Is there a trick to booking a 35k RT award from BOS to SJD online. Only seats I ever find are 35k each way.Thanks for the help.

[This message has been edited by bajamex (edited 05-23-2003).]

I'm having a similar problem finding standard awards between SFO and Cancun. While it seems I can find plenty of standard award seats going to CUN, I can't find anything but EasyPass rewards for the return trip (and I'm being extremely flexible on dates 10 months in advance).

Hard to believe other folks have already booked up all the standard awards ... in only one direction!

[This message has been edited by BradC (edited 05-24-2003).]

Have you tried just searching for the IAH-Cabo (or IAH-Cancun) flight by itself to see what dates are available? If you can find standard avails, you might be able to call an agent and get them to help you add in the domestic segments; they may be available independently or may be available via a long layover which would not pull up automatically but could be manually built-up.

In many cases, yuo will find things like GRU-IAH is available in your cabin standard reward, IAH-OAK is available in your cabin standard reward, but CO.com will not give you GRU-OAK in that cabin at standard level. Why not? Beats the heck out of me. But FT'er channa alerted me to this and I have now found it to be true 3 times, and all 3 times I was able to get a phone agent to built the record for me. Just research it and know what dates are available and exact flights and get them to input the segments manually as two legs.

Of course, there may really be no avails at all, but this just might help you. Good luck!

I was able to get a standard reward from Ewr to Puerto Vallarta the first week of May... not Cabo... but at least there might be some hope.

I just returned (literally today) from a standard EWR/Cabo trip. I left last sunday 5/18-- I routed EWR/SAN --- SAN/CABO (on Alaska) return 5/25 Cabo/san --- san/ewr ...35K

I second PhantomeSea's suggestion: use Alaska Airlines and NW, since they don't screw around as much with releasing award seats. They'll also offer you stopover options in a number of cities in the west: SAN, LAX, SFO, PHX, PDX, and SEA.

When we went two years ago, we ran into the same difficulty. No standard reward or First Class seats.

Thanks to the now defunct America West arrangement, we went down in FC for standard points.

CO is really getting stingy on rewards.

You say that like it's news....

I forgot to mention that the actual return flight(s) were not as easy as they sound.

My flight Cabo-San on Alaska was fine; however, when I went to check in for my San-EWR redeye, CO informed that they cancelled the flight a few days ago -- and never notified me. They put me on a flight the following morning without my approval -- they must think that we all just have so much time on our hands that when they cancell flights -- spending an extra day somewhere is no problem.

I managed to get them to book me that same evening on a NW flight (redeye) San-Detroit-EWR ...

This is one of the many experiences that remind me why my loyalty to CO has quickly changed.

When are you looking to go?
I just came back from Cabo last week. Flew out on 5/9 and came back on 5/16. I was able to get not one, not two, but THREE standard reward tickets for the family members that were flying with me.

I flew on friday, booked 60 days out, and flying ewr-iah-sjd.

However, I think the trick was logging in as a CO elite member, because now as an elite I see standard availability leaving bos on Friday, 6/20 and returning on Thursday the 26th flying bos-iah-sjd. Standard availability disappears when I don't login as an elite.

As we all know there is more availability for elites. I see you're a NW gold, so you should have access to the same availability. However, you won't be able to do it online.


[This message has been edited by AKelley728 (edited 06-02-2003).]

dup post

[This message has been edited by AKelley728 (edited 06-02-2003).]

[quote]<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by AKelley728:
[b]
From what I understand, the Co elite buckets are only for CO elite. NW elites just pick from the regular, non-existent non-elite availability.

Difference in award availability is one of the big reasons I've stuck in OnePass instead of switching to WorldPerks.

Hey, AKelley728! Have you posted a trip report regarding your visit to Cabo? How did you all enjoy it? Where did you stay? Mrs. Frugal and I are headed back in Ocotober and can not wait. We really like the new Hilton.

Hi! No trip report yet, sometime soon, I hope!

We enjoyed the trip immensely! The weather was perfect and the people were real friendly. We stayed at the Fiesta Americana.

The only thing I didn't like (other than the high prices of everything) was the very rocky beach at the Fiesta.