adamak

Is there a website / tool where I can compare the # of miles needed for partner's redemption?

E.g., say, I want to go USA - Asia, on CX or JL metal. I'd like to know how many AA miles vs BA miles vs CX miles that would cost me. Is there a website that will show me the summary?

Happy

Most likely not. But you can do your own legwork by creating a spread sheet and then input the number from each program's award charts for your easy comparison.

Mind you, the miles required is only the first step. There are other nuisances you must be aware.

For the very basics, AA let you mix partner flights in the same award, while BA would not. If you have 2 partners in the award it would immediately change it to a distance-based type award similar to AA's OneWorld but costs you far more miles to accomplish the same goal. AA would also bring you to the Gateway cities on AA metal or even AS metal for free, BA wouldn't.

Not to mention that you may have grown accustomed to AA's free change of dates, even itinerary as long as the partners and original / destination remain the same, plus the fee-based change of routing. The only change BA allows you is the date of the FIRST flight up till 24 hours prior flight and is NOT free. No if or but or even medical emergency would let you change anything after that 24 hours cut-off time. Nothing else is changeable...

I sincerely urge you to understand program rules of each program before you redeem your award and NEVER NEVER assume BA's or CX's rules would be similar to AA's. For they are NOT and are much more restrictive.

Oh, one final thing before I forget - the YQ on BA award! You WILL PAY a hefty YQ even on CX or JL if you cannot do this on BA website but have to call to book. At least that has been the incidents reported after the Oct 1 ATI finalization.

sbm12

None I know of yet, but I've been working with the guys at GoMiles and we're hoping to have something useful along these lines sooner than not.

adamak

Thanks. I've been reading up, and it's getting confusing. I just want to make sure that I'm using my miles wisely, esp with a very straight forward redemption.

HoKo

That will be awesome, I can't wait. Is there a target date set for the release?

sbm12

Not yet on this feature. I know that most of the data is already compiled so hopefully soon.

sbm12

So this is a mock-up of what we're working on for this feature. Feedback is appreciated.



I actually think that we're farther along than I had previously thought (this is 95% generated from actual live data on the site right now, not just my imagination in photoshop) so hopefully getting it deployed for folks to use should be relatively easy. That said, I'd have to check with the developers to see where it will fall in their time line.

coiaflyer

fantastic idea. thank you!

adamak

Thanks! Looking forward to the feature.

Please show J/F amount in addition to Y. Would be nice if you can show partner's requirement. E.g., need 135K AA miles RT to SE Asia on CX F, vs 150K BA miles on the same flight. (I'm pretty sure this # is correct, but didn't check again). Although, like HAPPY said above, it can get complicated with different airline rules....

sbm12

We have this data already so sharing it should not be a problem.

This one is definitely harder and we've struggled with the logic on it quite a bit. The easy number to display is cost on "home" metal and trust that users will know that it might be different with partners. Otherwise it gets VERY complicated very quickly in terms of figuring out based on a city pair which metal operates on it and which partners are available and which rule set they might fall under. I'm not sure that we're in a position to tackle that logic issue at this point versus grabbing the low-hanging fruit we have right in front of us but, as I noted in my prior post, I also need to talk to the developers and see where we get.

HoKo

I completely feel you on this one! I started putting together a spreadsheet and was planning on utilizing Pivot tables to manipulate the data but after I truly contemplated the complexity of dealing with partners, zone definitions, distance based vs zone based, award availability, peak season vs low season etc I felt like my head was about to explode and decided I need a beer instead haha

I think it definitely makes sense to nab the low hanging fruit as you put it but I think that the tool would be incomparable and an extremely valuable service if you could somehow eventually incorporate all of the variables I mentioned above. I recently spent a couple hours going through the award charts of all of SPG's airline partners to figure out who my best bet was for the particular flight I wanted to book. Pain in the but and some of the awards charts for the smaller foreign carriers were too hard to find so I ended up just skipping them.

I don't want to come off as being negative though, great start!

adamak

How about just showing the charts from various airlines? Say, I plug in JFK-SIN. The AA chart says 67.5 1-way NA to Asia 2. BA chart says 150K RT. Will this be easier (as you only have to feed the charts & the countries' zones)?

sbm12

That's more or less the goal, though we're trying to actually display the information rather than just point you to the chart. Where it gets wonky is where various partners get involved in some programs. CO is easy because 90% of the partner routes and options are just the same as if flying on CO metal. UA has a separate chart if you're flying *A or non-*A partners. AS has a separate chart depending on which specific partner you're on. So if you asked JFK-AUH the CO price would be mostly fixed, the UA price would depend on whether you were on QR or LH/LX/other *A partners and the AS price would depend on whether you chose BA or AF as the partner to fly with.

Parsing all that data (much less collecting all of it) turns out to be pretty complicated. We have charts of countries, zones, carriers, miles required and lots more very useful data and we can do most of the standard stuff pretty easily. It is getting that last 10% of the permutations perfect that we're struggling with. For now we might just go with the dreaded "*-These are the best case scenario numbers" type of disclaimer and see how much strife it causes. But we are absolutely trying to get it right.

ckpeter

sbm12, this is a great tool!

In what capacity are you working with the GoMiles? Would you consider posting a separate threads on the TravelBuzz forum, just like Airline Route Mapper or OpenFlights?

As someone who has, several times, looked into the feasibility of mileage comparison, I see lots of potentials on this. I would really suggest you set up a separate thread (or have someone from GoMiles do it) for dedicated discussion.

That's a very noble goal, but I would caution on the efforts expanded. Given how, occasionally, some of the airlines themselves can't even price their own redemption right, you may be looking into a lot of edge cases.

Just for fun, consider how BA has (at least) three award charts. For some itinerary, if you fly AA only JFK-NRT, it is one amount, but if you fly AA JFK-NRT, followed by JL NRT-HKG, you are looking at a full distance-based award chart. For your tool, this may not just be complicated, it may also be infeasible (because you now need to figure out what specific routings are available, given the flight schedule, etc... at some point, you may as well redeem the whole thing for them!)

Also, in your mock-up, you are showing the redemption amount for a specific award. Instead of approaching it from a specific award perspective, I wonder if there is value in giving generic advice to someone who is considering which FFP to join. For example, we see plenty of newbies asking "I am relocating to HKG, should I join CX or stay with BA." If you tool can take a generic route (e.g. LHR-HKG) and advise someone on the mileage amounts for typical FFP, it could be very useful.

P.S. Not sure how far you have gone from a mock-up or in what capacity you are working with GM, but PM me, if you want someone to walk through some scenarios and edge cases. I would be glad to help.

MyTravels

Careful what you wish for on FT, as there's no shortage of opinions here, so feel free to ignore as necessary

Just when I think about UI, I don't think about FT'ers, I think about parents, cousins, etc that really aren't "into" FF programs, but they have all these miles.

If I want to fly from say PIT to Asia, but not sure what cities, or possibly what countries, how do I quickly find out if I even have enough miles in the first place?

As most FF programs are by country (some exceptions like LA & BA multi-partner, etc) it would be great if users could click on the regions/countries on a map, similar to how Hyatt or Four Seasons does it (probably just to the country level not the airport/city level)

That allows me to search USA to China. Once I know a country that I have enough miles for then the next step would be to include city pairs (hopefully like Kayak where I can add multiple cities - where I can fly into PKE, PVG, etc).