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Companies That Find Flights Using Points


Trunkabella
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Can anyone recommend agents that can use points and cash? I don’t think I’ll have enough air miles for Sydney. We need two tickets in business class in oct of 2019. I just cannot process this transfer thing and frankly do not mind paying a fee for someone e to do this. I don’t mind opening a credit card, but I don’t know which ones....help! A telephone number would be best as I would love to speak to a human. I have been successful on getting Cathy first on a few occasions a well as business through American, but again my bank is low. It appears that there are other options....

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Can anyone recommend agents that can use points and cash? I don’t think I’ll have enough air miles for Sydney. We need two tickets in business class in oct of 2019. I just cannot process this transfer thing and frankly do not mind paying a fee for someone e to do this. I don’t mind opening a credit card, but I don’t know which ones....help! A telephone number would be best as I would love to speak to a human. I have been successful on getting Cathy first on a few occasions a well as business through American, but again my bank is low. It appears that there are other options....

 

You'll get a lot more help looking at www.FlyerTalk.com

and their sub-forum on Awards Booking Services. There are lists of those who offer their services and also many reviews of some of those services.

I'd suggest starting at the most recent posts and reading backwards, for current info.

 

Most of the services will start with email, and if useful, they'll phone you. The ones we dealt with don't give out their phone numbers (or they'd probably be innundated 24/7).

 

GC

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Can anyone recommend agents that can use points and cash? I don’t think I’ll have enough air miles for Sydney. We need two tickets in business class in oct of 2019. I just cannot process this transfer thing and frankly do not mind paying a fee for someone e to do this. I don’t mind opening a credit card, but I don’t know which ones....help! A telephone number would be best as I would love to speak to a human. I have been successful on getting Cathy first on a few occasions a well as business through American, but again my bank is low. It appears that there are other options....

 

You'll get a lot more help looking at www.FlyerTalk.com

and their sub-forum on Awards Booking Services. There are lists of those who offer their services and also many reviews of some of those services.

I'd suggest starting at the most recent posts and reading backwards, for current info.

 

Most of the services will start with email, and if useful, they'll phone you. The ones we dealt with don't give out their phone numbers (or they'd probably be innundated 24/7).

 

GC

Here's the actual link for the Flyertalk thread - https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-tools/1296363-award-booking-services-list-some-reviews.html

 

But a couple of notes to start.

 

First, for travel in October 2019 you're not going to have anybody who can help before November of this year. Airlines don't release their schedules until 11 months out.

 

Second, even then it's highly unlikely any airlines will make two business class award seats available on the same flight that early. Those seats are worth thousands and thousands of dollars to the airline, and they're going to wait to make sure there aren't cash customers before their computer models will release one or two seats into award inventory.

 

Third, getting business class award seats between North America and Australia during the southern spring and summer (October - March) is just about the hardest thing to accomplish in the entire world of frequent flyer points. Even the most experienced award bookers will tell you this is a very hard task to accomplish. It's especially difficult if you're trying to coordinate flights with a cruise; the cruise dates are fixed, so most cruisers will lack the flexibility that one needs for successful award booking.

 

Fourth, is this a one-way or round-trip? Are you cruising one-way from Oz or returning to the US by air?

 

And last, start thinking now about alternatives to using miles (or miles and cash) or coming up with more creative routings. For example, you could use your miles to get to someplace in Asia from which paid flights to Australia are more affordable. Or the opposite - pay for a flight to Asia (much cheaper than flights to Australia as a rule) then use miles to get from Asia to Australia.

 

I know this all sounds quite complicated, but we're talking thousands of dollars here, so it's worth some self-education.

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Here's the actual link for the Flyertalk thread - https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-tools/1296363-award-booking-services-list-some-reviews.html

 

But a couple of notes to start.

 

First, for travel in October 2019 you're not going to have anybody who can help before November of this year. Airlines don't release their schedules until 11 months out.

 

Second, even then it's highly unlikely any airlines will make two business class award seats available on the same flight that early. Those seats are worth thousands and thousands of dollars to the airline, and they're going to wait to make sure there aren't cash customers before their computer models will release one or two seats into award inventory.

 

Third, getting business class award seats between North America and Australia during the southern spring and summer (October - March) is just about the hardest thing to accomplish in the entire world of frequent flyer points. Even the most experienced award bookers will tell you this is a very hard task to accomplish. It's especially difficult if you're trying to coordinate flights with a cruise; the cruise dates are fixed, so most cruisers will lack the flexibility that one needs for successful award booking.

 

Fourth, is this a one-way or round-trip? Are you cruising one-way from Oz or returning to the US by air?

 

And last, start thinking now about alternatives to using miles (or miles and cash) or coming up with more creative routings. For example, you could use your miles to get to someplace in Asia from which paid flights to Australia are more affordable. Or the opposite - pay for a flight to Asia (much cheaper than flights to Australia as a rule) then use miles to get from Asia to Australia.

 

I know this all sounds quite complicated, but we're talking thousands of dollars here, so it's worth some self-education.

 

Regardless of whether you work with a service that helps with award travel, consider doing something like getting a business seat on two separate flights, and then keep searching for "a second business seat" on either of those, and whichever opens, grab it (and rejoice :)).

AND... keep looking for yet another flight where two business seats open up together. It's almost impossible (or impossible?) to predict what would open "next".

 

When we were having trouble getting two CX F seats on the same flight out from Hong Kong, we held awards seats on one flight, but one F and one J, so at least we'd be on the same flight (and CX J wouldn't be "bad", obviously).

(Some people are willing to get seats on two different flights, but that's not for us.)

While we were still traveling in Japan, our agent found two F seats together on a different flight. We had given him the "acceptable dates" (along with "first choice/second choice", etc.) and permission to "grab them", because we might not be easily reachable, and those seats probably would last long.

And those were the BEST flight we ever had! Just loved it, and no doubt got totally spoiled ;)

 

Even with a cruise, which we've just been ticketed for, we had several days of flexibility, and took the first availability that opened, in each direction, so we knew we had "something" in the class we wanted.

We might decide to change the dates later, IF there is availability, but the pressure is off, because we know we can get there in time and also that we can get home.

 

This willingness to change does mean being willing to pay a few change fees. But at least for us, given the value we are getting with international F travel, spending a few hundred dollars extra is still a great bargain.

That probably would not make sense if someone is trying to get economy tickets or maybe premium economy.

 

In some cases, if one can get a different flight that means one or two fewer hotel nights, then it also makes sense, if you come out ahead, cost wise.

 

Lots of angles to consider.

Our agent helps us with a variety of these.

And he's also a regular travel agent, meaning he can help us with hotel reservations (and cruises).

(Look for our post on FlyerTalk where we mention all of this in more detail.)

 

Good luck. Hopefully by starting early, you'll eventually get what you are hoping to get.

 

GC

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Can anyone recommend agents that can use points and cash? I don’t think I’ll have enough air miles for Sydney. We need two tickets in business class in oct of 2019. I just cannot process this transfer thing and frankly do not mind paying a fee for someone e to do this. I don’t mind opening a credit card, but I don’t know which ones....help! A telephone number would be best as I would love to speak to a human. I have been successful on getting Cathy first on a few occasions a well as business through American, but again my bank is low. It appears that there are other options....

 

I've used credit card points several times for long flights, as I posted above. We've flown to Sydney, also. That was with Air New Zealand credit card bonus points from Honolulu. I recommend you look for an inexpensive flight to Honolulu, stay over night (or more), and then fly to Australia.

 

I've flown Jetstar from Honolulu, which was reasonable.

 

Chase's Sapphire Visa allows you to combine your SAPPHIRE points with cash to book air. They have their own booking tool, too.

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Second, even then it's highly unlikely any airlines will make two business class award seats available on the same flight that early. Those seats are worth thousands and thousands of dollars to the airline, and they're going to wait to make sure there aren't cash customers before their computer models will release one or two seats into award inventory.

 

Third, getting business class award seats between North America and Australia during the southern spring and summer (October - March) is just about the hardest thing to accomplish in the entire world of frequent flyer points. Even the most experienced award bookers will tell you this is a very hard task to accomplish. It's especially difficult if you're trying to coordinate flights with a cruise; the cruise dates are fixed, so most cruisers will lack the flexibility that one needs for successful award booking.

 

Maybe this is true for Australia, but I just booked two British Airways business class seats from London to LAX on 7/3 of this year for a late April 2019 flight. Then, on 7/18 I changed the destination city to Miami and got a $51 refund. The seats were also available on the Miami flight, and our seat purchase to LAX covered the new seats. There was a lot of availability for seat selection, too on both the original and the Miami flight.

 

I had to wait until July for all the points to be credited to our BA Household account from our new BA credit cards we got for the bonus points.

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Can anyone recommend agents that can use points and cash? I don’t think I’ll have enough air miles for Sydney. .....I don’t mind opening a credit card, but I don’t know which ones....help! /quote]

 

Theoretically, an agent can use points and cash if booking on an airline that allows some kind of combination of points and cash, so be prepared to explain exactly what sort of air miles or credit card points you have. I don't have a lot of experience with these kinds of services, but you will likely have much better luck if you can say definitively, "I have X number of credit card points with such and such card, I have X number of miles on such and such airline." To simply say you're willing to get a new credit card for points purposes takes their research to a whole new level. Start on Flyertalk, and try to find out what card might work best for the airline miles you already have. Folks in that airline's forum can give specific suggestions for cards that might work particularly well with that airline's miles program to maximize benefits. As others have pointed out though, flexibility is your friend. If you need multiple tickets and only want to book them at the same time on the exact same flights your options will be more limited, especially for routes that are already known to have limited award ticket availability.

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Maybe this is true for Australia, but I just booked two British Airways business class seats from London to LAX on 7/3 of this year for a late April 2019 flight. Then, on 7/18 I changed the destination city to Miami and got a $51 refund. The seats were also available on the Miami flight, and our seat purchase to LAX covered the new seats. There was a lot of availability for seat selection, too on both the original and the Miami flight.

 

I had to wait until July for all the points to be credited to our BA Household account from our new BA credit cards we got for the bonus points.

Unfortunately it IS is very different for Australia. And BA tends to be something of an outlier on making premium cabin seats available, probably because they have so many daily flights between London and the US (many destinations) and also because the very high carrier surcharges they charge on top of the miles used for the award helps their bottom line, compared to other airlines that charge the same or fewer miles, but which don't add the big fees. And April is not a high-demand period, unlike October - March for travel between North America and Australia/NZ.

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First, for travel in October 2019 you're not going to have anybody who can help before November of this year. Airlines don't release their schedules until 11 months out.

 

For Australia, one of the best strategies is to look at frequent flier programs that release space earlier than others. Some open up more than 11 months out, and knowing which ones and knowing how to get points to those programs is important.

 

For example, Aeroplan opens its awards almost a year out (356 days). This means that if a flight is available on AC metal for an award, Aeroplan members have a significant time advantage to book it. I booked Air Canada business class over the holidays for four in business from YVR to SYD last year by logging into Aeroplan at midnight Toronto time 356 days in advance. Other star alliance programs open later -- singapore is 350 days and United is about 335 days. So, if you have miles in either of these programs, you'd have to hope those AC seats didn't get snapped up for weeks. That's never going to happen.

 

Similar with British Airways -- they open at 354 days. American opens at 330 days. Finnair opens at 361 days. So, let's say you want an award on Finnair. Finnair members have the first chance to use their miles for Finnair flights for 7 days. But then British Airways will let you book the space 24 days before American. For, say, HEL to SIN over a busy period, you're never going to get it using American.

 

Korean also opens nearly a year in advance. So does lifemiles. These are crucial programs to know about for very difficult to book flights if there's a chance of availability opening at the beginning of the schedule.

 

So, to book holy grail awards like Australia you need two pieces of information: (1) when do the airlines that fly to where I want to fly open their award space, and (2) which programs are the best to use to get the jump on other programs to book those awards.

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For Australia, one of the best strategies is to look at frequent flier programs that release space earlier than others. Some open up more than 11 months out, and knowing which ones and knowing how to get points to those programs is important.

 

For example, Aeroplan opens its awards almost a year out (356 days). This means that if a flight is available on AC metal for an award, Aeroplan members have a significant time advantage to book it. I booked Air Canada business class over the holidays for four in business from YVR to SYD last year by logging into Aeroplan at midnight Toronto time 356 days in advance. Other star alliance programs open later -- singapore is 350 days and United is about 335 days. So, if you have miles in either of these programs, you'd have to hope those AC seats didn't get snapped up for weeks. That's never going to happen.

 

Similar with British Airways -- they open at 354 days. American opens at 330 days. Finnair opens at 361 days. So, let's say you want an award on Finnair. Finnair members have the first chance to use their miles for Finnair flights for 7 days. But then British Airways will let you book the space 24 days before American. For, say, HEL to SIN over a busy period, you're never going to get it using American.

 

Korean also opens nearly a year in advance. So does lifemiles. These are crucial programs to know about for very difficult to book flights if there's a chance of availability opening at the beginning of the schedule.

 

So, to book holy grail awards like Australia you need two pieces of information: (1) when do the airlines that fly to where I want to fly open their award space, and (2) which programs are the best to use to get the jump on other programs to book those awards.

 

One "hope" here, two actually, is that first, someone might cancel. When people make plans almost a year in advance... things happen...

and second, additional awards seats might be made available closer to departure (although this is less likely during holiday seasons, when there are more likely to be plenty of paying passengers).

 

Our agent subscribes to some automated services that send out alerts if seats open up, and these alerts can come throughout the day, if preferred.

 

We've had good luck with both CX and LH getting F seats about 2 weeks prior to departure, although it wasn't guaranteed, obviously.

 

GC

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"One more thing for the "grail" type of destinations - be willing to split apart as a couple. Either with different routings, or even on subsequent days. Sometimes, I've been able to find flights, but only one ticket on each day. So, Mrs FT and I fly separately. Usually I'll leave first and just meet her at the airport the next day.

 

Another trick is to take different routings to the same destination. Say you can get one seat via Seoul and another via Tokyo. TAKE THEM!!! Meet up at your destination - again, I take the one that arrives first and I meet Mrs FT when she gets in.

 

And if you must fly together, then know your options will be limited.

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