferring points over... is this wise/advisable?

 

Thank you for your sage input...

 

bon voyage

[iancal]

The last time we redeemed our Delta points was for two one way tickets to Bangkok. 

 

We noticed two things.  First, the price....points and dollars changed from week to week (we were following the pricing). Up and down. 

 

Second, there were different prices for different flights on or about the same time. Those prices also varied by carrier. 

 

We opted for a Delta points award ticket on Korean Airlines. It required less points and less dollars.  About a third less points, half the price in dollars.

 

We were unable to complete the transaction for two people on line.  I assume it was a Korean AIr issue.  We called the Delta line and they promptly took care of this award booking.

 

As an aside, it was our fifth snowbird trip to Thailand.   The Korean Air trip was by far the best in terms of equipment, in flight service, etc and schedule.  The other bonus was Incheon Airport.  So much more enjoyable than that dumpty Narita.

[NMTraveller]

35 minutes ago, iancal said:

The last time we redeemed our Delta points was for two one way tickets to Bangkok. 

 

We noticed two things.  First, the price....points and dollars changed from week to week (we were following the pricing). Up and down. 

 

Second, there were different prices for different flights on or about the same time. Those prices also varied by carrier. 

 

We opted for a Delta points award ticket on Korean Airlines. It required less points and less dollars.  About a third less points, half the price in dollars.

 

We were unable to complete the transaction for two people on line.  I assume it was a Korean AIr issue.  We called the Delta line and they promptly took care of this award booking.

 

As an aside, it was our fifth snowbird trip to Thailand.   The Korean Air trip was by far the best in terms of equipment, in flight service, etc and schedule.  The other bonus was Incheon Airport.  So much more enjoyable than that dumpty Narita.

Thanks.  That will give me more choices.  It is about 2.5 hours more than some of the others but if the flights are available it is another choice.

[travelwell]

We needed flights to Auckland from Atlanta and back to Atlanta from Bali. We had what we thought was a lot of Am Ex points to cover the flights. Delta and co-chairs  wanted a ton of points even if we flew from the west coast to get to Auckland. But were able to transfer points to Hawaii from Atlanta for a fraction of points. We are staying two days in Hawaii and then transferred points to Hawaiian air to get the Auckland. The way  back we transferred points to Singapore air, you could get business class for 95000 points to LA. We decided to pay for the flight back to Atlanta. It helped to be flexible and retired. I did spend a lot of time researching. I have to say Singapore Air’s website a dream, Delta the worst.