Do award booking services find award tix for less?
 

I have a general question about how award booking services work.

I have always booked my own award tix, and the points/miles I am charged are those posted on the award charts. For example, Delta J class from US to Europe @ 125 r/t, etc.

Can an award service find something better?

I have a bunch of Avianca points and I want to use them for a trip to SEAsia. According to the Avianca LifeMiles chart it will take me 162K miles r/t to make this trip in Biz. Knowing this, I can book the trip myself (and spend the 162K). However, I am wondering: does the award booking service do something special, above and beyond what I can do? Can the service get me a tix for less than the 162K? What kind of magic does the award booking service do?

Thanks!

Generally speaking, they are for people less knowledgable than yourself.

I received an invoice today from a service (I'll leave unnamed for now). I vaguely remember using a service about 18 months ago and don't recall whether I received an invoice and paid for it. I've emailed them back...but what business takes 18 months to bill you????

Anyone else have this issue with any of these services?

Hi there,

I may be able to help you here. I have a service called The Point Planner where I directly help with this.

The Bengali Miles Guru (Tahsir Ahsan) is very knowledgeable and responsive online for requests for assistance. He is with Award Magic, and if I know for a fact that he does the award search and bookings himself, I'd give all our business to this site.

Back in 2013, Extra Pack of Peanuts offered an awesome and reasonable award booking service. He booked for 4 of us a fantastic around the world in business for $300, and I paid him $400 for a job well done. Have no idea why, but he no longer does award booking: http://www.extrapackofpeanuts.com/

Juicy Miles booked a fantastic BKK-AUH-LAX for our family of 4 in business with two seats in F Suite for the AUH-LAX leg of the trip (we just got back on 4/20). Total cost was 435K AA miles plus a chunk of change! Great & prompt service when others couldn't deliver. Their advantage was searching from Australian website to find the seats which did not show on the US sites: http://www.juicymiles.com/

Book Your Award was great when gary did the search & booking ....

Paying for economy and using miles to upgrade?
 

I have been a FT member for several years, but have not posted before since I felt I did not have much to contribute, given the expertise of most posters. I am aware of online tools that people use to find seats, chase fares, awards, etc, but frankly this is not something I enjoy, and I’m willing to pay someone to handle my needs.

I am planning a trip from DC to New Zealand and Australia for two in April 2017 and have about 350K United miles. I would like to optimize the use of miles by paying for economy and upgrading with miles.

I have also gone through all 28 pages of this thread, and still cannot determine if an award booking service, as discussed here, will do this. If not, where can I find the appropriate service?

Thanks.

Instead of buying economy and upgrading to business, have you considered doing straight-up redemption? Upgrading from economy with UA miles is poor value in comparison. For two people, you pay 120K miles plus $2000-$2400 in copay, plus economy air fare (another $2000+), and you are STILL limited to only UA metal and may have to waitlist.

If you do a full redemption, it'd just be 320K miles, and you can be fully confirmed with no waitlist flying UA metal or any of their large number of Star alliance partners. Your miles would even be refundable with a fee if you need to cancel your trip.

The only reason I can see upgrading economy would work is if someone else is paying for your airfare, or if you REALLY need the elite qualifying spend.

I agree with ckpeter. I was a committed UA flyer for a long time, and in the past (pre-2010) I always tried to buy a United coach ticket and then upgrade using miles (this had several benefits; the miles flown counted toward elite status and it was financially a good deal). It became progressively more difficult to do this, and the price to do so became progressively less reasonable.

In the past two years, I've booked award travel with two advisors from this thread (sadly, one of them is no longer taking new clients; I also used and recommend Matthew at UPGRD.com). They have booked me business and first-class awards on Star Alliance partners and Alaska Airlines partners. I learned a great deal during the process, and both of these folks spent a great deal of time telling me about the options and educating me on the process. I have a much better understanding of the process and of various options for award travel now but would still want to use one of these award travel experts for any overseas trip.

If you find a good person to do your award travel, they will likely tell you the same as ckpeter; and will give you other options as well.

PA101 and ckpeter, thanks for the information. I had always gone the upgrade route since I was reimbursed for an economy ticket. This will be the case for the NZ portion of my trip, but the Australia portion and all of my wife's travel will be on our own dime.

I will indeed contact some of the advisors on this thread.

Getting off topic for this thread

Premium awards USA to Australia - NZ are very hard to get. 2 people on the same flights is 4 times as hard. Easter is a peak time for Aust/NZ travel
Many of the ffp forums have threads on Aust NZ awards.
While Air NZ is in Star Alliance they effectively do not make USA awards available
For USA to Australia award flights many UA freq flyers now seem to go via Asia.

Airlines that fly USA/Canada to/from Australia (not from all airports to all airports)
- United UA (LAX SFO – SYD MEL) [Star Alliance]
- American Airlines AA (LAX - SYD) [OneWorld Alliance] (AS partner)
- Qantas QF (LAX SFO JFK DFW HNL YVR*– SYD BNE MEL) [OneWorld Alliance] (AS partner) {* seasonal}
- Jetstar JQ (HNL – SYD BNE)
- Delta DL (LAX – SYD) (VA & AS partner) [Skyteam Alliance]
- Virgin Australia VA (LAX – SYD BNE) (DL partner)
- Hawaiian HA (HNL – SYD BNE via Hawaii) (AA & VA partner)
- Air New Zealand NZ (LAX SFO IAH YVR via AKL) [Star Alliance]
- Fiji Airways FJ (LAX via Fiji) (QF, AA & AS partner)
- Air Tahiti Nui TN (LAX last segments on codeshares) (AA & DL partner)
- Air Canada AC (YYR – SYD, BNE from Jun 2016) [Star Alliance]
And others via Asia & Middle East

Airlines that fly USA/Canada to/from New Zealand are (not from all airports to all airports)
- Qantas QF (via SYD BNE & MEL) [OneWorld Alliance] (AS partner)
- American Airlines AA (LAX - AKL) from 23 June 2016 [OneWorld Alliance] (AS partner)
- Virgin Australia VA (via BNE & SYD) (DL partner)
- United UA (SFO - AKL) from July 2016
- Hawaiian HA (HNL-AKL)(AA & VA partner)
- Air New Zealand NZ (LAX SFO IAH YVR- AKL)[Star Alliance]
- Fiji Airways FJ, (via Fiji) (QF AA & AS partner)
- Air Tahiti Nui TN (via Tahiti -AKL) (AA & DL partner)
And others via Asia & Middle East

Aust NZ (~3:25hrs) has many services & can be cheap (but Easter time will be expensive.)
Better to buy cash than an award flight. Many aircraft are B737 A320 type. Some are economy only.

Airlines that fly Australia (CNS* MCY* BNE OOL SYD CBR MEL ADL PER) to/from New Zealand (AKL WLG CHC DUD ZQN) (not from all airports to all airports)
- Air New Zealand NZ (codeshares with VA) [Star Alliance] {* winter seasonal}
- Virgin Australia VA (codeshares with Air NZ) (Delta partner)
- Jetstar JQ (owned by QF)
- Qantas QF (codeshares with EK) [OneWorld Alliance]
- Emirates EK (codeshares with QF)
- LAN LA (SYD AKL) [OneWorld Alliance]
- China Airlines CI (BNE SYD MEL* – AKL CHC*) [Skyteam Alliance] {* summer seasonal}
- Singapore SQ (CBR WLG) [Star Alliance] from Sept 2016
- Air Asia D7 (OOL - AKL) from March 2016
- Philippines PR (CNS - AKL)

Moderator's Note:
 

Any award booking services that specialize in Avianca LM?
 

I need help!

Via the UA site I can see loads of saver avaialbility on *A partners like Swiss, SAA, UA, Turkish, and even LH. However, Avianca isn't showing me diddly squat. What it does show is massively inflated and disappears when I go back to it a second time.

Any referrals for an award booking service that can work the convuleted Avianca LM site/service better than I can?

I want to thank you for your kind words about http://www.juicymiles.com/

I happen to be on the team and there is a wide group of experts and knowledgeable people; most of whom travel extensively themselves. The top two reasons people come to a service like this is:

1) They just do not have the time to work out all the permutations of flights, dates and routing possibilities, or

2) They have been unsuccessful doing it themselves and then turn to us; often at a point of great frustration.

In either situation award (and Mileage Run) planners are worth their weight in gold. Personally I do not do it for the money but I do it to help others and try new tricks and routes. I learn something every time I take on a booking.

The time put in is often extensive and the small fee does not represent what one would pay say a professional on an hourly rate. But, as I said, I enjoy it as all of our staff do and it adds to another person's or family's life experience. At the same time we continually hone our skills which pay it forward for our own travel and our next client.

Recently, I have been improving my skills at booking at foreign sites as often (as you realized) deals can be had. We just have to be careful that we fully understand the terms and ensure that the currency arbitrage makes sense for our objectives.

Thanks again; it's much appreciated!

Serious etiquette question about using Award booking services. I checked out the wiki and see several that seem reasonable, and they all seem to charge nothing unless you like the itinerary they find. Is there a reason I wouldn't use several and see who finds the best itinerary? I have Delta miles and Chase Reward points and want to take a 25th anniversary trip with my wife in Business class ... into the south island of New Zealand and out of Sydney (based in Atlanta) in Mar/Apr '17. Any advice is appreciated.

I would probably do the same thing, to be honest...the best thing is that if you provide them with the correct information, it will probably take them no more than 5 minutes to give you an idea of what is/isn't feasible