Originally Posted by gleff
I have never booked an award 330 days out. I have never failed to get the award I needed.
No disrespect intended, but I doubt your experience is typical, particularly if you have top airline status which often permits rules to be "ignored" or "special" inventory to magically appear.
Have you tried to book a trip to TLV on CO using a saver award several months out? Or perhaps to Hawaii on 2-3 months notice? Good luck.
Originally Posted by gleff
If you're looking for a basic roundtrip award with a year's notice and you have miles in one program to use, why outsource the redemption?
Because awardplanner claims to have special expertise in such matters. One wonders what exactly that means if AP doesn't take advantage of the new inventory loads at the 330 day mark. I guess they just tell the client "sorry, we tried" when the seats disappear...
Originally Posted by gleff
It seems to me that the value in a service like AwardPlanner is that they will be familiar with all the potential partners that an airline program has, helping you figure out how to piece together different carriers for a complex itinerary... and that they'll do the searching when there are several different routings only some of which are likely to have space.
Agreed. AP could definitely pay for itself by saving customers hours on the phone with CSRs particularly some of the outsourced ones who are clueless
Originally Posted by gleff
The person who will stay up until midnight to book a straight return award probably isn't the target market for the service...
Clearly. As MileKing suggests, the best option for savvy FTers is to try your own hand with reservations at the 330 day mark, and use AP as a fallback option if you continue to strike out.
I personally have had good success booking many FF trips on UA and AA
both domestic and international, and very little on CO or US.
