Question
When traveling for pleasure my timing is very flexible. Some airline web sites are better than others in showing which days have award seats available (because availability is constantly shifting), and I know of no easy way to watch for seats, particularly at the lowest levels. Is there one? Once someone--maybe it was Randy--had a service where for a fee they would keep checking for you and because of their expertise they would know alternative routings to check. Does such a service exist today, beyond the free help and advice on FlyerTalk?
-- Michael

Answer
Thanks for the question Michael, and you have tactfully brought to life the fact that indeed airline Web sites are not all uniformly good when it comes to members being able to easily search and redeem awards online. One reason this might be is that regardless of the experience, would any of us actually change from one frequent flyer program to another just for the sake of a better functioning Web site award calendar? Not likely.

A few frequent flyer programs such as American AAdvantage have improved their user interface (UI) in recent releases to make award searches easier and more intuitive. But I think what you are referring to are simple tools that really would provide better customer service and increase the satisfaction of loyalty.

If you and I were the boss of the programs, my guess is we’d like the industry to adopt some of the following as minimal standards:
A calendar view of up to one month per screen, depending on the selected mode, which would highlight a one-way display mode +/-7 days and
a one-way combinable mode +/-15 days. It would also support all types of trips, domestic/international/one-way/roundtrip and multi-stop itineraries. In addition, you could search for multi-carrier flights to see a display of airline partner flights--and of course, and that means all their current partners, not just some. And since we’re the boss, it would display the actual miles/points necessary for the redemption (in cases such as spilt awards) and any and all taxes that would apply to the booking directly on the calendar. Furthermore, it would calculate the total miles/points based on a total redemption basis when looking for multiple awards across differing award levels. And before we have to step down, as the boss we would request that the flyer’s standby award basis would be listed as well as award wait-listing and call back (actually email/text back) with the airline system checking daily for you if the awards you wanted were not available at the time of the original request.

Since neither of us are the boss now, we’ll have to settle for the realization that over time many of these wishes will likely come about. But looking at what’s available today, there is some help available when it comes time to redeem your awards.

First of all, the easiest--watching for award seats to open up. Other than logging in daily and resubmitting your award request hoping something has changed since the last time you looked, there’s basically two options: AwardPlanner by MileageManager.com and ExpertFlyer.com.

These two options operate slightly different and let me explain.
The AwardPlanner by MileageManager service is part of a paid mileage manager service so you actually get far more for your investment since MileageManager manages your frequent flyer accounts—including help with expiring miles. AwardPlanner, a dedicated award tool, allows you to search for award seats from all the programs in which you have miles—making it a one-stop shop for watching for award seats. If the tool is unable to find your award seats at the time of your request, it will put your request into a queue and re-check daily for you until it finds an award seat and will then notify you via email. If planning in advance, you can let this tool run daily for you for several months. It has a really good track record of actually finding award seats (for when airlines change award inventory or other members change their plans). It is often preferred because it is looking at the actual awards you may be eligible for. For example, most programs set aside a differing and more generous selection of awards based upon your status with the airline. The cost is $14.95 annually and the list of programs includes most if not all major U.S. programs and several European and Asia programs.

The other option, ExpertFlyer.com is far more expensive than the other solution at $99.95 annually, but this service has one unique advantage over the other and that is that it also looks at upgrade awards in addition to standard award availability. And it also offers the same type of email notices as the other one.

So, these two services can greatly assist you with watching for award seats, particularly at the lowest levels as they search daily for changes to the award inventory.

And the final part of your question I think refers to other types of services beyond the alerts I’ve noted above. Yes, I did at one time offer a service for a fee to assist members with award redemption. It was highly popular and operated for many years with great results. But I discontinued it about two years ago to concentrate on technology solutions.

However, the good news is that at least two enterprising groups now offer services similar to an award travel agent. Both are run by extremely knowledgeable individuals who are up to the task of securing the award seats you want. Typically these services are best used when searching for multiple business and first class seats internationally. They know the partners, the odds of success and how to re-route you through the right hubs to get access to the award seats you want. Not inexpensive, but neither is having to purchase a ticket to wherever you may be going. I have seen excellent references and results for both services but like all things in life … “your actual mileage may vary.”

The first is BookyourAward.com and the second is available as part of the MileageManager.com service as one of two options of the AwardPlanner service. The good thing about this is that with the tool included in your AwardPlanner membership, you can use the AwardPlanner tool first to find and waitlist your award searches and if that doesn’t work, you can choose to use the paid service. If I were not able to find my own awards, I would not hesitate to use either service and actually have recommended them to close personal friends of mine that I did not have time to help.

Anyway, unless we both become the boss of all frequent flyer programs, these are the current tested options for smoothing the way toward your frequent flyer awards. Oh, one more thing … but don’t ever underestimate the type of help and advice you’ll get on FlyerTalk. You can’t go wrong there.