Where To Find Award Space

Thank you Tiffany.

I use the British Airways Executive Club site to search for One World awards. In my experience its not too “glitchy”.

SAS Eurobonus just opened their own award booking tool online last week.

Delta on alaskair.com? How old is this article?

It doesn't look like I can view LH availability on EF t-minus 1 week. User error on my side or can anyone else confirm?

I like AwardNexus for finding availability. But I am able to use it for free - I think new users have to pay. But it basically aggregates data from the main airline sites.

For Korean Airlines awards wouldn't you search Korean's website? Or is it a matter of them not making their space available freely to partners? But if you're using KE miles it makes perfect sense to search there for space.

@tiffany - what's the problem with looking for award space with Iberia on Iberia website?

@ raksiam @ Omer Stark -- Sure, if you're using the miles of a given carrier, on that carrier, you can use their site. But many of these programs make more space available to their own members, so you can't necessarily rely on the native site to tell you what is available to partners, if that makes any sense.

I like baredemtionfinder.com to see a bunch of BA nonstop availability at a time.

There's also a great free chrome extension, award.flights where it works with different mileage programs like BA Avios, to search multiple dates and multiple airports automatically. It worked very well for me searching Qatar qsuite space on BA before I caved in and bought expertflyer premium.

Tiffany thanks for the post. I was surprised to read Hawaiian Airlines has different availability for all partners. Do you have any info you can point me to on this?

I'm interested in booking what appears to be generous Business space from Asia and I was planning to use AA / TrueBlue / or HA to book in the future for a travel 2019.

The advice to "search for one segment at a time" is often helpful; however, it may be worth calling out the airlines (e.g., American) that have married segment restrictions which necessitate adding connections to see availability on long-haul flights. With AA, these extraneous segments can sometimes be dropped after placing such an award on hold.

Why not list Alaska's website for searching BA, AA, AY, QF, JL space?

Thanks for this post Tiffany! Very helpful. I have a specific question. Do you know what type of award space needs to be available on Emirates when booking via Alaska? I ask because there is a flight I'd like to book JFK - Dubai - Male, but the Dubai to Male segment is in coach. If I book this, is it D space I am looking for before calling Alaska to change my seat? Do you know if there will be fees involved if/when I see space become available when I call to change from coach to j? The JFK to Dubai segment is in j. I called twice and got two answers, one agent said no fees and the other said $125. Thank you.

@Charlie or anyone who can answer. Thanks for your tip. However, I use Safari and not familiar with Google Chrome extensions. What would I search in Chrome and how would I use the extension, "award.flights"? Thanks for the info!

For those of us older folks who are not computer savvy and a bit lazy, what's wrong with calling and having an agent try to find connections using our mileage plan?

This is great Tiffany, thank you. Nice to just be reminded of some of the smaller airlines one could take advantage of.

There is a caveat about searching for AS on BA. BA shows award space further out (by almost a month?) that is not bookable on AS. By the time the AS clock progresses and allows booking all the good redemptions are gone. If a good redemption remains it will always be cheaper (long haul) on AS points by a huge margin.

Thanks Tiffany for this post. Well informed article.

Oops - searching for award space on the BA site for redemption with AS points is what I meant in the first sentence. Should re-read before posting.

@Charlie
Lucky did a post on that before, but thanks for reminding me, I almost forgot ( https://onemileatatime.com/chrome-extension-award-flight-search/)

I couldn't find any flights on Cathay Pacific when I used British Airways site. Also, how many stopovers, transits, open jaws are allowed on a one-way and/or round trip on CP with One World Flights? It's so confusing because even CP agents are confused, and have different, often conflicting answers!

Thanks Tiffany I'm definitely going to bookmark this! FYI, I recently redeemed points for Qatar QSuites (yay) and Ive found the Asia Miles search to be quite easy and accurate to use.

@Tiffany asking for my mom. Is there anyway how she can use or transfer her CSR points for China Airlines flight? Thank you.

@Omer Stark I'm IB Infinita (long period top tier for IB), I've done many redemption on IB and Tiffany seems to be right. OW redemptions on IB where neither departure or arrival airports are not IB ones are a bit unusual (let's say HKG NRT, better to see in BA)
Even only way redemptions of an usual destination: eg LIM- CUZ are strange, if you search returns easier.
On my way I'll go thru the article to find a good redemption to JNB or CPT. I got that 500 EUR first class from CPT to BCN), it was honoured :))

Thank you, this is really helpful 🙂 .

I'm using Aegean's program and have run into issues a few times where neither their website nor their hotline can see award space on a given route even though United shows multiple flights available for redemption. One example was LH from Frankfurt to Tokyo recently.

Do you think this has more to do with inaccurate availability showing on United's site or *A airlines not giving Aegean's program members any availability?

@chub yup, that's where I found it from

@darlene search award.flights on google, and there will be a button on the homepage sating download chrome extension. That should be it

Thank you for this post. Even as someone more seasoned it's helpful to have this to reference back to.

You mentioned that Etihad should only be searched on Etihad.com, what about ExpertFlyer? The airline is listed on the award space list but not on your list?

@Tiffany Do you know of a good way of checking award availability on Philippine Airlines? I'm interested in booking their nonstop flights from the US/Canada to Manila but can't seem to find any space when looking on ANA's site.

How can I use British Airlines points on American Airlines domestic trip?