For those who say they can't use FF miles...
 

Here are the standard domestic awards (25K) that the 3 people in my household have been able to claim within the last 4 months:

1 r/t IAH-PHL (CO)
1 open-jaw IAH-PHL, EWR-IAH (CO)
1 open-jaw PHL-DFW, AUS-PHL (UA miles - flights on UA/US)
1 r/t DFW-LAX (CO)
1 open-jaw IAH-SFO, SJC-IAH (CO. Would have preferred SJC r/t)
2 r/t DFW-SFO (DL)

Again, all with 25K miles for each ticket, no double-miles used.

And we're likely to claim two IAH-HKG for 60K miles each on CO shortly, which is again standard awards.

So, from the accounts of 3 people, we are likely to able to spend close to 300K miles, all with standard award within half a year. There are basically two keys to it - flexibility with dates and airports; and know about partner awards. If you do some homework, FF miles can indeed be claimed.

Minor correction. The Dallas-LA trip was DAL-LAX on CO. Not DFW.

Two other things I forgot.

1. It certainly helps to be an "elite" member - at least on CO - to find 25K miles awards. Some of the seats were available for non-elites.

2. Do check availability again and again. For the DFW-SFO trip on DL, for many days it's shown that I would have to spend double miles for the Sunday return, or to use CO's connection via IAH at bad times. But later when I decided to book, 25K DL awards suddenly showed up. Therefore, it really helps to check and ask often.

Good for you. But the problem is not one of getting an award to fly to L.A. in coach. The problem is in getting the business class round trip award to Rome. Or the first class ticket to SYD without having to book it 330 days in advance.

Actually <b>mrwunrfl</b>, international business class is usually the easiest to get. At least that has been my experience. During the busiest times, I found I need about 2-3 weeks notice and so far I have not been disappointed. International coach, especially this summer is almost impossible to get for the plan ahead award.
This is based on my own experiences only. YMMV :-)

As far as business/first is concerned, you should look at it this way. A C fare to Europe is usually about 4 times that of coach or more. If it's 50K miles to claim an economy award to Europe, then the 100K business award is actually being &quot;too cheap&quot;, and are therefore always the first seats to go. And one shouldn't feel too bad about spending 200K miles on business to Europe if you remember that it's a $4,000 ticket.

A lot of people finally make it to an award level only to find that all the seats are gone, just like rkkwan said. Naturally, they are going to be disappointed.

Do either of you have an elite level status which has the benefit of more award seats available? Maybe that is part of the difference.

Yes, I <b>would</b> feel bad about spending 200K miles for FC on United to Europe when I thought it was going to cost me only 100K. (am thinking now about a long time ago when my GF, Tammy, told me &quot;Bill, quit telling me I shouldn't feel that way because I <b>DO</b> feel that way!&quot;).

I was pretty happy, in February, booking a FC AAdvantage award to Japan and Bali for travel in May/June. Only 3 months in advance and I made changes until I got it ticketed in the beginning of March. But, I did have trouble getting JFK-NRT-JFK seats on the days I wanted. And the fact was that the reason I went there at that time was because I couldn't get FC award seats to Australia for after-Christmas travel (I called in Jan and Feb for travel this Dec-Jan and could get FC across the USA but coach trans-pacific (or some unnaceptable comnpromise like that, I forget exactly).

&quot;Flexibility with dates and airports&quot; can translate to not flying when you want to fly or to the place you want to fly to. I am very happy to hear that you are happy with getting those award tix and thanks for the tips on getting awards. Don't forget to have sushi in Hong Kong.

The UA and DL awards were claimed without elite status. The CO ones are claimed from an elite account, but I also checked with a non-elite account. I believe of the 4 tickets claimed, two of them would not be possible at the 25K level without elite status.

My IMPRESSION, is that UA miles are easier to claim then CO/DL without elite. And the UA/US tickets are better coordinated, so one can check online on the UA site all the UA/US flights available to claim. On the other hand, CO/DL/NW are all seperate. On co.com, you won't see DL/NW/KL's flight listed for awards. You must call them, and you must know what to tell the agent to do.

I guess the &quot;Frequent Flyer&quot; programs are exactly that - for frequent flyers. And it helps if one's flexible with their travel dates. If one's flying a couple of domestic roundtrips a year, and hope that SOME DAY they'll have enough to go to Hawaii, then they're going to be highly disappointed. The FF programs really have little value to those who don't fly often, as the airlines really don't care for those business.

Is it worthy to claim TWO first class tickets to Honolulu, HI for total of 225,000 miles from Augusta, Georgia on Continental? We are thinking about December and there are seats available.

One of the best deals I ever got with FF miles was 2 first class tix from DC to Autralia/New Zealand.

UAL was &quot;charging&quot; 120,000 for one ticket or 2 tickets for 180,000 miles.

IT was a steal! I got almost $20,000 worth of tix for 180,000 miles

Unfortunatley, they no longer offer the specaial &quot;twofers&quot;.

z - Everybody sees the value of his/her miles differently, so only you can decide if it's worth it. But just for the record, the &quot;standard&quot; award to Hawaii in BF is 37,500 miles each way, and the &quot;Easypass&quot; award is 75,000 each way. So, you are using one of each. Keep in mind that you can mix and match types of rewards and class flown with continental, so if you think 75K miles for BF is too much, you can try get a economy seat for 17,500 each way.

Another possibility is to fly DL or NW in First or WorldBusiness (respectively) for that other leg. NW's World Business Class is a pretty good product to Hawaii, while DL's domestic first class is NOT.

So, just like what I said in my previous posts, you have lots of options. And make sure you know all about them - including flying NW or DL. Study carefully, and determine which is best for you.

rkkwan, thank you. We decided, it is worthy to us. We want to use all our miles before Continental decides to charge more. You never know.

Don't know if this has already been mentioned, but here's an interesting article on award redemption - perception vs. reality:

http://www.insideflyer.com/articles/...e.php?key=1853

An update:

Will be claiming -

2 r/t IAH-HKG (CO)
1 r/t IAH-EWR (CO)

So, the 6-month total will be 10 r/t, 320,000 miles claimed from 3 people's account, all at the minimum &quot;standard&quot; level.

Again, on CO, it's crucial to have elite status. Without that neither of these 3 tickets can be claimed on the dates/times desired.

I should have said &quot;none of the 3 tickets&quot;. Bad grammar.

I put the following three tickets on hold today. In coach, regular milage requirments

12/19 TYS to CDG
12/25 CDG to TYS

12/23 TYS to CDG
12/29 CDG to TYS

12/19 BNA to CDG
12/25 CDG to BNA

I did have to put a business on hold from 12/23 from Nashville to Paris.

We will make a final decision tomorrow and release two seats.

<b>CarolA&lt;/b.,

It's a very nice gesture, but unfortunately it doesn't work this way. Just because you release award seats, they don't automatially go back to award inventory. Depending on how many seats were sold between now and the release time, your seats could go to as high as full fare.

If it did work the way you think, imagine the possibilities.......

People putting seats on hold and auctioning to the highest bidder on e-Bay. </b>

AAFrequentFlyer.
I realize this, but I didn't want to get yelled at for &quot;hogging seats&quot; I figured what the airlines do with them after I release them is not really my concern.

Both of my sons are &quot;Lifetime Platinum&quot; AA FFs so they get perks unavailable to most of us.
In the (unusual) event they don't get comp upgrades, they use FF miles for international upgrades only.
M

Curious, how do you become lifetime Platinum elite with any airline??

My husband was always Platinum or the equivalent for years on 3 or 4 airlines when he traveled extensively but now that he's retired, he's lost all his status with all those airlines.

I can't talk about other airlines, but AA does have lifetime program. It's an unpublished perk so it could always be taken away without warning <i>(not the lifetime status once you get it, just getting it)</i>, and here are the details:

Gold lifetime = 1,000,000 miles
Platinum lifetime = 2,000,000 miles
Executive Platinum = there is no lifetime status

The nice part of the AA lifetime status is that <b>any</b> miles earned from any possible sources will count towards the lifetime status.

Other airline programs have this as well, but most require butt-in-the-seat miles <b>only</b>.

Lifetime = it's not your lifetime, it's the lifetime of the program.

Ah ha... CO has some US-HKG Business/First tickets available at the standard level - 60K each way, or 120K roundtrip, departing early September. Such rewards are pretty rare, and I think my parents will upgrade at least the outbound leg. Excellent value, as CO's Business/First on their 777 is very nice with 2-2-2 seating and 170-degree flat seats. They usually cost about $2,000 each way. Good deal at 60K miles.

I just put a reservation on hold for next March LAX-CDG-NCE-LAX in business class on DL/AF. Got my first choice of dates and flights. Granted I do most of my traveling in the off season but I've never booked 331 days out and seldomly have problems getting the flights I need.

Today I needed to change the dates on my earlier reservation. I called DL and again no problems getting the new dates that I wanted. I was offered a choice of 2 AF flights on the outbound and a choice of either AF via CDG or DL via JFK on the return. Both the agent last week and today were very pleasant :)

I just booked 2 FC LAX/CDG on my UA miles on the LH flight, I got my first choice of dates. I thought 200K for nearly $20K in rack rate seats was a good deal! I was pretty amazed, it was quite easy this time, and with UA I'm just a plain old regular member....So you can get them!

Thank you for clarifying AAFrequentFlyer. Now I'm sorry we got rid of our AA Visa card. We did away with it feeling like we could accrue FF miles quicker with the AmEx Starwood card since they give a 5,000 mile bonus everytime you transfer 20,000 points into a FF account (they work with lots of airlines too). It just made more sense to have a choice of airlines and to be able to get a ticket for 20,000 points rather than the usual 25,000.

Using the new CO FF tool on their website, I am unsuccessful in getting any reward travel for August 2005 (and very minimal Business/First in June or July 2005). Am I to believe that all of the seats are taken already or that CO offers very few seats for FF that far in advance? If I can't get it with allowing that much advance notice, how are others successful in using their FF miles? Very disappointed in the CO program. BTW, in all fairness, I am not a CO Elite...that might offer more opportunities.

larriola - Unfortunately, CO is one of the toughest airlines to get standard awards using miles, unless you're an &quot;Elite&quot;. That has been the gripe of many people for quite a while.

Fortunately, Onepass miles can be used on partner airlines, including all in the Skyteam Alliance. DL's FF awards are just as hard to get, but NW may be easier. And if you're going overseas, especially Europe, you can now claim on Air France, KLM, Czech, etc...

So, know what you can do with your miles, and they are other ways you can use your miles for award travel. CO's flight (as offered on continental.com) is only a small portion.

larriola,

Are you trying to get business class awards to Europe for next August? Try using your Onepass miles on Skyteam partners like Air France or Delta. I find that they're more generous with award seats than either CO or NW. While Delta's own website doesn't allow you to check seat availability for international awards, Delta award flights do show up on Northwest's website, so that's an option to check availability. You must be a NW Worldperks member to access it though.

To check Air France award availability, you can download the following tool:

http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~hartberg/ft/SabretoolSetup.htm

This availability tool doesn't give you access 24 hours a day (it has a cycle of 2 hours up and 5 hours down), so if it happens to be down when you try to use it, you'll have to wait for the next time it's up and running (it tells you when). You want to look for the specific award booking class which is O for business and A for first class on Air France. O is usually pretty easy to come by, A is more difficult and is often limited to just one seat. The number that comes after the O or A is the number of award seats currently available. So an O2 means there are 2 business class award seats on that particular flight. An O0 means no seats but the waitlist is open, OC means no seats and the waitlist is closed.

You'll have to call to book the award, but this gives you an idea of availability in advance.

Good luck!

Patty, Not sure how the link you posted works. I opened it, clicked on the middle of some print that was not legible then up popped a new screen about downloading somthing but it was all in German(?). Is there something I need to download first (hopefully in English)??

I would like to be able to access Air France's award seat availability.

petlover,

When I copy and paste the link into my browser, I get a screen that says
&quot;Availability Tool, Download and Information!&quot; at the very top of the page. After that there are some screen shots of what the software display looks like. When I click on one of those screen shots, a &quot;File Download&quot; box pops up which allows me to save the file AvailabilityToolSetup.exe so that I can install in on my computer.

Is that not what you see?

I found another availability lister where you can look up NW &amp; partner award seats that's so much easier to use than Northwest's own site. You can search up to 7 days at a time. You can also search by single segments and by specific airline:

http://usr.v7.com/wpaa/

I discovered it when trying to book a DL award to Nairobi with segments on KL. Since KL is now part of Skyteam, I realized that I could redeem a business class award to NBO with a stopover in CDG for only 30,000 miles more than what it would cost in miles for Europe only. It was not easy getting the KL seats - checking 3 months in a row, there was only one single date where 2 business class seats were available to return from NBO-AMS! And I had to settle for coach on the AMS-NBO flight, but at least I don't have any other flights/connections that same day. In comparison, it was relatively painless getting the AF &amp; DL flights to/from LAX. Even with the one coach segment, I think it's still worth the 120,000 miles each.

So I'll be flying LAX-CDG-AMS(AF), AMS-NBO-AMS(KL), AMS-CVG-LAX(DL). Now I just have to book my safari :D

Patty, looks like a home run to me! You captured a lot of value and accomplished something that would have been very expensive to purchase.

I read this post and have heard complaints from many people about not being able to use their frequent flyer points through Delta a zillion times. However, I have to point out, as a person who does not get to travel often (once or twice a year), I do not hold an elite status with any airline. I do however charge everything I can on my American Express Delta Platinum card since I live in Atlanta and Delta is the most convenient airline for me on most trips. With my AMEX I have manage to obtain quite a few points.

I knew ahead of time that booking a flight to Hawaii would be a pain so I made myself call at midnight when it was exactly 330 prior to the date I wanted to go and book the first leg. Then I did the same thing when 330 days came around for the returning leg. Sure it was not convenient and no I usually do not plan that far in advance but I can not really complain since it is basically a free flight for DH and I.

Maybe I am too easy going but since it is free, I do not mind at all.

The ticket is not free. I have the same AE Skymiles Platinum card. First, there's an annual fee of like $75-80. And there are dozens of other cards out there that give you ~1% cash back with no annual fees. To get your ticket to Hawaii, you need 35,000 miles, meaning you'd have charged $35K or close to it (because of some double points) to get that. If you have charged it to a 1% cash back card, you'd have gotten $350 back already.

And you don't get mileage on the reward flight to Hawaii. ATL-HNL roundtrip is about 9,000 miles, so that's close to $100 of value.

When you add all those up, you'll see that it's not such a good deal anymore.

Actually it is free to me. You can choose to look at it anyway you feel like looking at it. I have other cards that give cash back but I love my AmEx. I could not get two roundtrip tickets to Hawaii for $350 period. Some see the glass half empty some see it half full.

As for I charged $35,000, yes I did but since I had to charge it anyway, what difference does it make. You are also forgetting that I get double points each time I use it at gas stations, grocery stores, drug stores etc. You are also forgetting that I use it to charge business items and travel for my company of which I get reimbursed. I am not going to argue about it. You like your way of doing things and I like mine.

beachdreams - If you read my posts in this thread, you'll know that the main point of my thread is that it IS possible to claim miles. And yours is a good example. I just want to warn the casual INfrequent flyer to think he/she should go get a credit card so that they can finally go to Hawaii after saving up miles for several years. :D

BTW, as an update, my parents did use CO miles to fly EWR-HKG last month for 60K one-way. Not available on return so they fly coach for 30K one-way; for a total of 90K for the roundtrip. This is something CO allows and DL doesn't - a business award for half the trip, coach for the other.

So, my family claimed about 380,000 miles during the last 6 months for 10 roundtrips.

I mean EWR-HKG in BusinessFirst for 60K miles each person, each way.

Well I might not fly frequently anymore due to work, however, after reviewing all other offers, we felt AM EX offered us the best and we still do.

After flying to Hawaii many times on my dime, I appreciate being able to fly for free.

By the way, I forgot to point out that I do not consider the annual charge to be an issue considering the fact that when my identity was stolen I never had one problem getting AmEx to wipe away the charges but I spent a year's worth of my life getting Visa and MC to do it even with the police helping me. For that luxury alone, I will gladly pay them. In fact, it was AmEx that let me know something was going on in the first place. Otherwise, I would not have found out until the next billing cycle.