I've been having a very good hit rate lately on smaller awards. This year, I've redeemed a ton of 25k and 35k awards for domestic, Canada, and Caribbean itineraries to markets that aren't very competitively fought over out of MCI.

For example, MCI to Belize is always $700 round-trip, no matter how you slice it. Belize isn't one of those places that pops up on the $199 weekend getaway list. So I booked 3 award seats on Delta through ATL - got the exact flights I wanted, even during the holiday season.

I also just booked 3 awards to Montreal. It's almost always $400+: not really a hotly-competitive destination out of KC. But AA had perfect Friday-Monday one-stop flights available for 25k per seat, so I took it.

I have always had great luck with hotels. Still do... I think my best successes with availability have been with Marriott, but HH and SPG aren't bad either.

Pretty far. These flights are in Janurary. I booked them this past March.

Just booked BOS-LIM (BOS-JFK-BOG-LIM-ATL-BOS) for Christmas break last week on Avianca/Delta in business/first. Got the dates I wanted at saver rates.

In June, my wife and I flew ORD-SFO-PEK on UA and returned PEK-ORD on UA. We booked award tickets in coach and actually got upgraded to Business on the outbound SFO-PEK leg. On the way back, we were booked in A&C seats in Economy Plus with an empty seat between us, and actually managed to end up with the seat remaining empty even though there were only about 6 empty seats on the whole plane. My wife had gotten minimum status on UA in 2003, and still had status when she called their Elite Desk to book the reward tickets. We were initially booked on an outgoing Air Canada flight from ORD-YVR-PEK, but after a schedule change made that connection impossible, the UAL Elite desk rebooked our outbound flight on UAL. Although my wife's Elite status expired early in 2005, it still showed on our tickets as we had booked while she still had the status. As a result, we were lucky enough to end up with an upgrade to Business outbound and the empty middle seat in Economy Plus on our return. We were very pleased with our Reward tickets.

I can't speak to the situation in higher than coach class on international flights, but I've done a lot of booking acrobatics on the coach side internationally to get awards over the years.

Some of it is voluntary, like convoluted itineraries to get a plum stopover (HNL on Asia trips a good example). Other times it's not, like the most recent Asia trip where I had to do a MNL-BKK open jaw to make it work (I should mention that I'm always going for standard awards, none of this 2x "rulebuster" business that devalues miles by 50%).

Usually I get something to work, but I must say that I'm both more flexible in my time and adept at working the online tools than the average person. FTers as a whole are probably a lot more booking-savvy than the general population.

You can also play the waiting game and find that a lot will open up 2-3 weeks from a flight due to cancellations, but, again, many people aren't in situations where they can pounce on it. Maybe it's hard to get a vacation approved by the boss on that short a notice or they are in a work group and have coverage problems (or someone else already put in for the vacation time). Those type of people can be very flexible on dates *if* they can book way in advance, and they'll probably call way in advance. It's one thing to not get your first choice of dates, quite another to hear that everything in the standard award category is booked up solid for 4-5 months on all dates. It's incidents like the latter that get people questioning how many seats there were to begin with and whether they really had a chance. (Also note that airlines often don't volunteer to search partners for flights!)

I can see how it goes both ways...

I tried to book bus class 331 days in advance (Aug 06) LAX to Brussells on UA - only the outbound could be confirmed business - return coach - they never made ANY bus seats available. YET they required 80,000 miles even though only 1/2 the trip is Bussiness. I call each day and no seat have been freed up.
Any Ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

I had some luck as well. Booked 3 World Business Class tickets LAX-NRT-HKG-NRT-LAX for 120,000 miles each. Booked in September for next April. Got the dates I wanted with no problem despite hearing how tough it was to redeem NWA, especially getting 3 WBC seats on the same flights!

Should be nice for our first trip to Asia.

.....

CO.com has made it easier to narrow down available dates by showing a calendar of what is available. Better than guessing dates over and over on the search page.

I am trying to put together a trip to Belize in January or February 2006, and was very surprised to find standard award seats available through Northwest on Delta or Continental. I was just assuming I'd be using Rule Busters, but it looks like I was wrong!

In April, I booked a SQ F ticket LAX-NRT-LAX for September using 140k DL miles. Looked up the same itin using the SQ website and Travelocity, both came up with a price tag of around $12,800. In September, booked the same trip for April. Taxes and fees came up to $38.

I too will be in SQ F soon (SFO-HKG). It is absolutely wonderful to use miles for this. Still, we need to be realistic -- only rock stars and drug dealers actually pay that $12,800. Anyone who puts a little effort into it (or has someone else put a little effort into it), can reduce the price dramatically.

How does one go about getting the price reduced dramatically, aside from special negotiated or contracted rates which are not available to the average Joe flyer? I certainly am interested.

I'd suggest checking the Star Alliance website so you know all the available routes with UA and its partners. I always have much better luck when calling to book an award ticket if I know all the available routes. My impression is that some booking agents are excellent and others are reluctant to really check into all the possibilities without some prompting.

I checked the Star Alliance website for flights from BRU to LAX in August and count about 30 valid routes on United, Lufthansa, Austrian, BMI, and even LOT. Obviously some of these routings are much better than others, but I'm confident that with some persistence with a booking agent, you'll find a business class seat on your return.

http://www.staralliance.com

Curious to hear how it goes.