sea_flyer_17

I have a trip where I am having a hard time finding partner award availability from SEA to anywhere in Europe manually for the days I want, much less the cities I really want. I知 happy to position once in Europe, so I知 curious - Are there any search engines capable of doing a broader search for Alaska availability (with partners) for a given date to a broad range of cities? I知 picturing something like Google Flights which lets you price from Seattle to Europe or a country, not just a given destination city. (Does this exist for any airline mileage program?)

Thanks!

PV_Premier

Not possible really outside of google flights, as far as i know. ITAMatrix allows you to enter a bunch of cities on origin/destination lines. But obviously both of those are revenue booking platforms, not award.

The general best practice with AS miles (and all miles for that matter) is to search segment by segment, searching the longest segments first (ie, US->EU).

Don't forget about the possibility of connecting in Canada...SJC...SAN...and other second tier cities that have partner nonstop service...

beckoa

Or Mexico.

smilee

sea_flyer_17, I hate to tell you this, but Alaska points are often not great value for booking to Europe. Tifffany or Ben, I cannot remember who, at One Mile at a time, once wrote a piece about the sweet spots of Alaska Airline points. Anyhow the sweet spot they listed was (NOTE most of the sweet spots only have a couple of seats per year on a route)
You will notice the only Europe is Icelandair which offers 'domestic' first style seats, but gives an option to stop in Iceland.. If you find availability, and purchase miles at the current 40% off sale, that is about a $2500 'points' ticket. Depending where you want to go you can just outright purchase a business class ticket in that price range that may earn miles too.

Alaska Air is not the best for Europe destinations, as they don't have great partners. And unfortunately the new mileageplan loosing so many members, it is harder then ever to 'purchase' a business class ticket with a member that earns AS miles. (In the past I have earned many AS miles purchasing tickets to Europe and flying KLM, Air France, Delta and American)

Now if you are willing to value your AS miles closer to the 1 cent range, Europe is not too bad on British Airways,. There is an excellent tool British Airways tool, that allows you to search a year at a time that is very quick. British Airways has excellent availability from London to most places in Europe, but finding availability to Europe is do able, and there are a handful of dates in the summer from Seattle and other west coast areas like LA, Phoenix, and SFO for example. BUT remember redeeming on BA is only going to get you about a 1 cent redemption as you also will pay nearly $1000 tax/fee which many people on this board probably would agree with me is a value that they like to redeem their AS points for more then a penny each.

sea_flyer_17

Smilee,

thanks for for details on that, but a couple of things
1) I totally get the sweet spot argument, but for many of us, we have destinations in mind and only enough miles In a given mileage plan (in my case, get to Europe and I have miles on AS due to a couple years of flying them or partners nearly exclusively). Well, I also have Chase points, but not enough). So understanding how to be able to utilize even if not a sweet spot is important

2) Condor is same miles amount to IcelandAir there and a nicer business, right? (albeit still not top-tier); so I壇 add that to the list. For that matter, AA can still be found for only 57.5K (of course finding it is part of my original question).


For all of these, it would be easier if you could mix partners to better be able to connect the dots.

sea_flyer_17

bigbirdwithsilverwings

Brilliant find on the BA tool. Many thanks for sharing it!!

beckoa

I've got a USA-MEX-EUR ticketed currently. So yes.

willyplur

ralph4878

Are you willing to position yourself elsewhere on the West Coast?
BA has several directs to LHR out of LAX and SFO; AF/KLM to CDG/AMS (though not sure if you are leaving soon...); and AY has a direct to HEL out of SFO (though who knows when that'll be bookable!).
Not ideal, but you may find better availability out of the larger international airports on the West Coast over to Europe.

smilee

Condor – they will have pretty good availability on non-stop service to Frankfurt. It doesn’t take too long to search Alaska’s website to look for a calendar of dates in business class and set North American departure cities to Frankfurt. Condor cities in N.A. that you can easily get to with AS miles such as Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary, Portland, Anchorage, Austin and Phoenix.

(Possibly Minneapolis, Austin but there is little availability on AS SEA-MSP or SEA-AUS in F without overnights or routes with lots of coach)

Again the thing is value. Adding the taxes/fees and the cheap price you can purchase a business class ticket – I think MSP-FRA is selling for $1700 return, and at that rate you are often only getting about 1 cent per mile which may be OK with you.

I realize that you are trying to see what tools can easily get you to your goal and value may not be the top goal. I also realize that some people don’t worry about getting great value from your miles, and just being able to redeem is value too, and in that case paying $1000 BA fees PLUS using 120-140 miles to book BA should be pretty easy using the tool I mentioned previously. Better value may still be booking CONDOR out of the cities I mention, but still is not necessarily great value.
Third might just paying for a business class ticket and flying where you want, when you want.

Bottom line AS miles are less valuable now to get to Europe and no magic “Google” search tool to map where and when you can go exists.