Booking flights for myself and two children (ages 13 and 6) ASAP. Planning to use AA miles for one on Qatar website and Chase Sapphire for one of the other two. Also trying to keep us all together on the flights if at all possible. Would it be more advantageous to pay for any remaining costs with AA credit card or Chase Sapphire? Thanks!

Trying to book trip for 2025 to South Africa.

I see lots of award availability for 70k miles from East Coast to Doha, and then Doha to South Africa for 55k (all in business).

Is it true that you can call American Airlines and have them combine both legs into one itinerary for 75k miles? It almost seems too good to be true.

I started monitoring spaces release and trends over the past two months. Thanks to all who shared their experience, learned a lot of tips and tricks from here and flyertalk!

Itinerary for two:

Total distance according to GCmap = 21648
Total distance according to ANA = 21680
ANA miles used : 125000 x 2
Taxes/Fees : ~$1060 pp

Tools I used:

• FlightConnections helped to show all routings available to/from a destination
• SeatsAero for quick searches to find availability, subscribed premium for a month
• Ultimately I used ANA to confirm the spaces are actually there.

Other comments:

• I made several calls before finalizing the itinerary to get the exact flights I wanted. On the first call, the flights after HKG are not released yet, but I want to secure the TK flights, so I just use dummy dates for those later flights and called back to change dates
• GCmap was within 100 mi, as others have pointed out. At first, the agent miscalculated the total distance, and quoted 23XXX mi total distance. I politely, but assertively pushed back and asked her to list the distances per each segment. Then she realized where she made an error, and quoted the correct distance.
• On the first call, with dummy flights, total taxes/fees came to ~$945. Then when I made changes two weeks later, and switched a TPE-NRT flight to a TSA-HND flight, total taxes/fees jumped to ~$1060.

Edit: So I was wrong about this being a great deal, BUT if you get the same error I do, you need to contact Aeromexico. They can reconfigure your account to accept an int'l address.

Has anyone joined AM without a Mexican address? Support seems to tell me I can, but the website is restricting me to inputting a Mexican city and state. Thanks!

All flights from going to/from US to UK seem high. What airport is cheaper to travel to/from. Its either higher points or way more taxes ?

Example 6/20:

ATL - MAN - 30kpoints + $152.8

MAN - ATL- 18k points + $319

OR
Cash

$1595 Return Trip

2.3CPP effective

Is there a trick to travel cheaper to UK from US ?

Thanks

MMS integration into Hyatt looks to be a huge disappointment for the most part. I’ll probably start using Hyatt less frequently. What do you guys think is the next best hotel award program for cheap redemptions at luxury properties? What about budget ones? Hilton? Marriott? Discuss.

I’m looking to fly JFK to ATH on 08/16/24 on AA flight 334. I have a combination of Capital One miles and Chase UR points. AA shows an economy flight for 2 people with miles at 54k + $11.20 in fees. It’s my understanding that I can’t transfer my Capital one miles or Chase UR to AA miles but can transfer them to British Airways miles. When I search the point value for British Airways, it shows that the same flight booked through BA is 51,500 “Avios” miles and then an additional $474.60 in fees. Seems ridiculous vs the value from AA. Just wondering if there’s anything I’m missing or any other work around for this?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently looking at different to go from the North-East of the US to India/Sri Lanka/Maldives.

Last year, I was able to find some good availability on Etihad in J through the AAdvantage portal, and eventually booked that (granted it was Europe to South Asia).

This year, it seems that only the Economy seats are available. I saw a report by OMAAT on the 30-Day rule for J availability (https://onemileatatime.com/news/etihad-partner-award-availability/) but that doesn't even seem to apply anymore.

I get some J availability on EY using tools like points.me and Roame but I don't see the same availability on AA, even within 30 days.

The only search I found that return some EY availability on AA's portal was for May 9th JFK->AUH, but that onlu gave an option for F, not J.

Anyone experiencing the same thing ? Any insight on how to proceed (get the flights numbers that we see available and call a reservation agent) ?

I’m looking to use my United awards to book a ticket from the US to Paris, with a layover in Frankfurt. The first long haul flight is in business class but the second short leg is economy. Both legs are operated by Lufthansa. I have a few questions.

1. Does that mean I check in at the Lufthansa ticket counter? a Lufthansa plane?
2. With my second leg in economy, does that mean I can’t access the Lufthansa lounge in Frankfurt? If it makes a difference, I would be arriving and leaving Frankfurt the same day. Would it make a difference if arrival and departure were different days (meaning my layover is overnight)? With a long layover, I may leave the airport; does this affect lounge access?
3. If for some reason I have to cancel, will my award points be refunded?

Thanks!

I know it would be ideal to tKe advantage of transfer bonuses when they are available, so I can take advantage of 20/30% transfer rate. But those other times when there are no transfer bonuses , are you all using transferring your points at a 1 to 1 ratio?

I do have travel coming up São Paulo Brazil and I have AMEX. I tried Cathy rewards to book a flight in December and from the travel hacker website, it was showing possibly as low as 30k points for an AAflight - economy is fine. Well turns out, after talking to the Cathy rep , for a family of 3 round trip is 550k points..in economy main…I realize it’s inflated due to demand around the holidays. Question is, when there are no transfer bonuses, is this really the best use of my points (1:1) when the flight is expected and almost mandatory. Or is there a better way to go about this ?

Hello, I just booked a flight thru chase travel for china airline. I received confirmation email & now I am trying to add that flight/booking onto the China Airline app itself but every time I input airline confirmation number or even tried trip ID number, it says they are not able to find it or it does not exist. Anyone able to help me out? Would I have to call Chase Travel?

I booked a one way HKG to SIN on SQ an advantage fare in F. I also want go to from SIN to DPS on SQ, but that flight does not offer F class, only J. Is it possible for me to add a stopover on my existing flight so that the final itinerary looks like HKG to SIN in F, stopover for a few days in SIN, then SIN to DPS in J? If so, how can I do this?

Hello, I am trying to book an RTW through ANA Award Reservation but am having a hard time figuring out why this route is not working on the website. I used the RTW Star Alliance website and it works but I clicked through all the flights on the ANA website and once I hit the last flight, it just says for me the read hints about booking through ANA, partner airlines, etc.

I am trying to attempt: HKG-Beijing

Beijing-Shanghai

Shanghai-TPE

TPE-TYO

TYO-NYC

NYC-Copenhagen

Copenhagen to HKG for the way back.

Is it easier if I call an agent to try booking?

Hello!

In two years I was trying to plan a trip with my gf to Lake Como using points. However, now that the SLH were basically removed from Hyatt and their Mr. And Mrs.Smith have poor redemption value (relatively), I was wondering what other options I have for booking a hotel stay at Lake Como.

I’ve been loyal with Hyatt for a while, but given this change, I’m willing to start getting points for other programs to help pay for this trip. I know Sheraton has one hotel and so does Hilton, but they weren’t nearly the same quality as the SLH ones. Any advice or recommendations?

I’m about to get my bonus points for spending the first 3,000 on my new IHG card. Points will post in a couple weeks. My question is, can I book a hotel, and later pay with points somehow, since I’m not paying in advance anyway. First time using rewards, and we have two 4 night stays planned I’d like to book and use the free fourth night on!

Looking to go to the Maldives in January for 5-6 nights. Would love to stay at the WA but doesn't seem like i will be able find award availability there. I am debating between the Conrad the PH and Alila (all currently have availability for beach villas). I am also open to the Marriott properties but that redemption would be a little more complex for me. Any suggestions on which property i should pick.

Booked MEX-LIM Jun. 24 on some Aeromexico J fare discount with Amex Plat (35% off). Would like to make it back to DTW but will prob reposition, prefer NYC.

If you were to do a short tour in SA (no more than say 2 or 3 weeks) before making it back home, where would you go?

Right now my idea is to spend a bit of time in LIM, pop over to EZE for 33k w/ Amex Plat and do some sort of routing through Colombia via Avianca biz and make Colombia the stopover for a day or two with Aeroplan, something like 65K + 150 in J.

I wonder if there is any more creative routings to be had here.

Is it worth booking at high end Hyatt if you are not Globalist? I tried looking at few hotels - including in Maldives… couldn’t find hotel for family of 4 + no option for free breakfast… love to hear experience from folks in same boat as mine… how should you think about expenses if you stay at Hyatt without any status…

Hi,

I recently took a couple flights on Turkish Airlines and the points got credited to my Miles&Smiles account. I was unable to switch the frequent flyer number to my Aeroplan number (I couldn't get the website or app to do it) prior to taking the flights.

I was thinking I could call in and ask them to credit the points to my Aeroplan account after the fact. However I called Turkish and the person told me I would have to call Aeroplan to do this. That doesn't make sense to me as it seems like it would be a Turkish Airlines system thing.

Before I spend more time waiting on the phone, does anyone know if this is possible and who I should call?

Separately, is it possible to email Turkish rather than call? I haven't found an email address for them.

Thank you!

I have 100k true rewards points and every domestic trip I try to find outside of boston on multiple months is all the points+ $700 or so. I could pay cash easier. Any ideas? I’m building up my rewards on Chase to transfer but I’m stuck wanted to use up these JetBlue dollars.

Till a week ago, I could find SFO - India tickets on united for pretty much any date for 49.5k miles (economy, one way).

However, over the last 3-4 days, I see almost zero availability (and mostly F/J for days that are open, and even those seem 2-3x more than what they were a week ago).

I couldn't find any news of changes. What am I missing?

I already normally purchased tickets for a flight from SFO to Istanbul, however I was wondering if there was a way to use some of the 300,000+ points that are sitting on my card to upgrade the seat from economy to business class?

Turkish Airlines doesn't appear to be a partner for chase points, so is there a way to convert those points to something that they'll accept?

There are a lot of pros and especially beginners in this subreddit, and like a lot of people, I read the OMAAT. Once a day, maybe.

Every now and then there is stuff going on in the award space that would seem to be newsworthy with what the OMAAT blog covers. Transfer bonuses, major blackouts, phantom award space problems, credit card changes, etc.

However, some of it goes unreported.

Some examples:

​

• American Express Business Gold card had a multiplier change several months ago. For the last decade it offered either 3x or 4x points on shipping spend. This made it an ecommerce powerhouse card. The change went entirely unreported.
• There are frequently mile transfer bonuses being offered that go unreported. I remember a couple years ago when I logged into AmEx and saw a 40% transfer bonus to Avios partners, and it wasn't even mentioned on the site.
• Yesterday, there was a post about United first class devaluations for ANA and Lufthansa. The comments rightfully pointed out that Air Canada hasn't even been allowing ANA F to be booked. That's much worse than a price increase.
• Finally, last September, EVA released a shit ton of phantom awards to their partners. It was a problem for several weeks - people we're moving hundreds of thousands of points to United

and Aeroplan, not realizing EVA couldn't be booked, and their points were locked.

• This was mentioned all over Flyertalk and this sub, but went entirely unmentioned on OMAAT other than in the comments section.

Instead, there will be news alerts for Russian citizens, best boarding music rankings, or Southwest's new commercial.

Not making any accusations, just an observation I've made and was wondering if anyone else caught this. Seems worth noting that a lot of this important information was also missing from other popular blogs like Frequent Miler or TPG, so not entirely singling out OMAAT.

My point is we can't rely entirely on the blogs to cover stuff that's important to many of us here. Check this sub, join the Discord groups, scan Flyertalk... the blogs miss things, have their own agendas, etc. Nothing wrong with that, it just is what it is.

Hoping someone can help me out. I've read that JAL release award seats to all of its partners at the same time. I'm hoping to book two JAL J seats from the west coast to TYO T-14 in Sept or Oct. I've been monitoring through seats.aero for the last several months and availability on AA seems to be readily available T-14. But my points are in Avios, and BA/QR don't seem to show the same availability that AA shows- even when I've called. I do see *some* availability on BA, but not nearly the number of seats that seats.aero shows for AA. Can anyone help me understand what's going on with that?

TIA

Hi, I'm booking a trip to Madrid through Paris on an Air France flight, but will be using awards points through Virgin Atlantic. Since I'm booking with through VA using VA points, will that prevent me from being able to get a free 3 day stopover in Paris?

I've seen several people had this issue before, I tried to transfer 300,000 points to ANA and after 3 days the points were returned to my AMEX account:

Here's what I tried so far without success:

• I called AMEX multiple times, they say it's not possible to change my name UNLESS I actually have a change name in my ID, which obviously I don't have my last name as BBBCCC in my ID. They insist I need to submit a form to change my name, OR to talk to ANA.
• I called ANA yesterday and they say they simply cannot add the space to my last name so it shows as BBB CCC, they tell me to call AMEX.

Has anybody dealt with this recently? How did you fix it?

AMEX seems useless and ANA takes forever to get a hold of someone on the phone, what can I do?

Edit: I called AMEX again and finally found an agent who knew what I was talking about. Took 2 hours to link my account with my last name without the space, I sent my points again, I'll make another edit to this thread to confirm if it went through or not.

Trying to find promotion award tickets on Turkish airlines' business class. It is quiet hard to find these seats and searching day by day on Turkish website is a bit of a pain. The weekly view only shows the minimum miles which is for Economy. Plus I have to refresh the page after each date I look and it has been a bit of a struggle.

I was wondering if anyone has a better way?

My dates and airport preferences are VERY flexible. I can travel any day within the summer and there are about 4 airports I could book the flight to.

Here's the situation. I have two J/F tickets YUL-DOH-BKK for my wife and I. We are considering bringing our kids on this trip (5 and 3 years old). There is two economy award tickets on same flight available. My issue is obviously I cannot have my two kids alone in economy; I need one adult and one kid in business, and same in economy.

Options looked so far was (i) change name of wife ticket to one of my kid and (ii) book two economy tickets for kids and switch seats while on plane. None of these are working or guaranteed. On the phone, they basically said only option was to cancel one J ticket and rebook it under my kid's name, which obviously is subject to availability and no guarantee it'll return to inventory. Is there any other sensible options?

I do have 4J tickets on the return so at least that part would work.

Currently I am booking ASIANA Airlines but should I use a different membership from Star Alliance that would be easier to work with in the future? I dont plan to use ASIANA that often in the future as most of my trips will be going to Taiwan or domestic USA flights and maybe Japan.

Would it be better to Create something like a UnitedMileagePlus membership and apply my ASIANA flight? That way it is easier to use United to pair up with my chase UR to buy tickets in the future or does it not matter?

Hi everyone, I have a 35k point redemption with Marriott and I was planning to use it in Vegas and I have quite a few options but I want to see which upgrade scenario might be better/possible for me.

Scenario 1

Book a basic 2 Queen room at 20k points and see if I can cash upgrade to a strip view at check-in.

Scenario 2

Book a basic 1 King strip view 30k points and see if I can cash upgrade to a 2 Queen strip view at check-in.

Scenario 3

Book a basic 1 King suite 35k and see if I can cash upgrade to a 2 Queen suite or 2 Queen strip view.

Essentially I need a room with 2 beds but hate to lose value since the only 2 bed option is the cheapest redemption option. Would it be more cash to upgrade from the lowest tier(non-strip view) to 1 tier higher(strip view) or would it be cheaper to upgrade from a 1 bed to 2 beds if both are on the same tier(strip view)?