Originally Posted by
PHXflier
Or as the flight is well in the future you can just wait for (likely) price reductions, or consider alternate airports. For example, from SDF (Louisville KY) or MDW (Chicago Midway) to ABQ the Z award fare is priced such that you can get two tickets for 156K or 157K miles in April.
FC awards on IND-ABQ start at 80K miles roundtrip, SDF-ABQ is slightly cheaper at 78K miles roundtrip, MDW-ABQ is higher at 86K miles roundtrip. These are all before Amex 15% discount.
It's more about flexibility of dates than which airport you fly out of. These cheaper award levels require Tue/Wed/Sat travel and flying on other days of the week will always result in higher award levels. Cheaper revenue FC fares have same fare rule requirements as award levels are fairly heavily coordinated with revenue fares these days. Both in terms of fare rule requirements and bucket availability.
Coorelation is pretty obvious with both a Delta and Google Flights calendar view fare search.
