I am trying to find available standard awards to any airport in Hawaii from Charlotte during the summer months of 2004 on either NW or AA. Where do I start? On WPAA I can find available flights to Dallas but after that it says not available to Hawaii. Galileo totally confused me. This is my first time with award booking. Any suggestions?

But why would you want to route through DFW on NW?

Anyway, NW has standard coach availability on 6/2, and first class available virtually everyday for the return.

why not just call the airlines..........

Its not that I wanted to go through DTW, it was either that or MSP. I was trying to search rather thatn call thinking it might be easier since I wasnt sure of the date. I am new at this. How many miles would I need to use to do coach over and first class back?

Thanks for all you help.

Your original post mentions an attempted connection in Dallas. Now you're talking about Detroit?

The NW award chart to Hawaii is available here:
http://www.nwa.com/freqfly/direct/charts/zone03.shtml

Sorry that was a typo. I guess what I want to say is I dont care where I route through I just want to get there. That is not the issue. What I need help with is as stated in my original post, where is the best place to look for standard award availibility.

Thanks for the help with June 2 Upgrade.

[This message has been edited by djrules88 (edited 08-18-2003).]

djrules88:

Use this:

http://book2.nwa.com/jp/booking/asp/...ONID=803559142

To check availibility on AA go to AA.com and as long as you have enough miles in your account you could play with different dates all day long. Just sign-in, go to reservations, click on Award tab, and you're ready to rock. Pick some imaginary dates and press continue and it will either comeback with flights available for the exact dates, or if not and a close date is available it will show you the options. Again, this will only work if you have enough miles for a Hawaii award ticket, which I belive is 35K for coach and 75K for F/B. You can't split awards with AA. They don't have one way option. It's either coach or F/B. Don't forget, once you ticket AA award ticket, you can't upgrade later, so make sure you could live with coach if that's the option you chose. There is a way around it, but it's costly, as it involves re-depositing miles and claiming a new award. Also any changes to a coach award ticket carries a price, while F/B ticket allows you to change dates without any penalties, as long as the new dates are available and the departure and arrival cities stay the same.
Good luck!

If there is availability on NW from any location (MSP, SEA or DTW) to Hawaii, then another alternative is that you can use either CO or DL to get to the Hawaii flight. In other words you can mix and match segments.

We are doing that next March. In order to get what we wanted, we are flying
Houston to LA on Continental,
LA to Honolulu on Delta,
Honolulu to Minneapolis on Northwest,
Minneapolis to Houston on Delta

Weird but we got what we needed on the date we wanted.

Also the availability can change day by day so I suggest checking online frequently and then snap it up if what you want appears.

Watchful, can I ask you how you managed to grab this routing--through your own web-surfing research efforts, or on the phone with an airline rep? I'm amazed that you did so well since it seems like coming up with this routing and airline combination is on a par with solving the four-color map problem.

I've also just found out about the DL-NW-CO alliance today from reading about it in the NY Times business section. If I have Amex MR points that can be transferred to Delta, does that mean that I can use those miles also on CO or NW? I'm planning on going to Hawaii myself next Jan/Feb and this would greatly improve my chances of scoring an award seat.

[This message has been edited by travelmad478 (edited 08-19-2003).]

If you are going on NW. you might want to check out its newly posted promotion - cash & miles.