Worldperks frustration
 

I used to live in a major NWA market and so flew them almost exclusively. Unfortunately, I never took advantage of the miles I had accrued. Now, I am in a different market (United hub) and so don't really fly NWA much, if at all. However, I would like to use my WP miles to go to Hawaii this winter.

My frustration is that the NWA folks and WP folks have been less then helpful. They tell me the dates we started with are unavailable for award travel. Fine, tell me when the next award-available flight is. They won't do that. They can only check two week increments.
Fine, here is the next two week span. Nope, nothing available.
Fine, here is the next two week span. "I am sorry, I can't continue to search for you, you will have to go online." (So much for customer service!!!)
Fine, I go online....there is not really a great way to search for the next available flight that way, either, as you can only flex your dates by 3 days +or-.

Their awards travel costs MUCH more than any of my other FF programs, and their inflexibility and lack of customer service is driving me nuts! (I have flown to Hawaii every year for the past 7 years on FF miles on other airlines and have NEVER had these issues--one year we even booked with less than 6weeks notice and STILL got exactly what we wanted!!!)

I want out. So, help me out...what other airlines can I use WP (soon to be SM) on? Are there any programs I transer WP or SM miles to? Or, if I am TRULY stuck with this program, any tips for getting our flights booked?? Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Tell us more. Where are you starting, when do you want to go, how flexible are you, how many passengers, and which class of service?

When I search for award travel at nwa.com a link at the top of the results page appears that reads "Please click on the award calendar to search for more flight options". There is a small image of a calendar next to this text. This should give you more options than just +/- 3 days.

But the calendar is misleading. I checked DEN/HNL for the month of January and I found many dates in yellow and light blue for both outbound and return. Yellow dates (supposedly) mean PerkSaver is available in both cabins and light blue means PerkSaver is available in biz class only. I chose Jan 5 out and Jan 18 return because both dates were yellow. The results that were returned had NO PerkSaver available at all but plenty of PerkPass.

Looks like the broken delta award calendar has crept into the nwa award calendar and corrupted it. :p :(

Our dates our flexible--we usually shoot for the first week in January and go from there. We would be open to anything from Jan 1 to March 1, staying for about 10 days, tops. It will be two adults and two infants in laps (our twins will be about 18 mo by then). We would be flying out of DEN and preferably to OGG with only one stop along the way. However, with NWA I realize that might be impossible.

I will check out the award calendar again on NWA. I had been trying it yesterday but wasn't getting anywhere. Perhaps by then I was so frustrated I was missing something simple.

Thanks, again, for the help!

When choosing the calendar option it takes so long for the months to appear that I usually check some emails in the meantime and then return to the search page to check out the calendar options.

Using the multi city search for a 10 day trip in January, I come accross the following at the lowest redemption rate for 2 tix, 80,000 miles and $20 in taxes. OGG could be the problem, but getting to HNL should not be. Cheap interisland flights can be had or you can book the flights to HNL on the internet for 80,000 miles and then call and have them tack on the HA legs at 5,000 miles per leg after the fact. This will also allow you to not have to pay the phone fee because you are within 24 hours of booking.

$20.00 + 80,000 Total miles for all passengers

Sat, Jan 16, 2010 Delta Air Lines 967 Equipment: CR9 Booking class: N/Coach
Ticket Designator: WP300
Fare basis code: YSM
Depart: 10:40 AM Denver, CO (DEN) Approx. flight miles: 390
Arrive: 12:10 PM Salt Lake City, UT (SLC) Non-Stop
Duration: 1 hr 30 min Operated by Mesaba Aviation


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Sat, Jan 16, 2010 Northwest Airlines 9021 Equipment: MD-90 Booking class: W/Coach
Ticket Designator: WP300
Fare basis code: YSM
Depart: 3:05 PM Salt Lake City, UT (SLC) Approx. flight miles: 629
Arrive: 3:59 PM Portland, OR (PDX) Non-Stop
Duration: 1 hr 54 min Operated by Delta Air Lines
Award Level: PerkSaver
Time between flights: 1 hr 46 min Sat, Jan 16, 2010 Northwest Airlines 217 Equipment: 757 Booking class: W/Coach
Ticket Designator: WP300
Fare basis code: YSM
Depart: 5:45 PM Portland, OR (PDX) Approx. flight miles: 2,602
Arrive: 9:40 PM Honolulu/Oahu, HI (HNL) Non-Stop
Duration: 5 hr 55 min
Award Level: PerkSaver

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Tue, Jan 26, 2010 Northwest Airlines 626 Equipment: 757 Booking class: W/Coach
Ticket Designator: WP300
Fare basis code: YSM
Depart: 10:10 PM Honolulu/Oahu, HI (HNL) Approx. flight miles: 2,677
Arrive: 5:46 AM Seattle, WA (SEA) Non-Stop
Duration: 5 hr 36 min
Award Level: PerkSaver
Time between flights: 1 hr 54 min Wed, Jan 27, 2010 Alaska Airlines 676 Equipment: 737 Booking class: W/Coach
Ticket Designator: WP300
Fare basis code: YSM
Depart: 7:40 AM Seattle, WA (SEA) Approx. flight miles: 1,022
Arrive: 11:19 AM Denver, CO (DEN) Non-Stop
Duration: 2 hr 39 min
Award Level: PerkSaver

This flight arrives 1 day after departure

The non stop to SLC and then the early AM flight to DEN on DL metal is also available for the way home.

Unfortunately welcome to the "new" NW, owned by DL. Very hard to use NW's website now and I had the same exact info from a DL phone rep a week or two ago. They want to charge me $20 to use their phone service for award travel, but don't ask them to work too hard to find what I want!

You are trying to get an award to the most popular destination at the highest peak time frame especially if you are trying to go 1st class. In the 10 years I have been a WorldPerks member I have only been sucessful at flying that time (and I go every year at that time) has been to do the double miles or book a year in advance. The problem is they only go out of 4 airports SEA, SFO, MSP and DTW so capacity fills quickly. I did find this year a little easier because with DL there now is LAX and SLC too, but again I had no PerkSaver option.

The only DL/NW routing (w/o Alaska) is DEN-SLC-OGG. DL operates just one SLC-OGG daily. If efficient routings DEN-OGG are what you want from a FF program, you were accumulating in the wrong program. Sorry. :(

Thanks again for your assistance. I am unable to replicate the itinerary that kss5555 posted, and I am having no luck with the award travel calendar. As Evan noted, even though the dates are yellow, which is SUPPOSED to mean that there are perksaver seats available, I have not found one yet. Really frustrating. I also have been checking Honolulu--thanks for that reminder as well, I hadn't thought that it might be easeir to book to there and then island hop.

I wasn't accumulating miles on NWA for the purpose of flying to Hawaii, I just happen to have enough to go to Hawaii and thought we would use them up this way. I guess we will have to use these miles for a different trip and fly on another airline to Hawaii this year. It is a good point that there are really limited flights to Hawaii (any island, I have found) on NWA and that they are filled much faster than the other airlines I have used in the past.

Thanks, again--you all have been really helpful and I have learned much! ALOHA!!!!!!!!!!!

Call back and get another agent. As soon as I detect attitude in any agent with any airline, I find a reason to end the call and just call back.

Sometimes the website shows inventory that agents cannot see, but more often agents can find things not available on the website. They know this, so it's ridiculous to tell you they can't help you. If they don't want you take up there time, they should release more award seats. Simple as that.

I agree always call back and get another agent. I do find it ironic though that they want people to use the internet more and then do not make it as easy and robust as possible.

The flights i posted the other day are still coming up on the nwa.com website.

Use multi city, leg 1 DEN-SLC, leg 2 SLC-HNL, leg 3 HNL-DEN. 2 adults.

You just have to play around with the legs as well. it also looks like DEN-PDX (AS), PDX-HNL (NW) is available on select dates in January and February as well that will only leave you with a one stop connection, however the layover in PDX is quite long.

Another option, book Southwest cheap fare DEN-SLC, then SLC-HNL or SLC-OGG show up with some decent availability as well.

Hope this helps.

Are you finding Elite availabilty? If so, then it wont come up for the OP if he is a base mbr...

I just tried as a base member and the problem for me was the flight from SLC to HNL...only Perk Pass availability.