Searching for the Partner Airline Award Space

Once you have accumulated a healthy number of miles & points, you should be actively looking to book overseas business class flights to complete your bucket list. I will describe the ways to look for the nonstop international flight award space in this tutorial.

Origin & Destination Flexibility

The key to finding the long-haul overseas business class award space is not only booking 8-11 months ahead of time but also finding the award space from several major airports. For example, if you live in a small town/city without a major international airport (e.g., JFK, ORD, IAD, DFW, ATL, MIA, IAH, BOS), you should be willing to take a separate economy class cash flight to any city with an available business/first class award space. The same rules apply to the intended international destination if there are no nonstop award flights available (e.g., if you want to travel to Venice, a business class flight is only available from JFK/ORD to Frankfurt). You can always buy a separate inexpensive cash flight from FRA to VCE to reach your destination.

I recently traveled in first-class Singapore suites from FRA-JFK as part of my Dolomites trip (first flew to Venice and took a separate flight to FRA). The Singapore suite experience for us is as memorable as the Dolomites (https://awardcracker.com/award-destination-dolomites/).

How to Easily Find Nonstop Flight Destinations from Each Major City?

I recommend using either flightconnections.com (https://www.flightconnections.com) or flightsfrom.com (https://www.flightsfrom.com). The free version of flightconnections.com is impossible to navigate without ads and pop-ups for the paid version (ad blockers are bypassed when you click on a destination). Flightsfrom.com is very easy to use with all the same information available for free and works well with ad blockers. It also lets you choose flight results based on flight alliances and individual airlines.

Once you understand which nonstop flights fly from your nearest major hub, the next steps are figuring out what partner alliance they belong to, award seat availability, and how many points (with taxes) it costs for each partner. Then you will see if your partner airline is affiliated with one of your credit card point systems (e.g., Amex MR points, Chase UR points, Citi TY points, Capital One miles). The final step is linking that partner airline account (if not done already) and transferring the points to complete the award booking (https://awardcracker.com/do-not-waste-your-credit-points-on-travel-portals/).

Understanding Airline Alliances

There are 3 major airway alliances in the world (Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam).

Star Alliance	Oneworld	SkyTeam
Aegean Airlines. Air Canada. Air China. Air India. Air New Zealand. All Nippon Airways (ANA). Asiana Airlines. Austrian Airlines. Avianca. Brussels Airlines. Copa Airlines. Croatia Airlines. EgyptAir. Ethiopian Airlines. Eva Air. Lot Polish Airlines. Lufthansa. Scandinavian Airlines. Shenzhen Airlines. Singapore Airlines. South African Airways. Swiss. TAP Air Portugal. Thai. Turkish Airlines. United Airlines.	Alaska Airlines. American Airlines. British Airways. Cathay Pacific. Finnair. Iberia. Japan Airlines. Malaysia Airlines. Qantas. Qatar Airways. Royal Air Maroc. Royal Jordanian. Sri Lankan Airlines.	Aerolineas Argentinas. AeroMexico. Air Europa. Air France. Alitalia. China Airlines. China Eastern. Czech Airlines. Delta Air Lines. Garuda Indonesia. Kenya Airways. KLM. Korean Air. MEA (Middle East Airlines). SAUDIA. TAROM. Vietnam Airlines. Xiamen Air.

Star Alliance – the most useful point booking partners are United, Avianca airlines (LifeMiles), Aeroplan and ANA. 

One World Alliance – the most useful point bookings are AA, British Airways, Alaska, and Asia Miles (Cathay Pacific). 

Sky Team Alliance – the most useful point booking partners are Delta and Air France (Flying Blue).

Virgin Atlantic and Etihad Guest programs are not part of a large alliance but have important partnerships with individual airlines. Virgin Atlantic partners with Delta and ANA, which are useful for partner award bookings.

I recommend linking all the useful airline partners to your MR & UR point portals for any future award redemptions. See my detailed post for further details (https://awardcracker.com/do-not-waste-your-credit-points-on-travel-portals/).

Find the Lowest Number of Awards Required

Finding the lowest number of points needed to reach a destination is the first step with free to use online tools (https://www.travelcodex.com/award-maximizer/) or (https://www.awardhacker.com/).

Point search engines are not always inaccurate due to frequent changes in partner award charts. They may not have updated award charts for all airline non-alliance transfer partners (e.g., Etihad Guest or Virgin Atlantic) and they also do not show real-time award availability or the amount of taxes. I still encourage beginners to make use of these free tools.

Find Award Seat Availability for Free with Pointsyeah.com or Awardtool.com

Both of these programs support Air Canada, Air France / KLM, American, Avianca, Delta, Iberia, JetBlue, United, Virgin Atlantic and Emirates. They have a free version and a paid version and put programs like Points.me to shame with insanely fast results.

Find Award Seat Availability for Free with Seats.aero

Seats.aero (https://seats.aero/united) is a free award space search tool developed by a Flyertalk user dlflyer00 (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/avianca-lifemiles-amigo/2080768-lifemiles-availability-finder-15.html). The tool supports not only airlines from SkyTeam (AeroMexico Club Premier), Oneworld (American Airlines) and Star Alliance (Avianca LifeMiles), but also Etihad Guest and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. Each group of airlines can be selected by using the toggle at the top right hand corner (United MileagePlus selected in the image below). The blazing fast results display the type of aircraft and number of free seats by class of service along with award taxes.

You can choose to see all the available award space from a particular airport (JFK with all First Class flights in the image below). The number of available seats and flight connection information is available by hovering the mouse over the color coded section. The free version supports looking at up to 90 days of award space ahead of time. The search tool allows you to see +/- 7 days results for any date you are searching.

Under the “Tools” section you will find “Lufthansa First Class”, “Delta One” finder and “Qatar Q-suites finder”.

The developer of this free search engine tool is rapidly expanding the supported city pairs and there is also a free alert feature that can notify you when award space opens up. One can also become a “Pro User” by paying $7.99 per month, which will let you search up to 361 days of availability along with the option to choose nonstop flight availability. Compared to other programs, Seats.aero will not let you choose smaller airports as your origin or destination, since it is designed to track only major airports with international flights.

Seats.aero is a fun way to see all the available First and Business awards that are released to various partner airlines. It is an extremely useful tool for award booking enthusiasts who can decide on a spontaneous escape based on the premium cabin availability.

Find Award Space Availability for Free From Airline Websites

• To check for the availability of award seats for free, one must use different search engines (AA for One World flights, United for Star Alliance flights, and Delta for Sky Team flights).
• You must make sure that the “use miles” box is checked before you conduct the search.
• These three websites offer the best search interface and show availability in a calendar format for the whole month, along with the ability to view nonstop flights. 

American Airlines Oneworld Award Search

Use the available filters to look for nonstop flight availability and any partner airlines (JAL in this example).

You can click on the calendar view to check the whole month’s availability.

United Airlines Star Alliance Award Search

The newly updated United search engine is giving a lot of errors and I recommend readers use links to the old search engine (bookmark the following link). You must first log into the United account on the home page and then click on the link below to avoid the “access denied” error. https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/flight-search/book-a-flight/results/awd?f=ORD&t=TPE&d=2023-08-23&EdtSrch=1&EditSearchCartId=2D62A097-9923-486E-84A5-2CDB58715EF5&tt=1&at=1&sc=0&px=2&taxng=1&idx=1.

Once the 7-day default calendar view appears in the results, you have to uncheck the box “with stops” (if you are looking for nonstop) and click on “view 30-day calendar”. Business/first class availability is shown as “5 round dots”. You must click on each date to further expand the results and see the availability. You will be able to browse the entire 11-month calendar with this search engine.

• You should look for “saver” (lowest) awards on these sites and once availability is confirmed, you can use any partner airline to complete the booking.
• For example, if you only have Amex MR points, a Saver Award Seat can be found at United.com. Since United is not an MR point transfer partner, the same award can be booked by transferring MR points to other Amex Star Alliance partners like Avianca, Air Canada, ANA, and Singapore airlines (with different award charts and point requirements).

Paid Award Search Programs

There are several paid award search options that charge up to $75-240 dollars annually (e.g., Points.me, Award Nexus, Award Logic, Expert Flyer, KVS, and Seat Spy). I have tried most of them over the years and I like Expert Flyer and Seat Spy for unlimited award seat alerts, but none of the paid programs at this time will let you search for award flights from a combination of city pairs (you are forced to type each city pair for every single search). Only Seat Spy lets you see the calendar results for the entire year, but it only supports a handful of airlines, and the results are inaccurate many times (not able to confirm the award space on partner websites). Seat Spy is best used to seeing British Airways flight availability and the free version is good enough for that purpose. I hope it lets you separate all the London airports (LHR, LGW, etc.) in the search, which will make it easy for the partner award booking.

If you are not flexible with your travel dates and want to see your options for a particular day, I recommend paying the $5 per day fee on Points.me to find the award flights. I don’t think any of these paid programs are worth the money if you have the patience to look through the AA and United search engines for One World and Star Alliance partner award flights. I would mix the searches with the Air France Flying Blue program, which has wonderful deals from time to time.

Saving Points for Better Airline Redemptions

• Avoid using points to book domestic flights (unless it’s for a last-minute overpriced booking). You should save valuable points only to book expensive international flights. As a rule, you should at least get double the value for points (e.g., 25000 points should get at least $500 flight value and if a short-distance flight is cheaper than that, consider paying cash and use a credit card that earns the most points for booking a flight). 
• Avoid transferring credit card points to book hotel rooms (e.g., Hilton and Marriott) since you get poor value for hotel room bookings compared to airline redemptions (Chase transfers to Hyatt hotels as an important exception to this rule due to the high value of Hyatt points).

Book Award Flights as Early as Possible

Partner airlines only release a few business class award seats ahead of time and they are rarely available on the weekends. The best way to guarantee award seat availability is to plan your travel 10-11 months ahead of time.

One-way Award Bookings Pros/Cons

• Booking two separate one-way award bookings is preferred unless round-trip booking is required by the airline (e.g., ANA). 
• Two one-way bookings make last-minute travel changes easier (no show, change, cancellation), without losing the whole trip (one can cancel inbound/return after flying outbound and still get miles refunded).
• It is easier to book when inventory is available in one direction and decide on the return ticket later from another city or destination.
• Two one-way bookings make it easy to use two different mileage currencies (e.g., use AA miles to book one-way and United miles to book your way back).
• Canceling two one-way bookings will cost double the fee compared to a single round-trip booking.

Round Trip Award Bookings Pros/Cons

• Most programs offer 1-2 free “stopovers” within the same region of the destination (e.g., United Excursionist Perk and Alaska mileage). E.g., Travel from JFK to Tokyo, then Beijing, and return from Beijing to ORD instead of JFK.
• Only one change/redeposit fee applies if you decide to change/cancel the award ticket.
• With round-trip bookings, if you miss one leg of the flight, the remainder of the round-trip ticket will be canceled.
• It is easy to avoid “EXIT taxes” (e.g., Europe) with R/T bookings.
• R/T bookings are better with cheaper “infant lap fees”.

Premature point transfers

Once you transfer points to another program, they will remain with that program only and cannot be transferred back to your credit card. One should leave the points in the credit card portal until they are sure of the award booking availability before transferring the points to the particular airline program.

Example: If you do a nonstop flight search from JFK to SCL, you will see plenty of seat availability on LATAM airways for paying cash. However, if you log into the British Airways portal and look for an award booking, you may see zero award availability, as LATAM may not have released all the award seats for partner booking for that time frame. If you prematurely transfer all your points to British Avios without first verifying the award availability, your points cannot be used for that trip.

Point Transfer Delays

Since point transfer times are variable (a few seconds to a few days) depending on the program, the seat availability (especially business/first class) could be gone by the time you have the points transferred. A few programs (e.g., AA and Virgin Atlantic) allow 2-3 days of “award hold” on the seats, which can be used to transfer points.

Ghost Awards

Ghost award seat availability occurs in a few cases where the seat appears to be available for award booking, but the booking process cannot be completed.

Not all Airlines in the Alliance See the Same Award Space 

Certain airlines in the same alliance may not show matching “saver award” availability (e.g., Avianca’s “saver award” availability may not match United for certain awards). Make sure the award space is available before transferring your points.

Transferred Point Expiration

Transferred points will expire in 1-3 years with most programs with a few exceptions like Delta/United/Virgin Atlantic (miles never expire).

Airline points expiration can be extended to most programs by adding miles to the account (e.g., AAdvantage, BA, United, Alaska, Avianca, Aeroplan, Virgin Atlantic).

Miles can also be earned using credit card shopping portals (https://www.cashbackmonitor.com/travel-miles-points-comparison/) and miles can be transferred from hotel points (e.g., converting a few thousand Hilton/IHG/Marriott/Hyatt points to AAdvantage miles) to extend the expiration date.

Due to a few programs (ANA, JAL, Singapore), points expiration cannot be extended by adding miles to the account.

Airline Mileage Devaluation

Airline program award charts can change with frequent devaluations, so it is important to use the transferred miles ASAP.

High Airline Award Booking Taxes and Fuel Surcharges

• In some cases, award booking seems lucrative by costing very few points, but the taxes and fees can be as high as $400-800 per ticket.
• Virgin Atlantic and British Airways flights to London charge a few points to book the flights, but they will charge high taxes (~$600). It is best to book these flights with alliance partners (e.g., book Virgin Atlantic with Delta and British airways with AA miles).
• Before transferring points to international airlines, careful evaluation of the partner award taxes with each airline is recommended by doing a sample booking. This method works for most airlines (Singapore, Virgin, ANA, British, etc.,) even without any miles in the account.
• Few airlines will not reveal their taxes until you have enough miles in your account (e.g., Asia Miles and Qantas), so you must research historic destination/partner airline-specific taxes by reading several blogs.
• United, AA, Avianca, and Aeroplan have the lowest taxes/fees for all the award bookings.

Fixed vs Variable Airline Award Charts

• Most international airlines have “fixed award charts” (e.g., Avianca, British Avios, Kris Flyer, Asia Miles, Aeroplan, Virgin Atlantic, ANA) and they won’t change the point requirement irrespective of the weekends, or holidays. Air France/KLM Flying Blue program is one exception to this rule with variable award charts, but they have very reasonable award prices to make an advanced booking.
• Most US airlines have “variable awards” (AA, United, and Delta), and the flight point requirement increases or decreases based on the demand. Typically, you will see point requirements doubling or tripling for weekend flights and close-in bookings. Points from these programs are best used to book partner flights a few months in advance or to travel in the middle of the week. 

My Upcoming Overseas Award Trips

I work full-time, but I am flexible with choosing my vacation dates one year ahead of time. I was able to book several international trips with points (see below). I will post the trip reviews soon after completing them.

Travel Date	Destination	How I used Points
February 2023	Trip to Finland to see the northern lights	Round trip business class booked with Aeroplan points to fly Lufthansa from Atlanta to Helsinki
April 2023	Trip to Biarritz, France, and Marbella, Spain	Round trip business class booked with Flying Blue miles on Air France. Award Hotel Stays: Hôtel Du Palais Biarritz & La Zambra (both with Globalist suite upgrades)
June 2023	A Trip to Svalbard & Jostedalsbreen National Park, Norway	Outbound flight business class ORD-OSL booked with Avianca miles to fly LOT – Polish airlines. Inbound flight business class OSL/FRA-JFK booked with Singapore airlines Frankfurt to JFK
September 2023	Trip to Mont Blanc, France, and Innsbruck, Austria	Outbound flight business class JFK/LHR/LYS booked with Asia miles; Inbound flight business class (VIE-JFK) booked with Iberia Avios. Award Hotel Stay: DasPosthotel (SLH).

Conclusion

After reading this post, it should be obvious that you should be using your points wisely by transferring them to partner airlines for the best redemptions. I encourage the readers to make use of point transfers to visit their dream destinations around the world. As I mentioned earlier, the key to enjoying business class award redemptions is advanced vacation planning and looking at several major airports for award space. I will describe most of the partner booking award sweet spots in the next blog post.