11 Best Airline Award Ticket Sweet Spots: Maximize Your Miles

I respect you so much as a travel writer but I roll my eyes whenever I see this headline because I know you're going to include essentially theoretical sweet spots, like ANA F with Virgin or Qatar J with American.

ANA basically releases nothing in F (and honestly, virtually nothing in J either) to partners and Qatar more or less releases nothing to the US in J. Yes, sure, you can still find two seats from Rome to Doha. Whoopee.

@ Cranky Commenter -- I hear you, but I'm making a quick list with 11 different options, some with great availability, and some with less great availability. Regarding Qatar Airways, I noted how award availability is limited to and from the US, but it's quite good in other regions of the world, and those awards are still useful.

I have noticed that recently there are hardly any business class award seats between the US an Europe on LifeMiles. Used to be able to find often two business class seats on LOT, Austrian - not anymore, only coach seats.

@Ben you could be a lot more honest about the possibility of booking these though. You said you've listed 'some with not great availability'. Seat.Aero has an ANA F seat finder tool and it currently shows two flights across the next year, both between HNL and NRT.

So, not a single F class seat between Japan and the continental US (or to Europe) is available to book with points. Saying this is 'less great availability' is simply misleading and something an industry expert should know and disclose.

@ Chris W -- If ANA first class is available, it's typically pretty last minute, which is why you don't see a lot of seats available. They come and go very quickly, but a lot of people do book them.

And that section was about first and business class, not just first class. While ANA business class award availability isn't great, there are more than a few seats available over the next year.

Anyway, I totally get that this is super niche, so people are free to ignore it, and I won't hold it against them. It's really an award for those of us who are flexible and maximizers, willing to lock in awards at the last minute.

As a semi-frequent IB flyer, I've noticed a recent trend where I am consistently finding better business availability on BA's platform than IB's own system. IB always has better economy availability but IB no longer seems best for booking their own business award Tix in many cases.

To clarify for Flying Blue on AF/KLM, 50k is the saver level award correct? And once those are gone, seats are still available but at higher price levels? I recently did a Flying Blue redemption using Virgin and Flying Blue points for the outbound and inbound respectively, Premium Econ for both. I never did see the saver level business class unfortunately, but on the way home the buy-up for Business Class wasn't bad, just $384 per person.

Cue the "nothing available" chorus. Part of this game is doing things differently from civilians and one of those differences is sometimes booking last-minute. When seats.aero sends you an alert (because weeks ago you invested an hour setting alerts in your paid seats.aero account) you drop what you're doing and book that ANA F HND-JFK now, from your LifeMiles account. As in, not in 7 minutes, but now. If you "need" the airline to confirm your booking months in advance, or you "need" 5 seats on the same flight, you're a cash customer. But for a decade, I've begun every trip with a oneway, without a homebound booking. I've always made it home. If you want reassurance on availability, search tomorrow and the next 4 days. There's plenty.

Has anybody seen recent QR business class using AAdantage miles? I haven't and I look regularly. Heck, you hardly see economy awards from US gateways.

We transfer Amex to Avios for QR and book 360 days out. Hoping for a transfer bonus again.

The only AAdantage sweetspots are domestic economy in secondary markets off peak.

While availability is limited on some of these programs, I looked at my own experience (mostly One World travel from the East Coast). I'm no points guru, but have done 5 of the 11 sweet spots listed, and agree that they were all great deals. It's mostly been on travel to Europe and the Middle East, not the Far East (yet).

The problem is that ANA business class hasn't been bookable by Virgin Atlantic for almost half a year now. The seats always come back as unconfirmable from VS.

This article is a recycled article that you've posted before, but now lacks the context on important gaps in Dec 2024. Like how AA basically has no US availability for Qatar, etc.

Small error. You say "Flying Blue also often sells points at a discount." in the Virgin Atlantic section. It should be Flying Club 🙂

I wonder if he could have an article of all the sweet spots that I’ve been killed in the past two years. I think that less would be pretty long.

You don't need to transfer from BA to Iberia to get the cheaper prices any more. It's the same pricing in either programme. 42,500 avios Madrid to Latin America is unbeatable in my opinion and they always have tons on availability to Bogota and Mexico City

For me its J tickets acrros the pond with aeroplan for 120k or 140k. Even then, I book with cash half the time. And I'm not short on points. Points offer less and less possbilities every year.

Really bummed about VS going with dynamic pricing. During off peak months there are already enough deals going around.

I loved paying a standard points amount when cash tickets are super inflated during the summer and winter holidays.

Oh well! 🙁

I may be wrong but it seems that restriction of access to rewards is a USA issue?.

I have booked AKL-BER (berlin) in J for 85,000AA with Qatar. DOH-HND in F with Qatar/JAL for 50,000AA and NRT-AKL in J with Fijian for 40,000AA , all in May/June 2005. I had to wait a bit for the DOH-HND flight to come up on the dates I wanted but the other flights were pretty straight forward.

Personally I think one of the great sweet spots is that for 40,000AA miles I can fly Business from NZ/Australia to almost anywhere in Asia or 50,000 in F for the rare SYD/HND on Japan Airlines. some of these flights are 10 to 12hrs long.

Iberia business class awards are also 34k Avios to/from Chicago's ORD, which is a shorter positioning flight from points west in the United States. Like Colorado, where I live. Also, fees are easily $150 per-person each way nowadays. Still a good redemption, though.

Correct. When inventory is first released, it is at the lower point price. When those are taken, the point price rises. When those are taken, the point price rises again. Etc. While many criticize dynamic pricing, it does open up award seats. Frankly, in a pinch, I'll take the higher point price than no award seat at all.

As so many have already commented, award inventory made available to partners is the bugaboo. United domestic first via a partner?

There is availability of partner awards and then there is visibility of partner awards. To see award inventory, there needs to be an IT systems handshake between the booking partner and the flying partner. Within One World, Qantas is known to have the best visibility. Use Qantas to identify an award flight on airline X and then CALL AA or BA or whomever to book. Identify availability exists and be persistent. Best of luck.

Yes, though saver availability isn't necessarily always available as soon inventory is first released. It's not uncommon so see insanely high point costs for seats on the furthest available date out.

I'm fairly new to the points game, but I've noticed significantly fewer 50K flights available to/from my home airport IAD on Flying Blue vs just a few months ago. They're still out there, but I've gone from seeing a few each month to many months having none. This is searching with several different final destinations.