Hi everyone...well this is my first post to this web site. I have quite a few FF points acumulated on CC and am looking to book a trip from Australia to New Zealand and then to Malaysia and then back to Australia. I have enroled in several FF programs (qantas, enrich and kris) that are affiliated with American Express and now I need to book the flights. Is there an easy way to do this?

I saw a program at url removed/ does anyone know if this works and how useful it is? are there other programs that may be better?

I am one of those clueless people that you all have been talking about.

www.awardplanner.com

You will have to pay for awardplanner.com. I would try searching the various airline website to check availablity. Best bet is to call the airline and get a sense of what is available and then book it online. If you dont want to speak to anyone then aeroplan.com is your best (free) bet.

Clueless,

We all had to start somewhere. On-line is your best bet.

Awardplanner.com used to be $50/year. It may have gone up a few bucks since I was a member. Awardplanner will coordinate miles, points, and dollars spent between different programs. I think the money might be well spent for the trip the poster is talking about.

I just used Awardplanner for a difficult to book Hawaii trip. (one person on award and one on paid coach with an upgrade) I had spent HOURS & HOURS trying to find a decent itinerary. When I signed up, Yvonne first warned me she might not be able to come through and made sure I understood that I pay regardless as I was paying for the time of working out the itnerary.

Yvonne came up with a good trip in a day. And the number of miles it cost was about 50k fewer than any way I had been able to manage. Count me as a happy customer of Awardplanner

I am sure Awardplanner has its merits, but as someone with the power of the internet and a phone at their fingertips I cannot imagine paying for the service. Just me...

I paid for the service for the Olympics in Athens, and secured 4 tickets, split between coach and business, and among 2 different carriers. Yes, I probably could have done it myself, but I was looking at deadlines in both directions and holding flights, and for the fee I didn't have to worry, and they took care of everything when the particular dates (330 days ahead of travel) came about. For that type of an itinerary, or maybe even an around the world award ticket, I think they would be worthwhile. I'm planning on using them again in 2007 to book a year ahead for the Olympics in China.

Tom in Galway Ireland tonight

As both a UA and AA flyer, you're probably quite aware that the internet (airline web sites) are useless when you try to book any type of partner flights for award travel. Expert Flyer is good on some AA partner availability (Qantas, Air Tahiti Nui) but not all. Any time you get partners involved you pretty much have to talk to a live person, and hope they know how to work those partners in. AA has One World awards that are different than standard AA awards. I'm not sure all the agents are up on One World awards, as I just had a friend call back and book one of those, after being told a standard award routing would not work (I have to thank Magic111 for bringing me up to speed on One World awards so I could have her call back and request just that..it was not offered by the agent..and now she has one).

I tried award planner for HNL. They couldn't find anything that different than I could find on my own. I ended up booking myself and getting a refund

Not only are you forced to talk with a live person (which I do not mind) when booking on partners, but you are also forced to pay a fee for not using the internet (which I find a bit annoying).