NWA WorldPerks standard award flight searches
 

Just so you know, I'm new to searching for WorldPerks flights. Have finally accumulated over 100,000 miles and thought I'd play around with a search for 2 standard award flights from Detroit to somewhere in Europe (not sure exactly where yet) for June 2006. Am doing this mainly to see how the search works and what results I'd get. After trying oodles of combinations of dates, airports, etc. I've become disgusted because there are NEVER any standard award flights available. Closest was 100,000 miles which was a rulebuster. I did, however, find standard flights to Frankfurt but for NEXT WEEK Aug. 23, 2005 which made me think perhaps you CAN get standard flights at the last minute. I understand that there are only a limited number of standard award seats reserved for flights so I'm wondering if it is EVER possible to actually obtain standard award flights far enough in advance? I've heard of people awarded these standard flights, but HOW is it done, if after a LONG time of trying, I couldn't come up with any? Any advice/suggestions on how to obtain standard award flights IN ADVANCE will be appreciated. Is this "standard award" thing all just a "come-on?"

NW is part of the Skyteam Alliance. You can use miles on Delta, Continental, Air France, KLM, Alitalia, CSA Czech to get to Europe. They also have non-Skyteam partner Air Europa (though I believe all their US flights are Continental codeshares).

nwa.com won't show you most of these partner flights, so you need to call the Worldperk partner desk to get them.

It is indeed possible to claim flights with standard award, but it pays to be flexible.

Yes, it is possible to book FF miles on Northwest website by clicking on the award part not the regular booking site. You may have to put in a number of different dates. To check my flight out for 50,000 miles to Amsterdam in April which I booked on the website I also called the award center. It is definitely possible You just have to be persistent in trying.

nwa is horrible when it comes to ff availability... we can never find any tickets there

I have often read that NW is particularly bad, but we've traveled 3 times to Hawaii in January and NEVER had trouble booking standard award (35,000 mile) seats. Sometimes we did it a year out and other times several months out.

Hi canamchic, I would call the Award Travel Reservations. Their phone no. is 1-800-447-3757. Best wishes.

Summer months can be a very difficult time to book standard awards to Europe on Northwest. You are correct in that if there are undersold flights, some award seats may open up late (and the looming mechanics strike may help to explain why there were seats available on August 23.) I've booked family members to Europe at other times of the year on standard awards on several occasions.