Any recent success booking 60K awards trips to Europe (w/o crazy fees)
 

Are 60,000K award tix to Europe really, really hard to secure?

I couldn't get any for this summer (searching last summer and fall) - I wondered if it was b/c USAir was leaving the *A and less awards were being made available.

I just read on FlyTalk that AA makes *one* FF seat available on its flights? I know there's no way to verify such info, so I was wondering if any of you have had success booking 3-4 award tickets to Europe using OneWorld (but not BA) at the base level of 60K.

I just looked for several days in July, and un-clicked the British Airways box on the listing of open flights, and found numerous options from Philly, although most involved changing planes in New York, usually also requiring a taxi ride from La Guardia to JFK.

I looked for three pax, total fees $5 per head each way. (AA no longer has round trip awards, only one-way trips at 30K miles each way. I didn't bother to look for return trips because that would depend on how long you want to be gone.)

Airlines release seats into award inventory on an unpredictable and arcane basis, using very sophisticated "yield management" software. FF seats appear throughout the 11-month booking period, but relatively few are made available at the outset. It's not uncommon to see many more seats open closer to flight time. It makes planning a bit harder, but the seats DO come open. It's ironic, but it's usually the late bird that gets the worm.

Fees are apparently tied to the airports you use, highest in the UK and less in other countries I've flown to/from with miles, such as Paris & Rome although, presumably, things can change on any given day.

Meant to say, my search was for LHR.

<i>Fees are apparently tied to the airports you use...</i>

Except some airlines, British Airways being the most notorious, add a "fuel surcharge" on top of mileage tickets, often making them nearly as expensive as buying a fare for money, and reducing the value of the FF miles to a trivial level.

In the UK, the Air Passenger Duty," a departure tax, is levied regardless of the airport used, and is a very big tax. The fuel surcharges aren't taxes; the technical term for them is "profit."

Agree that if the main portion of your flight is on AA, the additional fees are much less.