3StarsFoodie

I have always used my miles for international J tickets that I can get at the saver rates. However, it looks like we will be going on a family trip in May. I can't find any saver rates and the tickets will cost 40,000 miles each in coach.

If saver award space opens up between now and then how hard is it to get the lower rate? If saver space in first class opens up can I "upgrade" my coach tickets? Does the 72 hour rule apply to "upgrades"?

lamont2718

If saver space opens up in economy or first, you can certainly change your award accordingly. Since you are a PM, your award change fees are waived as long as you make the changes at least 72 hours before the scheduled departure of the first segment of your itinerary.

mattp1987

This may be a dumb question and I don't mean to insult you by asking it, but are you sure there are zero seats available at Saver rates? In other words, did you search for a single ticket? You may be able to book something like 2 awards in Saver, 1 award in mixed Saver/Standard, and 2 awards in Standard. In that scenario you'd pay 162,500 miles instead of 200,000 miles. Of course you could always change them later as well.

3StarsFoodie

Thanks for the suggestion. I did try and book just one ticket and it still priced out at 40,000 miles.

gooselee

I'm convinced that sometimes there just isn't saver inventory for certain routes, or at least it's so limited there might as well not be any. I just did an award search for Mrs. Lee to go JAX-ATL-SFO and back. Couldn't find a single seat below 40k and we were being flexible across a 2 week window.

Same when I was sending my parents on an open jaw to ANC/SEA. They wanted to go for a few days anytime this summer and I wasn't able to dig up anything at 25k.

I suspect that less or no saver inventory exists for routes that are longer distance or traditionally demand a higher cash price.

The 40k redemptions were still not too bad, as we used them to pick desirable flight times that would have jacked up the cost in cash. For SFO, there were $400 tickets available, but they required a redeye on the way back. Flights we ended up booking priced to almost $800. For ANC/SEA, spent 40k miles instead of nearly $700 each and also had my pick of dates/times.

Sure, 1.8-2.0 cpm isn't the greatest redemption in the world, but none of the people I was booking for care about RDMs/MQMs and even after paying for EC for all of them, I now I have an extra ~$1500 in my pocket that I can go buy a new TV or something with.

mattp1987

Or another business class trip to Europe this summer

gooselee

Touche.