Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky,

I am looking to cash in points to take my 6 family members from Minneapolis to visit friends in Turkey for 2 weeks in August of 2016. I have over 600,000 in American points, 50,000 in Delta and 300,000 in my Amex along with 600,000 at Marriott. I looked at American and found the fees where pretty high. Delta appears to be the best with rates of 77,500 per person and $40 in fees. I had thoughts of converting some Marriott points to Delta to bridge the gap needed – 465,000. Any recommendations on how to score the best deal to get the whole family to Turkey for the least points? Thanks for input.

Hello DavidPL.

You post is missing an important piece of the information, namely what airport in Turkey are you try to fly to?

Also what class of travel are you looking for? Are we talking economy here?

The American award with high fees, would it by any chance involve British Airways and flying true LHR?

Are you willing/able to break up the group to different flights? Or have you been searching for space for 6 on one flight?

I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, your timing is not very good.

Award seats become available in general for booking 330-365 days out depending on the program, then the next group of seats that will be available will hopefully show up close to the flight leaving IF the airlines have seats the can’t sell.

Your challenge is twofold, first of all you are trying to to fly TATL during the summer which is the busiest season and to make matter worse AA is devaluating their FF programs come March 22 which means that a lot of Oneworld award space have already been booked up by people trying to burn their miles before they lose value.
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/11/17/2016-aadvantage-program-details/[/URL]
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/11/18/aadvantage-award-chart-devaluation-2016/[/URL]

Not sure how much experience you have with booking awards?

But have you considered using an award booking service since getting 6 seats this late in the game might be a challenge? Lucky runs a service called Pointspro, link here
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/need-award-help/[/URL]