In biz or Y?

I believe you can't buy miles for 30 days after setting up a new account. Not sure if that's changed recently?

Must be Y as you can never find Biz seat from India until 7 days before departure.

Forget about F. Their inability to offer mixed redemption's mean that F is more or less out the window unless you do point to point without any internal flights.

i wouldn't actually buy even if there is availability....i once ended up buying the miles after checking availability only for the website to keep giving me an error every time i got to the payment page....their customer service is terrible & couldn't do anything to help....

i also know 2 other people who went through a similar problem....

Its 11 or 12 days... but you can always find a helpful FTer to help @:-)

Finding seats around 330 isn't hard. Around 180, another few usually come out.

For short notice redemptions, you do often have to wait until 14 days, except for if you want to fly via BKK.

I have to just simply sit with 150k+ miles in my account... :p

I just found a seat on UA C direct to EWR, and then the LH unions decided to strike, so that seat was out the window...

Any ideas to the US East coast - TG doesn't fly there...

Why? The best time to book awards in my opinion is when expecting IRROPS - the traveler gets rebooked into a revenue class.
TG India-BKK-Europe, and UA from there. Doesn't work very well in peak summer season.

The other option is OZ, which is usually generous with availability outside of their blackout dates (viewable on the website). (something like BOM-BKK-ICN-JFK)

ex-BOM, there also was a lot of availability on ET (to IAD) before the 787 got grounded, but I haven't seen as much lately.

You are able to do this on the LM site in one go??

these options do sometimes come up with lifemiles. ET, in particular, comes up without a problem.

I have heard of people booking these things multicity, taking the PNR and calling lifemiles customer service and asking them to reprice, but it sounds like too much headache for me. Their customer service is terrible to say the least.

It's why I loved US Airways and BMI so much - it was much easier to string together availability.

The nice thing about LifeMiles though is that you can book phantom availability sometimes - LH/LX were wide open a few months ago, and we can book SQ J and F now (it won't last ;))

@onlysuites

It was in Biz - In fact for Y I had to shuffle dates around a little, and there was no real financial gain.

Even the newer ones?

Make that 3.

F? What route?