Oprime

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Oprime

Naw, you're speaking the truth. Anyone who is informed and an honest broker, would agree.

george 3

I saw an earlier post about Revenge (on COVID) travel planning and true it is. Data point from me is that my wife and I booked one way JFK MXP in October for 110k each way in biz. Coming home from Athens we are sentenced to Premium Economy (128k) as biz class award was 300k miles. Nothing available on BA or IB in biz and I’m not flying 12 hours in economy with a change mid trip. Supply chain challenges extends to travel sector.

Good hunting to all of your searches.

enviroian

hope Japan opens by the time you fly. That’s why the segment is available.

disclaimer I don’t consider countries with a mandatory quarantine upon arrival “open”.

stephem

The standard MileSaavers are rare for for international biz but if you dig a bit you can find some “web specials” for sightly above the milesaaver rate. So for US-EU I see 60k vs the 57.5k. The problem is the web specials cannot be combined with anything else beyond what appears in the search. And, yeah, nothing for this summer but never to early to start planning for next summer!!

sdsearch

It used to be (at most airlines) that you'd get saver fares or "no availability at all". They then decided to let you get award fares instead of "no availability at all", but now those awards on non-saver days obviously cost more.

And as has been pointed out above, there's a giant surge like crazy in international travel, now that pandemic entry/exit restrictions are being lifted like crazy, so it simply means that saver fares have been used up already.

There's never a period before with such decreased flight availability (due to staffing issues at all airlines) coinciding with such a sudden surge in demand (especially right now in international travel). So you can't compare it really to any other time.

And these surge problems aren't just affecting airlines. It's causing hotel rates to skyrocket in some places, and it's causing some rental companies to run out of cars if you didn't book far enough ahead of time, in places which where getting rentals cars at the last minute was never a problem before.

VegasGambler

You are assuming causation, despite a lack of evidence. JL has always made tons of J and F space available, even before the pandemic. It's not reasonable to assume that the space that's available now is because of covid.

Also, my travel is in October / November. Everything should be completely open by then (which just means that the guided your requirement goes away)

tkelvin69

really misleading. I’m flying ABQ-AMM-DOH in business and QR DOH-BKK in first on the 380 for 50K. I’d say not a bad redemptemption.

Oops, AQJ. Still a good redemption especially for the A380 first.

upinsmoke

If I had the spouse understanding of my obsession time, I would use 50K miles to take those flights just to take them, even if I didn't have a reason to be there.

VegasGambler

I think that the people who think that they are worthless are mostly looking at AA international awards and either don't understand that the sweet spot in just about any mileage program is partner awards, or don't understand how to (or don't want to take the time to) search for and book partner awards (since, often, the web search does not show end-to-end routings that are available).

This year I've booked PHX-HEL-FCO, PHX-DFW-HND, and HND-DFW-PHX, all in partner business, for 57.5k/60k/60k miles, and none of them showed up as an end to end search. I had to put the long haul segment on hold and call in to add other segments. And that meant that I had to use flightconnections.com to find all the gateways, and then search from each one individually. So it's a bit of work, and it might take an hour or so to find the flights you want, but the value is there if you put in a bit of time and effort. Which is, after all, the whole point of flyertalk -- to learn how to do all this stuff.

guv1976

Who flies from Albuquerque to Amman? And how do you get from Albuquerque to Bangkok in any class of service via the Atlantic for 50K AAdvantage miles?

Are you actually starting from some airport other than ABQ?

VegasGambler

I parsed this as 2 different awards, with the F award being 50k (which is widely available). Or maybe the awards being 50k each?

JJeffrey

ABQ-XXX-AMM-DOH is 70k in business and DOH-BKK is 50k in F.

enviroian

No, I get it and fully understand partner awards trust me. However unlike you and the other poster my travels don't take me to the Middle East nor Asia they take me to the EU and One World sucks for that. All AA metal flights to LHR/CDG/FRA/MAD/FCO are C zeroed out until god knows when. I don't consider BA award travel ...award travel when you have to pay $1500 tax. MAD has some good IB connections but finding saver award J on IB is also gone pretty much.

Asia and ME ...sure partner awards are great. Europe? They suck. Sorry FI isn't going to help much either.

That's just my two cents that's all. I'm glad it working for you and your travels. Me? Not so much.

IADCAflyer

You're asking about award fares for trips that are within the next 20 to 40 days. That's a nice "mission impossible" task. Put it to you this way, I did book an October trip to the Caribbean a month or so ago. 21,500 miles for what is a $800 fare. That is a good redemption IMHO.

While we're at it, feel free to price out paid fares between LAX and BOS. Let me know the last time you saw fares from LAX to BOS where the BASE fare was $800 round trip.

I just booked DCA to LAX for a conference in late July. COACH was $1067 round trip. COACH.