One of the best ways to maximize airline miles is to redeem on an airline other than the one you’re accruing miles with, and take advantage of award pricing sweet spots. There are some fantastic arbitrage opportunities out there, whether it’s redeeming Avianca Lifemiles for Lufthansa first class, or redeeming Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points…
Continue reading: What Causes Airline Award Availability Discrepancies? Factors To Understand…
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
These discrepancies have become a huge problem for anyone trying to book TPAC award space in premium cabins. There is almost no way to reliably find space using programs that accept transferable currencies. Lifemiles has not had access to ANA premiumm awards in forever, Air Canada seems to only show available ANA space for short/medium haul routes. United has full access to ANA business class awards but charges a lot of miles for the awards. J
EVA only makes premium cabin awards available to its own program, haven't seen any premium cabin availability through partners in years. China Airlines has always been stingy.
AA has married segment logic for AA awards making it hard to book directly to Tokyo.
Haven't seen any availability in premium cabins on Korean carriers in forever.
Cathay has stopped releasing premium cabin awards to partners and anyway almost never shows TPAC availability through their own program.
United, ironically, used to be the last airline that would show decent availability but they have also stopped making award available TPAC.
The miles and points game is basically dead over the Pacific.
One other discrepancy that I would like to mention is mixed cabin space. For example on Alaska when searching on mobile app shows business class Seattle - Portland - London available. But in actual fact it is Seattle to Portland in business and the long segment Portland to London in coach. Air Canada is also notorious for this too. Very misleading.
On a side note this lack of partner space in J is also why my miles are worth much less than they used to.
Like everything else it has got to a point where it’s just super difficult to get a decent itinerary to your destination in premium cabin. It’s not the pre-pandemic world and it’ll never be.
Best ways to watch for sales. Recently saw a sail for next summer from US to Europe round-trip in J for $2600. I think that is the best way to book fares nowadays. I want to become a time consuming activity with very little rewards.
Timing can be important (not that Ben hasn't mentioned that frequently). I booked a LAX-SYD award ticket in F on QF on the QF site, about six weeks out. Nothing available for a flight to LA, so I booked revenue. Fast forward three weeks and F and J were available but too late.
@Greg has a great point about mixed class awards. Thankfully, QF does the opposite. They list the fares by the lowest class in the booking but you can tell there's a premium sector by the price. I've seen a SYD-LAX Y award on JAL with HND-LAX in F.
My experience SYD-LAX shows that there's at least some TPAC availability. Bizarrely, as if to confirm at least a TPAC shortage, searching CX there was a HKG-LAX flight available in J, but on BA via LHR (nothing non-stop) for the standard CX point-to-point award price. Go figure.
I don't agree with that Stoppy. Yes if you look closely Air Canada states it, but it is not obvious especially for people who don't do this all the time.
@Bbt:
Agreed. I booked JFK-Rome RT in J for $2,600 for April 2026 travel just this weekend past.
I so don't have time for those time consuming searches.
Yep. Almost got caught a few weeks ago. I thought the over the water leg was in J. It was only when I looked closer to review all of the details, I realized the longest segment was in Y.
There was no immediately apparent information that this was mixed class travel.
I hate these mixed awards but at least Aeroplan clearly shows percent Business Class (even if it's just 4%). Alaska and AA aren't so transparent until you drill down and check flight by flight on the itinerary. United search is best as it won't show J or PY space unless at least the long(er) segment is available in the higher class.
Re: Airlines releasing more award availability to their own loyalty club members than partner loyalty club members- And certain partner loyalty club members can get more availability than other partner loyalty club members.
Also HEAVY emphasis on "Married Segment Logic" especially with Delta Skymiles which basically ruins almost every single attempt to redeem those points to/from NA and possibly even beyond to a lesser extent.
It's a matter of "learning the computer's algorithm" when redeeming points and then working with/against it to try and get a suitable itin.
Wow so much catastrophizing. Especially @Andrew M, who makes a series of categorical statements, each in its own paragraph, a sort of poem of doomsday pronouncements. Most untrue or exaggerated.
My friend booked EVA TPE-YYZ in recent months on Aeroplan. I booked and flew JL F BKK-HND-ORD(-YYZ) on one gorgeous AA itinerary this year. My LifeMiles+ subscription is paying off, with cheap cancellable StarAlliance redemptions. I'm finding last minute JL and ANA in Premium cabins.
There are 30,000 planes in the air, at any given moment, day and night. Most have a premium cabin and most of those had unsold J seats 7 days before takeoff.
Whenever someone asserts that the sky is falling, I wonder what they're doing different from me. When we discuss it further, it's always the same thing: they want confirmed booking weeks, or months in advance. That November seat you "couldn't find" in August? I'm flying it this weekend.
EVA connecting routes don’t ticket via MileagePlus for whatever reason. UA & EVA reps confirmed saver availability for both legs but could only ticket an invalid standby itinerary.
@DenB, "they want confirmed booking weeks, or months in advance." Well, lucky you, not everybody can plan for time off with a couple of days notice, most working people need to put in their request and plan for it months in advance.
Acutely feeling the lack of TPAC award space. Had to get creative and am basically going around the world in late February/early March in J. Settled for PE on the return HND-JFK but I'm getting the A35K. Have yet to try the Q suites so I'll get that too.
JFK-LHR-CDG (AA/BA), CDG-DOH-KUL-CGK (QR), CGK-KUL-NRT-HND-JFK (MH/JL)
@Ricky: And advanced points travellers know that you can plan your time off, your lodgings, your babysitting catsitting plantsitting, months in advance, then book your outbound flight 5 days before leaving, and your homebound flight 3 days before returning. You can. You really can. Lots of us do it. You, @Ricky, don't. And that's your choice.
Nice try pretending I'm being insensitive.
Aeroplan is the winner in this crap game. I was quoted 700K miles for Business class from DXB-BOS, mentioning it as mixed cabin, out of which Business class was only 5 percent. WOW!!