Where is the Award Space to Australia and New Zealand? These Exact Routes

One of the most frequent requests we get for our Award Booking Service is finding premium cabin tickets between the US and Australia/New Zealand.

The Incredible Frontier Airlines Award Chart

The application links for the cards mentioned in this post have been removed because they are expired.
Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

Full offer details on the 40k bonus mile Frontier card offer:

0% Intro APR on purchases and balance transfers for the first 12 months.

Book Now to Europe for Next Summer: Economy

I started this series of posts about booking your trip to Europe for summer 2013 with a post about booking business class. This post will focus on booking an economy class award.

If you want to fly economy class this summer, I recommend getting some American Airlines miles. There are two main reasons:

All the legacy carriers--American, Delta, United, US Airways--charge 60k miles roundtrip to Europe in economy class. But I've outlined a trick that I'll repeat here to get your AA award for 50k miles.

Thai First, ANA First, United First All for 60k

Hot off the heels of FTU LAX, I'm writing a post to show people how to construct an awesome, yet rare aspirational trip. It's a trip with United, ANA, and Thai First!

For the past few months, I've been super busy with our Award Booking Service and haven't had time to post here. I was amazed at how many people actually came to me this weekend and told me to write more! Everyone also asked me to write about my upcoming trip that I booked.

For many, the question is simple.

Best Practices for Searching Oneworld Availability

This post is about the best practices to use when searching oneworld availability when you want to use your American Airlines miles.

American Airlines miles can be used on any oneworld airline and on its non-oneworld partners. For a list of oneworld airlines, see Free First Class Next Month: Airlines’ Codes, Hubs, and Alliances.

The best part about using partner award availability is that partner award availability always prices at the sAAver level, so you are always getting the best miles price you can.

Surcharge Info on All Delta SkyMiles Partners

The Delta SkyMiles program has a lot of drawbacks. One of the most annoying is that it charges fuel surcharges on award redemptions on several of its partners. For this post, I've compiled a list of SkyMiles partners that fly to the US, and I've priced out a roundtrip award from the US to their hubs in either economy or business class.

Delta miles can't be used for three-cabin first class redemptions. Awards cost the roundtrip price whether you fly oneway or roundtrip.

I've noted which awards incur surcharges and how much those surcharges are.

Award Space on American Airlines’ Brand New Routes

A few weeks ago, One Mile at a Time was all over the new American Airlines international routes:

Dallas (DFW) <-> Seoul (ICN)
Dallas (DFW) <-> Lima (LIM)
Chicago (ORD) <-> Dusseldorf (DUS)
New York (JFK) <-> Dublin (DUB)

Those flights went on sale yesterday, meaning that they were added to the award calendars. I decided to take a look at the award-space picture, and I found some surprising results.

Anatomy of an Award: Routing West to India on an American Airlines Award

This is a guest post from Chase Tajima. Chase is a tax attorney in Honolulu--Aloha! He writes about Hawaii tax law at TheTaxTable.wordpress.com. Anyone is welcome to submit a guest Anatomy of an Award post, so we can all learn from interesting award bookings.

I started following MileValue because I wanted to find a cost effective way to get from Honolulu to Delhi, India to attend my college roommate's wedding. Roundtrip flights from from Honolulu to Delhi ranged from about $1,600 to $2,000+ in economy.

Anatomy of an Award: How to Book an Award on Southwest

Update 10/13/14: Southwest awards now cost 70 points per dollar of the cash fare instead of 60. Taxes are now $5.60 per direction within the United States instead of $2.50 per flight. Everything else is the same.

The other day I helped a friend book a roundtrip Southwest award from Los Angeles to Denver for 11,761 Rapid Rewards and $5, taking advantage of a 1,000 Ultimate Rewards transfer to make up a shortfall of points in her account. For some people, this post will be very basic.

I Don’t Know United’s Award Rules

I've got a thriving Award Booking Service. I hold myself out as an expert on the nuances of award-booking rules, and yet I don't know United's award booking rules. Let me explain.

On February 10, 2011, someone believed to be a United employee posted on FlyerTalk that the new routing rule for United awards would be that the actual routing you choose can exceed MPM by no more than 15%.

For those who don't know: MPM (Maximum Permitted Mileage) is the maximum length that a routing on a paid ticket between an origin/destination city pair can be.