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I looked at the upcoming reservations in my United account. There are three trips:
- Honolulu to Sao Paulo
- Frankfurt to Los Angeles
- Honolulu to Chicago
One trip was booked with United miles, one with US Airways miles (before US Airways lost United as a partner), and one with Lufthansa miles.
The award booked with United miles flies Asiana, Lufthansa, and Air Canada. The awards booked with the other types of miles both fly United planes.
These three awards illustrate two simple and counter-intuitive truths about frequent flyer miles that I want everyone to understand.
1. Where you search for award space is NOT related to the miles you are using to book the award.
There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, all of an airline’s partners have equal access to its Saver award space.
What that means is that you can search the easiest-to-search website for Saver award space even if you are not using the miles associated with that website.
To give a concrete example, I just booked Honolulu to Chicago on a United plane with Lufthansa miles, but I searched for the award space on united.com.
(I booked with Lufthansa miles because they are much cheaper to Hawaii than United miles and because I have 73,000 Lufthansa miles since getting the Premier Miles & More® World MasterCard® with 50,000 bonus Lufthansa miles after spending $5k in 90 days.)
I searched united.com because it is the easiest place to search award space on United planes. It shows you a two-month calendar of award space and lets you manipulate the search to show only direct flights.
Search wherever is the easiest to find award space without regard to the miles you plan to use, and then call the airline whose miles you want to use to book your award (or better yet, book on its website if you can.)
To finish my Honolulu-to-Chicago-on-United example, I searched on united.com then called Lufthansa to book the award since I was using Lufthansa miles and United flights are not bookable at milesandmore.com (the Lufthansa site.)
The obvious follow up question is: where is the easiest place to search for award availability for each airline.
Broadly:
- For Star Alliance airlines, it’s almost always united.com.
- For oneworld airlines, it’s aa.com if they show up there and ba.com if they aren’t on aa.com.
- For SkyTeam, it’s delta.com or airfrance.us or Expert Flyer.
If you have a specific question about where to search for an airline, leave it in the comments or google your question with the word “milevalue” at the end.
2. The miles you should use for an award are not related to the carrier you plan to fly.
If you want to book a United flight, you can use:
- United miles
- Lufthansa miles
- Singapore miles
- ANA miles
- Aeroplan miles
- and on and on, basically any Star Alliance carrier’s miles
The best miles to use depends on how many miles of that type it costs, whether using that type of miles incurs fuel surcharges, the ease of earning those miles, how many of those miles you have, and more.
As I said about my three upcoming awards booked with Star Alliance miles:
- One trip was booked with United miles, one with US Airways miles (when US Airways was still in Star Alliance), and one with Lufthansa miles.
- The award booked with United miles flies Asiana, Lufthansa, and Air Canada. The awards booked with the other types of miles both fly United planes.
In each case, I weighed a lot of factors that are explained in the posts I wrote about the redemptions (linked above) and used the best miles to book the flights I wanted. And it just so happened that I always used a different type of miles from the airline I flew.
For instance, Lufthansa miles were better for the United flight to Chicago because Lufthansa’s chart is cheaper for an economy redemption from the mainland to Hawaii than United’s–20k Lufthansa miles versus 22.5k United miles.
US Airways miles were best for my redemption from Hawaii to Sao Paulo because they were the only miles in which I had a big enough balance at the time to book the trip, and they offer a great deal at 125k miles roundtrip in First Class.
United miles were great from Seoul to Los Angeles in First Class because at the time I booked, the one way award was only 70k miles plus government taxes with no fuel surcharges. (The miles price has since skyrocketed.)
A lot of folks say to me:
I want to earn Alaska miles because I fly Alaska a lot. Or I don’t want to earn United miles because I had a terrible experience flying United.
Those folks are missing the point. British Airways Avios are better than Alaska miles for most Alaska flights, and United miles can be used on over two dozen partners.
Recap
1. Where you search for award space is NOT related to the miles you are using to book the award.
2. The miles you should use for an award are not related to the carrier you plan to fly.
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Scott,
I thought you can only book r/t flights on LH Miles&More? Can you book a one-way flight on LH without booking it through UN?
Yes, just call Miles&More. Indeed, booking one-ways can provide novel savings sometimes, since they round down to the nearest thousand when an award is redeemed. So if a one way is 12,500, for example, you only get charged 12,000. This may seem trivial, but as a person with exactly 12,142 miles in my account right now, it’s interesting.
Hey Scott. Great post!
So, I have a question regarding point one. For example, I earn mi points (in this case kilometers, nos miles) in LANPASS program from LAN (OneWorld airline). So you basically say I could search for the flights I want in American.com, and see how many miles (or kilometers, how does it work there?) I need, and then call or go to LAN’s website to book? Even if the flight is, let’s say, Madrid to Helsinki with Finnair (also OneWorld)?
Thanks so much for the help!
Martin from Argentina.
No. You can find whether a flight has award space on aa.com, but the number of KM needed is based on LAN’s chart.
Sorry to be a pain Scott, but you should have entitled this article, “Award Booking for Dummies and/or Idiots.” Nothing here is “counter-intuitive” to anyone who is not utterly ultra-challenged, which yes, does indeed define some people. You must have to endure some major idiocy from the people who contact you if you have been forced to conclude that anything here is less than obvious to your reading masses. I really feel for you, envisioning what you must have to put up with.
This question isn’t exactly related to your post, but is part of the nuts and bolts that go into award booking.
I recently booked a bunch of flights through AA for my Australia trip. A couple of things. All the flights are on Qantas, but not all of them show up under my trips on AA the way your trips, even on partners, show up on United. Seems hit or miss. I have to search the record locator to pull up the reservation. 2 flights show up, 2 do not. Any idea why, and how to make it that way? Much nicer to see everything without “forgetting”.
That brings me to my second question. Every time I made a booking, I had to add my DOB and my sex. Each flight I also had to add my companion from scratch. Is there no way to add people like an address book to use frequently on your bookings? Also adding your country of residence, passport info, etc for each flight gets tiresome. Any way to save some time on this, or all these precautions by the airline for identity purposes.
New to this stuff so sorry for the super noob questions and thanks for any help!
United allows you to “Save” a reservation to your profile after you pull it up by confirmation number. That’s how I saved my bookings with US Airways miles and Lufthansa miles to my reservation page.
I don’t think AA allows this. I had an AA-mile-Cathay-flight booking I could never get to stick on my reservations page.
United also allows you to save all that stuff you want to save. I don’t know a way to do that with AA.
I read above that you can search a two month period through the united website, but at what point do the airlines release award availability for flights? I am searching for a flight 3 months out for domestic united and te saver space is already unavailable, is this likely to change? Thank you
The point is that you can search two months at a glance, which is nice. You can search about 11 months total by clicking on the forward and/or back arrows sequentially to see other months.
Award space is always changing. And some airlines including United are famous for releasing a lot of last minute award space. Check 3 weeks out, 2 weeks out, 1 week out, 4 days out, 3 days out, 2 days out, and day of.
If seats are unsold, you’ll probably find award space opened. But there is a $100 fee for booking within 3 weeks of departure.
BA frequently disappoints when trying to book Alaska flights with Avios. I can find the award availability on AA.com, but when I call into BA, they claim they can’t see the availability and won’t book the flight. So I either have to find a different day, or use the more expensive AA miles option (12.5 vs 17.5 to Hawaii from the West coast). This happens about 1/3 of the time. I now have Avios sitting in my account because I foolishly transferred in from Membership Rewards before verifying on the phone that I could book the flight.
I’ve never had that happen. Next time let me know the flight number, date, and cabin that BA couldn’t see.
how many Avios is it for a low (saver) first class award on Alaska to Hawaii from SJC/OAK?
is it 3 times the Y award since it is named First Class, even though it truly isn’t a first class product?
Which is the best award program for using miles for first class on Hawaiian and which airlines award chart/availability should I check?
Yes, it is 3x. BA charges 3x for AA, US, and Alaska First Class on domestic flights even on two-cabin planes.
Scott you have one of the most informed blogs out there. I’ve been a fan for well over a year now. I like the way you go about deconstructing the whole miles/points world. You’re easy to understand and it never feels like your posts contain fluff and filler.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks!
hi scott,
thanx for all the valuable info. I have lots of Avios, but after using AA.com to find awards flights jfk/lax, or lax/jfk,, British Airways website does not show the same availability…actually, a lot less!
Is there a way, short of calling BA, to get those domestic AA flights using Avios…i recall it is incredibly frustrating ro try and get BA on the phone.
Thanks
Gary
Please give me the dates, cabins, and flight numbers of any MileSAAver level award space found on aa.com on American Airlines flights that doesn’t show up on ba.com.
scott, thanx for your interest in my Avios challenge. hope you can provide some suggestions.
i was booking flights for my mom, to visit next month, (only non-stops):
jfk-lax 7/9 flight 1
lax-jfk 7/15 flight 12
On AA no saver fares in any class, so economy anytime is 20k outbound, 30k return.
doing same search on BA
get the usual messages:
Sorry, there are no flights available on Wednesday 9 July 2014.
Sorry, there are no flights available on Tuesday 15 July 2014.You can:
Scott is the authority on this but I think BA can only book saver space on the AA flights. If you don’t see saver space, you won’t be able to book it with your Avios.
Because BA only has access to AA’s MileSAAver seats. As this post mentions, partners have access to Saver seats. Partners never have access to Standard/High/AAnytime level seats.
Scott/Gaurav: thanx; i never realized this!
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I’m one of the complete dummies Mark is referring to above. I’m in my 70’s, been collecting miles since I retired 12 years ago and am not all that computer literate. Still, I have followed some advice from Milevalue and got the Citi Premier and its nice bonus points. I would like some real basic info. I probably did things wrong but since my destination has always been SE Asia, my miles are all on Asiana and EVA. Guess I should have accumulated them on United but, didn’t. Call me dense if you want but I can’t find where to find available upgrade space. I can’t fly economy – I need to take my oxygen generator with me and only Prem Econ and Business have plugs otherwise I need 3X the hours of the flight in batteries. My plan is to buy a Prem Econ seat on EVA and use miles to upgrade to Business and or Econ on Asiana and upgrade to Business. I have no problem understanding the charts for the various airlines but Is there a real basic primer on upgrades?