bigbirdwithsilverwings

I have a lot of Alaska Miles and since they are selling them on a 50%+ basis, figured use 'em or watch them depreciate.

I saw Singapore is starting non-stop service out of SEA so I did a mock search w/completely random dates but after 9/3/19--and then used the monthly calendar. No luck.
Then I turned my attention to London. Hong Kong. Tokyo. Auckland. Paris. I found no availability for 2 people anywhere a full year out. I found lots of what shows up as F class but it's F class to SFO/LAX/ORD/DFW and then connecting transatlantic or transpacific in coach.

Am I doing something wrong?

QT31415

We just booked two J awards on British Airways to Prague for Valentine's day. But there are those taxes.... There were also tickets to Marseilles and JNB. BA, Condor, Emirates.

Jaimito Cartero

VegasGambler

There are dedicated threads for each partner, but, in my opinion:

• JAL is simple to book online. Great F product too!
• For CX you can call. You can also search on JAL, BA, or Qantas to find CX award availability (I recommend BA) and then call the agent with the exact flights you want. This should save you a lot of time.
• BA is basically a scam for award travel due to their surcharges (This has nothing to do with Alaska)
• Emirates is a great product and easy to book online, but, so many miles.. after flying in F with them I basically felt like I had lit 100k miles on fire.

It seems to me that there is great value redeeming to Asia. Europe probably has better earning opportunities than redemption opportunities. Just my opinion of course.

Don't forget to take advantage of the stopovers if you like visiting multiple places! IMO that's where the true value of this reward program lies. Going from the US to Tokyo in F for 70k miles is a great deal, but tacking on a flight to Bangkok in business (no F on that route) after you leave Tokyo for just an extra 5k miles is a real steal (that NRT - BKK J ticket sells for about $3k). With stopovers in both directions you can visit 3 places for the price of 2 one-ways. I'm going SFO - Tokyo - Bangkok - Hong Kong - SFO, all for 145k miles and about $130 in fees, all first class transpacific and business class within asia (neither of those routes have F). JAL there, CX back... so really great products on all the flights.

Flying for Fun

I enjoyed my EK F LAX-DXB//DXB-FCO for 100K. I have booked EK J LAX-DXB//DXB-JNB for 120K. I have friends in both DXB & CPT. EK works well for that. The differential between EK J & F isn't worth the additional 67% Miles for me. I'll take CX back to North America for 70K and still have 10K leftover.

75K on JL will get you all the way to DEL, 70K on CX will get you all the way to JNB or CPT with TPAC in F with either airline. Stopovers are definitely a plus. My last CX stopover was 2 months long. Considering the connection to the gateway is included, it is pretty hard to beat. I have 2 JL F coming up in January, two more in March and CX 1F & 1J to BNE in February.

James

VegasGambler

Just to be clear, when I said that it felt that I had set 100k miles on fire... I spent 180k miles. Not that it had no value; just that I thought it was overpriced by about 100k. In other words, I didn't think it was significantly better than JAL.

3Cforme

Four words: Paid award finder service.

Award booking services - a list and some reviews

Flying for Fun

I think we are both saying the same thing. I enjoyed it at 100K to Europe but won't pay 200K to South Africa.

James

Beltway2A

Singapore traditionally restricts premium awards on their A350/77W/A380 to their own Award Program, partners like Alaska cannot book these awards. It's not an online search issue (like CX), you simply can't book the award through Mileage Plan.

eponymous_coward

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...er-overview:SQ

Quote:

Coming soon to Alaska Mileage Plan members

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...available.html

Note the thread is over a year old. "Soon" in AS-speak = "before the Sun expands into a red giant and consumes the Earth billions of years from now".

KnownasEric

This isn't any different if you're flying other airlines. They either have extremely limited saver space (AA) or have dynamic pricing that makes most premium cabin award space ridiculously expensive (DL).

With that said, you've just got to look around. I've found FI premium space (direct) at the edge of the current window, QX first space (on multiple routes from LAX) around the first of this year and I was successful in booking both CX F and J space next summer with a JL J space for the return trip. I also found some DE space around the time of Oktoberfest. So options are out there.

Believe it or not but I think the hardest space to find is AS' own saver space for positioning flights to partner gateway cities. It's so bad I actually booked AA space to ORD to position my CX award (yes, sometimes you have to make sacrifices, but that's the game now - the scheduling worked out better on AA anyway, and they had saver space available so it was worth it to ignore the hassle).

I'm sure it'll take a long time to get SQ and EI space available for redemptions, if only because their IT and systems are absolutely archaic. But by then, you'll have hoarded so many miles it won't have mattered!

3Cforme

SQ awards have been bookable on united.com since 2012.

eponymous_coward

PS:

VegasGambler

What's the little red infinity sign by the first JAL segment?

Also why is it 130k miles? Do you have an F return that's cropped out?

Eastbay1K

Total price for 2, that is two, dos, etc., passengers.