Searching for Award Availability

Ok, you’ve opened up some credit cards and now have lots of miles. Hooray! Now what? They say that collecting miles is only half the battle – actually using them can possibly be even harder! So, how do you use those miles? How do you know if you’re using them in the best way?

Let’s start with some background and then we’ll get into the actual steps of searching for award availability.

Assuming you know where you want to travel, the first step is to figure out what airlines fly the route. Google flights is really helpful here. Checking off the “non-stop” option will limit your results to only the airlines that fly directly between 2 cities. (As an aside, if you’re ever curious what airlines fly from and what destinations are served by a particular airport, Wikipedia is a great resource for that, just search for the airport name or airport IATA code (e.g., JFK, DFW). If you don’t know the code, you can Google, “Buenos Aires airport code” to find out that it’s EZE.) Another option to help with routing that I recently learned about is FlightConnections, which is described really well in this Travel Codex article.

Now that you know what airline you want to fly, you need to find out if you have the right miles to fly them. If you have miles with a specific airline (aka “airline/miles currency”), then you know what you have to work with. But, if you have transferrable currencies – like Chase, Amex, Citi, SPG points – then your points can be sent to many different airline programs, expanding your possibilities. Here is an awesome chart to show you which bank points transfer to which airlines. It’s important to note that you don’t necessarily want to transfer your points to the actual airline that you want to fly with, as sometimes it can be cheaper to book the flight using a partner airline's miles. The idea is that you need to think about your trip as 2 separate airlines: One, the airline “metal” (as it’s called) that you’re actually flying on (i.e. you are sitting on a United airplane); Two, the airline that you are paying for the ticket (that’s whose miles you need to use). Sometimes, it will be the same airline for both, but many times it can be cheaper to use a partner airline to pay. For example, if you want to fly on American Airlines from New York to Miami, it will cost 12,500 American miles for one way in economy. However, you can fly on that same flight and pay with British Airways miles for only 7,500 miles. In that case, you’d want to transfer your points to British Airways instead of American. It’s not simple to always know the cheapest program to book with. The more you do it, the better you’ll get. AwardHacker is a good site to price out which program would be cheapest to book a specific flight. It’s not perfect – doesn’t always list all options – but it’s pretty good. A more manual process would be to first find all airlines that are partners with the one you want to fly and then Google each airline’s “award chart”. Most airlines have award charts that list the prices for flying from any region in the world to any other region. Sometimes they have separate charts for using miles to fly on their own airline metal and another chart for flying on their partners’ metals. FYI – this is not an easy step until you get familiar with all the programs and even then, airlines regularly devalue their programs, so there is a lot of research and information to stay on top of.

Now you know what airline(s) fly the route, and you know the cheapest airline currency to pay with, so how do you actually find award availability?

As opposed to cash prices, which fluctuate seemingly every day, most airlines have fixed award prices, meaning that there either is availability to use miles, or there isn’t. Availability can also change quite often depending on whether people cancel award tickets so those seats are back in inventory or the airline decides to release more seats to award inventory (perhaps if it’s close to departure and there are still a lot of seats unsold), so you need to be prepared to search often – even several times a day! While I have essentially explained availability as a “Yes/No” scenario, it does get a bit deeper. Basically every airline has a few different levels of fares that can be purchased with miles. Colloquially, they are referred to as “Saver” and “Standard” award prices. Saver is the cheapest price level that an airline offers and where you’ll get the most bang for your buck. You need the Saver level to be available on the airline you want to fly with in order to use partner miles to book the flight. Some airlines will even have several levels of Saver and Standard, but usually, only the lowest level of Saver provides a value that makes using miles worthwhile to pay for your flight, so that’s what you’re looking for. Saver prices are usually the ones you’ll see listed on those award charts described above. The tricky part with most airlines is that they don’t always differentiate between Saver and Standard (because they want consumers to just book at whatever price they see), so you have to know if the price your seeing is the lowest level or not (that takes us back to studying the award charts to get familiar with Saver prices, or using AwardHacker to verify).

How do you practically search for award space?

For US airlines, you can search directly on their websites. Fill out the departure and arrival cities and your dates and be sure to check off the box that says something like “Use Miles”. That will show you results for award space only and not any cash prices. I also usually search just “one way” at a time, since as opposed to cash prices, miles aren’t cheaper when booked as a roundtrip. I prefer to see if there is availability at least one way, because perhaps I can take a different airline on the return.

Here’s the “Miles” option on Delta.com

Let’s look at some search results from AA.com:

American shows 4 price levels, each indicated by the 4 colored boxes. The lowest level, called” Economy MileSAAver,” is what we called Saver until now and “Economy AAnytime” is what we called Standard. You can see that there are 2 dates that have Saver availability for 12.5K. The greyed out dates are all Standard prices and look at that range – all the way from 30K to 50K just for the one way flight! The blue boxes are for business class and work the same way as economy. While the United and Delta websites look different visually, searching and finding award space follows the same concept. However, they are a bit trickier as you can see on United’s website here:

United only shows 1 column for economy flights and says “lowest” which makes you think you’re getting the best deal. However as you can see, in that same column you have a flight for 12.5K and a flight for 25K. This is a recent change to the United website, and it’s showing both Saver and Standard prices/availability in the same column. Delta.com works in a similar way. If the first flight wasn’t available, you would only see the second one in your results, and you might think that 25K is the Saver level. Just another reason why it’s important to become familiar with Saver prices for different airlines/routes. To refresh something I mentioned above, if you wanted to use a partner’s miles for this flight, you could only use them for the first option since that one is Saver, but the partner would not be able to book the second option.

That covers the main US airlines: Search for availability on their own websites, but sometimes partners might be cheaper to book with.  In terms of searching for Saver availability on other airlines, it becomes important to learn where to best search for each one. The benefit of airline alliances and partnerships comes into play here as many partners can be searched for on these 3 main websites. Some airlines may show up on one of these sites, but may actually offer more availability on their own site to people who use their own miles to book, such as Lufthansa. Remember that if you’re trying to fly on Turkish, and you’ve found availability on United.com, that doesn’t mean the best way to book it is with either United or Turkish miles – it could be that a different partner, like Singapore, has the best rate! Some airlines’ availability can’t be searched for online at all, and you’ll have to call them up to see if there is space.

Finally, there are a few 3^rd party programs that can search for availability, most notably ExpertFlyer, which costs $100 a year. ExpertFlyer can’t search for every single airline, but it can handle a lot of them and most importantly, it can set alerts to email you if award space opens up! That feature is awesome and can save you time from having to repeatedly search for award space.

To finish this off, I’ll give some recommended airline websites that can search for more partners than the standard United, American and Delta:

•          Air Canada (Star Alliance)
•           British Airways (OneWorld Alliance)
•           Korean (SkyTeam Alliance)
•           Alaska (Not in an alliance, but partners with a lot of airlines)

      We covered a lot of sub topics here under "award availability," and there is much more that can be covered, but I hope you find this starter to be helpful!

Unfortunate Abuse of Southwest's Boarding Policy

If you've ever flown Southwest, you'll know that they have quite a unique boarding process. Instead of having the option to choose a specific seat on the plane ahead of time and then board the plane in any order, you are assigned a boarding position "number" that tells you when it'll be your turn to board the plane. Once on the plane, you can choose any open seat. I'm not here to discuss whether this process is more efficient than the classic system used by all the other airlines, but rather to tell you how I witnessed what I think to be an abuse of this system.

Let's first understand how Southwest's boarding process works. Exactly 24 hours before a flight, online check in becomes available. Racing to check in as early as possible is extremely valuable with Southwest because the earlier you check in (again, can't be before 24 hours), the higher boarding position you'll get. There are 3 boarding group labeled "A," "B," and "C," with each group containing 60 boarding position numbers. The A's will board first in order of 1 to 60, then the B's, etc. First, all the A's will line up by the columns (shown on the right side of this picture), which are numbered to tell you where to stand.

One will say 1-5, the next 5-10, etc. Once everyone from your group is lined up, everyone boards in order.

Because there are no guarantees as to what boarding position you'll get, Southwest offers a few options to help certain individuals. If you're willing to shell out cash, you can opt to pay for a more expensive, refundable ticket (what Southwest basically calls "Business Class"), and in turn, you'll be privy to be automatically assigned a boarding position in the first few A slots. Another way to buy yourself a good boarding position is to pay $12.50 for what they call "Early-Bird Check-In," which will also guarantee you a spot at the head of the A group.

However, if you don't want to pay extra and weren't able to snag a few boarding numbers in a row for yourself and your children, yet you understandably want to sit next to your children, Southwest will gladly allow you to board with your family after the A group boards before the B's get to go. Any family traveling with a child 4 years old or younger can board in this special group. Simply approach a gate agent while waiting for boarding to begin, and they'll make sure you're set up. Finally, if you have a disability, Southwest will give you the highest boarding priority of all and allow you to board even before the A group. Again, just find an agent to let them know.

So, where's the abuse?

On my flight EWR-DEN this week, I curiously noticed a group of about 20 kids (probably in the 12-14 age range) standing together right in front of the gate.

Immediately, I raised my eyebrows and said to my wife, "Watch, these kids are all going to get special boarding." Because I was heartily enjoying my Chinese food that I picked up on the way to the airport, I didn't notice when exactly this group boarded, but the kids never got in line, and they were definitely on the plane before us, who had B18-19. (Yes, I know terrible numbers, but I forgot to check in on time. :-( ) Once on the plane, I saw that this group was seated together about halfway back in the plane. That leads me to assume they didn't get full boarding priority before the A's, or else they would have been sitting in the first few rows, rather, I imagine they got to board between the A and B groups.

I understand that it's nice to let a family with 2 adults and a few kids to board together. In fact, I'm not sure why the cut-off age is 4 and not something higher. I'd have to research how they picked that age, because I'm quite certain I'd want my 5 year old sitting next to me and not some stranger as much as I'd want a 4 year old. But, how did this group of older kids get this priority - and why? Is it simply just going up to the agents and saying we'd like our group of kids to sit next to each other, can you help us out? I've been on a few Southwest flights that clearly had groups on them - you can tell when you see 20 friends at the boarding area all clearly coming back from a group ski trip or all wearing ties and jackets looking like they're on an classy sports team. Yet, both those times, the groups were split up - 2 sitting together here, 3 over there, 1 nearby, etc. How did this group pull it off and why were they allowed to. B18-19 should have gotten us 2 seats next to each other in the middle of the plane, not 3 rows from the back.

In the end of the day, sitting a few rows back just means getting off the plane a drop later, so I'm not complaining about that. I'm complaining about the principle of the matter. Once you make exceptions for people to board early that don't fit your established criteria, where do you draw the line?

My Thoughts On Spending Actual Money For Travel

On the road back from Pittsburgh over Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I decided to begin the drive Monday night, stay at a hotel, and continue back to New York first thing in the morning. We passed on the opportunity to drop 40K Hilton HHonors (HH) points for a Hampton Inn and decided to spend 20K InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) points on a Holiday Inn (and boy was it exhilarating booking a hotel as you're on the way driving to it!). Miles professionals will tell you that was a bad redemption because the hotel's cash rate that night was about $120, and 20K IHG is worth double that. So, why'd I do it?

I know that among the professionals in the blogs and forums I'm in the minority with my opinion here, but I thought I'd share my mindset with you. I warn you now, though, you are not about to be met with logical, rational thinking. Just emotions.

I don't like spending actual cash on travel.

(Image from Google Images, empoweredstudies.com)

Wait a second. Don't most people feel that way? Of course they do, but I'm not talking about holding back from spending $15K flying first class from New York to Frankfurt. I'm talking about flying first class from New York to Frankfurt and using 60,000 miles and paying $300 in fuel surcharges and taxes. I don't mind dropping $5.60 for fees on a domestic flight in the US, but those "large" taxes and fees make me think twice about the flight, despite the fact that the miles + cash might be an incredible steal. What makes something a "large" fee versus a "small" fee? That's exactly my point. It's subjective, and whether I'm willing to spend $100 in taxes, but not $400, is completely up to me.

Where does this stem from?

It's clear to me that it goes back to my childhood. My family was never from the fancy vacationers. We took awesome road trips all around the East Coast and only two or three times got on a plane and flew to Disney. Flying/traveling was something I always viewed as a luxury. If, one day, I made it to a financially comfortable place where I wouldn't notice dropping $2000/person for a cruise to the Carribean versus using that money to pay for my kid's tuition, then great, I'd go traveling. Otherwise, I would be completely fine with taking a short weekend road trip once or twice a year. With this mindset, I never expected to visit exotic islands or see the grand history of Europe. I hoped I'd be able to go on a honeymoon and that would be enough.

Enter DansDeals. When I learned that responsibly opening up credit cards and learning how to hit the spending bonuses to rack up miles can allow you to travel around the world for pennies on the dollar, my desire to travel was born. At the same time, I've stuck to my mindset of points/miles = free travel, and cash = paid travel. And, believe me, I've gotten my fair share of flak for it. Most pros in the game do not consider miles to be free, despite the fact that they often don't pay cash to earn those miles. And they're right. I'm just crazy. :-) Miles absolutely have a value. There are brokers that will pay you top dollar for your miles and there are airlines that will give you luxurious flights for your miles. They definitely have a value.

We're not going to get into the math of using your miles for a good redemption (such as a first class ticket to Hong Kong) versus a bad redemption (such as a cheap hotel night at a Hampton Inn that somehow costs 40K HH points). I try to use my miles for their "good uses," but I definitely am guilty of using points that were worth more than the cost of my hotel/flight. And I'm just fine with that. If we had to pay $120 cash for the ability to begin our drive at night and crash at a hotel, we would have just stayed at our hosts and left the next morning. The benefit to us was not worth $120. But it was worth free. And, despite the time and labor I put into earning my miles, in my mind, they mean "free" travel. It's just the way I view it. If miles are free, you may ask, then why didn't I just book the Hampton Inn for 40K HH and why don't I redeem my miles for double-the-price Standard Awards when Saver Awards are not available? I don't know. That's just too much. How do I decide what's too much? Well, that's up to me. :-)

SUCCESSFUL UPDATE: Hyatt's Seemingly Shady Practices To Offer Less Award Rooms

Since I wrote about this story last week, I realized I had a few details down incorrectly. Additionally, a few bloggers covered the topic as well, so I wanted to post an update with what's going on. I started writing this before there was a final resolution, so let's catch up on what's been going on.

First off, I had Hyatt's T&C quoted incorrectly. If you go to the Hyatt Gold Passport (HGP) overview page, you'll find the T&C I quoted last week:

Members are welcome to any available standard room when booking a free night award with no blackout dates.

I mentioned that The Points Guy quoted those T&C in his post about Hyatt not releasing award rooms properly, but honestly, it had been a while since I read his post, and I didn't realize that he had also quoted Hyatt's full T&C on the matter. The quote above is what you'll find if you happen upon the Hyatt page describing what their membership program is about. On that page, they conspicuously leave out one "minor" detail from their seemingly "generous" award booking policy. One would have to go to the full HGP T&C page, scroll down to the section on "Redeeming Points for Hyatt Gold Passport Awards" and read item number 3, which says:

Hyatt Gold Passport Free Night Awards apply when standard rooms are available at the Hyatt Daily Rate. Standard rooms are defined by each hotel and are not subject to blackout dates. Hyatt Gold Passport Free Night Awards cannot be redeemed for packages.

So now, you don't just need to find an empty standard room at the hotel, it also has to be offered at the standard "Hyatt Daily Rate". If you do a random search for hotel nights, you'll see that Hyatt (like all hotel chains) offers different rates for the same room called "packages," such as a breakfast or parking package. The full terms clearly indicate that even if a standard room is currently vacant for your night, it has to be offered at the base level price; if they're only available at special package rates, then you're out of luck. The T&C clearly don't hold Hyatt responsible for releasing award nights in this case. Is there anything you can do? Let's take a look at what other bloggers have written since I wrote about it last week.

1) In last week's post, I mentioned that Nick at One Mile At A Time wrote that he was having this issue at the Hyatt Olive 8 in Seattle. Standard rooms were only available as part of special packages, and therefore, not bookable with points.

2) Later that day, Travis from One Mile At A Time wrote that he was actually successful in booking that same Hyatt Olive 8. Originally, he faced the same issue that stonewalled Nick. So, what did he do? He called the special phone number for Hyatt Diamond members (their highest elite level), informed the rep about his great standing with Hyatt and convinced her to call the hotel directly to see if they would be willing to open up a room for him to book with points, and he was successful. In the past, I've heard that getting in touch with the right person at a hotel could work, but in my personal experience, I've never been successful. Is it crazy to think that perhaps his success was due to the fact that he has Diamond status? Travis wrote that he believes anyone probably could have done it. "Hmm..." is all I could say when I read that.

3) In the meanwhile, I blogged my story and sent out a tweet. I was humbled the next day to find that the Senior Vice President of HGP, Jeff Zidell, actually responded to me!

@creditcardmogul @HyattTweets Summer is a very busy time in Seattle, and they have the US Open. Regardless, we are checking into it.

— Jeff Zidell (@jeffzidell) May 28, 2015

What does "checking into it" mean? I'm not sure, but it was nice to know that he cared enough to at least let me know he was looking into it.

4) Nick then wrote a follow up post where he announced that award space was back open for the Hyatt Olive 8, the same hotel that had no availability just a day earlier! Whether it was his and Travis' posting on a very popular travel blog or perhaps my calling Jeff Zidell's attention to it (hehe, look at me thinking I'm a big shot), it seems like the standard rooms were "freed" from their special rate packages and were now bookable with points. Nick never really explained what actually "did it," but hey, whatever it was, it worked.

5) The final blogger who I saw mention this issue was Mommy Points, who wrote that she was having the same issue I hypothesized about in my original post, but at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines near Austin, Texas. As someone who had stayed at this hotel many times in the past, she felt that a conspicously high amount of rooms were being called by new names - names that would change the room from a standard room to a "special" room, exempting it from being able to be booked by award members. In my original post, I mentioned that I felt the Andaz Maui was perhaps doing that by calling some of their standard rooms "Mountain View" rooms, while in reality, those rooms are just regular rooms with the same views as the hotel's official standard room, the "Garden View" room. Mind you, Jeff Zidell kindly replied to Mommy Points' tweet as well, telling her he's looking into it.

BUT FINALLY, I have some great news!!

For a little while now, I've been looking at specific dates at the Andaz Maui, yet no award nights have become available. I get it. It's the summer, and Hawaii is always a popular destination. BUT, from my little research here, I realized that the standard "Garden View" rooms were in fact available (and not completely sold out) if booked as a special package - the same issue Nick faced. After too many unsuccessful calls to HGP trying to convince them to open the rooms (even though I admitted that I knew the T&C said that rooms available as part of a package don't have to be released to award bookings) or to have the rep call the hotel directly and perhaps convince them to open the rooms, I decided to try my luck myself at the hotel. I had previously attempted this, but gave up after the front desk clerk couldn't help. This time I made sure not to just deal with the front desk clerk, but to get in touch with someone of higher authority. After listening to me and checking out the situation, he agreed to open up a Garden View room even though they were currently only available to cash customers as part of a special package!!

Wow. I honestly did not believe I would be able to follow up this story with a super happy ending, but I sure am glad to be able to!

So, what's going on at Hyatt? 3 different properties (and even more based on the comments on some of these blogs) have seemingly been holding back award rooms - either by possibly changing the names of some of their standard rooms or by locking in those rooms as special cash packages. Because we don't know how many standard rooms a hotel has and how many of those rooms are actually already booked, these issues are not really resolved just yet, and we'll likely never know if - and to what extent - a hotel is "locking" those rooms against award bookings. However, in those scenarios, calling the Hyatt Diamond line (if you have the status) or the hotel directly and trying to get through to the right person might just help you succeed in your quest for an award stay.

Can British Airways Avios Really Book Every American Airlines MileSAAver Flight?

If you're familiar with the British Airways (BA) Avios miles program, you know that Avios can book domestic-US flights on OneWorld Alliance partner American Airlines (AA) (and their recently merged airline US Airways) for fewer miles than AA will charge for the same flight. AA charges 12,500 miles for all domestic one-way coach tickets, but because Avios is a distance-based program, shorter-distance flights can be much less than 12,500. The amount of miles you need is based on the distance you are traveling. For example, NYC-MIA falls in the distance bracket that's only 7,500 Avios (a savings of 5,000 miles!), and NYC-CLE falls in the smallest bracket at just 4,500 Avios (a savings of 8,000 miles)! But, this isn't a post about the program; it's about phantom availability - a term used when you see available award space, but the airline can't book it.

Normally to find availability, you go on AA.com and search for the flight you want. In the results, you'll see AA shows different colors boxes, representing different award redemption levels. Take a look at this screenshot:

Avios is supposed to be able book any flight that shows up as MileSAAver (AA's cheapest redemption level) - that's the light green for coach (yes, even though it says 12,500 miles - that's if you pay with AA miles, remember you're on their website) and light blue for business. Click on the light blue box, and the calendar will update with all dates that business MileSAAver flights are available. (The AAnytime awards are much more expensive than MileSAAver and cannot be booked by partner airlines, like BA. You can see a few examples of AAnytime in the screenshot. The days with gray boxes that say "25K" are days when MileSAAver is not available, but AAnytime is.) Once you find a flight you want with MileSAAver space, you can go to BA.com, search for the flight there and book it. Why search on AA.com first? AA.com has a better calendar/search capability. You can see a month's availability at a time versus having to go day by day on BA.com. Additionally, there's one more benefit, which is the crux of this post.

Sometimes, AA.com will show MileSAAver space for a flight, but the followup search on BA.com won't show that space. Although it's a hiccup, it's not the worst thing, because you should be able to just call BA (unfortunately, they usually have a long hold time), and a phone rep can usually see the space and book it for you. However, 2 weeks ago, I came across an anomaly.

My wife and I were planning to visit friends in Pittsburgh for Memorial Day Weekend and the Jewish holiday of Shavuos (which coincided with Memorial Day this year). Obviously, Avios was the way to go as NYC-PIT is just 4,500 Avios per person each way. The round-trip would cost us 18,000 Avios total. If we were to pay with AA miles for the same flight, it would be 12,500 per person each way, for a total of 50,000 miles! What a steal, eh!? I always search flights one-way at a time since many award search engines won't show all availability if you search round-trips. It's easier usually to just search for your flight one leg at a time. So, finding a flight with MileSAAver space was not a problem for the outbound, and BA.com was showing the flight as well. However, I found a flight with MileSAAver for the return, but BA.com wasn't finding it. I knew that this happens, so I called up BA.com to book it on the phone. As expected, the rep saw the space and started booking it. However, when he tried pricing it out and ticketing it, it wouldn't ticket. He got an error that said the flight was not in inventory. I called several times over the next few days, spoke to reps and managers, but nada. No one could get the ticket to book. Calling AA didn't help either. Their reps obviously saw the space, but had no suggestion as to why BA couldn't book it. My last attempt was trying to convince a BA rep to call their "contact" at AA and figure out why it wasn't showing up in their inventory, but alas, that failed as well.

We ended up driving to Pittsburgh, about a 6.5 hour drive, and had a wonderful holiday weekend, but boy was the flight situation frustrating.

So, was this a one-time glitch, or can Avios really not book every available AA MileSAAver flight?