Best Sites For Mileage Deals

[PeterRS]

With most airlines still increasing mileage requirements, can any member advise what is the best site for finding out the cheapest mileage redemption tickets?

I can find several but all seem to be based on travel ex-USA on US airlines. Asia has always been more stingy when it comes to mileage redemption and it is Asia in which I am more interested.

Thanks in advance.

[fedssocr]

These days seats are difficult to come by. But I did just book Bangkok to Washington using Avianca Lifemiles on THAI and United via Zurich. 90K miles plus $100 taxes and fees for one way business class is probably about the best you can get these days on this route. The problem is that they are difficult to find. I had to book a ticket paying cash for the outbound to get to Thailand - but Kuwait Airways is starting a new route to IAD in December so they have some good deals. I booked one way business class for about $2800 connecting in Kuwait of course.

ANA's program has a distance based award chart still. I think from DC to BKK is about 95K miles (business class) in their program but seats are tough to find.

There is a site called awardnexus.com that allow you to do a search by airline alliance but it is very slow.

This site called travelcodex has a chart that shows how many miles are required to book flights between a city pair on various programs. I am not sure how up to date the information is though. https://www.travelcodex.com/award-maximizer/  They also have "tips and tricks" https://www.travelcodex.com/tips-tricks-and-useful-tools-for-award-travel/   It's very US-centric though. There are also award booking services that will do it for you - for a fee of course. But it might be worthwhile.

I know there used to be another similar site but I can't remember what it's called.

Personally I just spend a lot of time searching on my own. I have a big stash of Avianca miles because they are relatively cheap to buy in bulk. But it is definitely more difficult to find seats than it used to be. I search their site for Star Alliance airlines. I search American Airlines for OneWorld flights. I search FlyingBlue/AirFrance for Skyteam, but they usually want a crazy amount of miles and lots of money for their tickets. I will also search Delta and Alaska since I have a decent number of miles in those accounts. Those of us in the US are lucky in that you can accumulate lots of transferrable credit card points which can be moved to many different programs.

The various air miles blogs can be helpful. I have been reading onemileatatime for a long time. https://onemileatatime.com/guides/

I don't think there's any magic bullet. You just have to poke around doing searches in the various programs.

[PeterRS]

Many thanks for that post @fedssocr. Sadly airlines based in North and South America seem generally to have much better deals for passengers into Asia than those based in Asia for travel to Europe and the Americas.

[fedssocr]

travel between the regions should cost the same number of miles in either direction. The beauty of alliances is that you can credit your miles to any member of the alliance. So I can credit my ANA flights to Avianca or Air Canada or United or whoever. Although because things change so fast in this world crediting to the "best" program today may not be the best choice in the future. There's an old saying in the points and miles game that you should "earn and burn" i.e. use your miles and points as fast you can. But it's not practical for most people and it takes a while to accumulate enough miles for an award redemption. These days most of the programs will sell you miles and frequently offer bonuses. Avianca for example often offers 150% bonuses. So if you buy 100,000 miles you get 250,000. The catch is that you will pay about US$3000 for those 250,000 points. IF you can find a seat this could be a decent value. For example my 90,000 mile business class award essentially costs about $1000 in such a scenario. If I were paying cash for this ticket my guess is that it would cost $4000 or so, maybe more. 

However I will say that if you are willing to fly in economy there are a lot more available seat options. The Lifemiles program for example seems to always have plenty of economy seats on the route I search most (IAD-BKK) for 47K points one way. But if you want business class your options will be more limited. Fewer flights and more people willing to pay cash for fewer business class seats means they don't make as many available. If you are flexible enough to travel more last-minute there can be better availablity options. For example if I wanted to fly to Tokyo next week there are many business class options on ANA and United for 90K miles.

[Keithambrose]

I rarely buy airmiles, but did succumb to a BA offer last year. I tend to travel BA, as I am based in London. I use seatspy, which is pretty good. I am on various apps, one of which, and I can't remember which, told me BA had suddenly opened up more Avios seats to Sydney.  I only had 30 mins, but booked a business class seat, Sydney return, normally very rare, for reduced Avios. 

[Keithambrose]

Seatspy covers 13 airlines, including Virgin, United,  and American.

[Keithambrose]

The app that gave me the BA details to Sydney, also gives you, for example, very cheap BA flights to USA, as long as you don't mind starting from a European city, such as Frankfurt, Paris or Stockholm. I booked Frankfurt/LHR/NY/LHR/Frankfurt for just over £1,200, business class. It's no hassle to go to Frankfurt, I can visit friends, or boys, there! Clearly I do not intend to use the LHR/Frankfurt leg. They also had  v cheap fare, Stockholm/NY/CPH. Not so convenient but cheap. Other US destinations also. You book with the airline direct. There is a small annual charge 

'skip@luxuryflightclub.com'

[fedssocr]

be careful about skipping legs. US airlines have really been trying to crackdown on it since it technically violates their contract of carriage. But I suspect Europe has more sensible rules about airline regulation.

[PeterRS]

3 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

The app that gave me the BA details to Sydney, also gives you, for example, very cheap BA flights to USA, as long as you don't mind starting from a European city, such as Frankfurt, Paris or Stockholm. I booked Frankfurt/LHR/NY/LHR/Frankfurt for just over £1,200, business class.

This has been the case in Europe for at least a decade and probably a lot more and involves more airines than just BA. I think it also applies in some cases to flights to Asia. Never fly from your usual departure city. Get a cheap flight to some nearby cities (but not all) and start the journey from there. 8 years ago I flew London to Chicago on BA but started in and returned to Berlin. The fare was much cheaper than LHR/ORD/LHR. I have never worked out the rationale for this!

3 hours ago, fedssocr said:

be careful about skipping legs. US airlines have really been trying to crackdown on it since it technically violates their contract of carriage. But I suspect Europe has more sensible rules about airline regulation.

I understand all airlines now do this! Decades ago I would purchase round-trip tickets for Japanese clients who wanted to fly TYO/JFK return. A ticket with extra coupons to and from HKG was at least a third cheaper. In those days you could tear up the first and last sector coupons. But when actual tickets disappeared and computers took over everything, miss that first sector and the computer deleted all the remaining sectors. In fact miss any sector without informing the ticketing airline and the rest of your trip disappears.

Another dodge in those days was flying BA from Macao before Macao got its own airport. BA had some sort of deal with Portugal whereby return tickets starting and ending with a jetfoil Macao to HKG and then BA from/to HKG to/from Lisbon via LHR had a massive discount. First class return on BA was actually less than business class HKG/LHR/HKG. On the few occasions I used this routing, the jetfoil tickets ended up in the trash!

[Keithambrose]

As my LHR/Frankfurt flight is the last sector, this should not be an issue. I have to rember not to check in for that sector.

[vinapu]

1 hour ago, Keithambrose said:

As my LHR/Frankfurt flight is the last sector, this should not be an issue. I have to rember not to check in for that sector.

and make sure they tag your luggage to LHR only.

[fedssocr]

you can't do it with checked luggage. Asking them to only check your bag to LHR is just asking for them to investigate. The only issue you might face is for your next trip if they flag you. Here in the US a kid in Florida recently tried to do this and ended up getting all over the news because they canceled his ticket altogether and he had to pay for a last minute fare to where he was trying to go. If you do it more than a couple of times you could apparently get blacklisted by the airline.

[Keithambrose]

10 hours ago, vinapu said:

and make sure they tag your luggage to LHR only.

I only have carry on, luckily.

[Keithambrose]

10 hours ago, fedssocr said:

you can't do it with checked luggage. Asking them to only check your bag to LHR is just asking for them to investigate. The only issue you might face is for your next trip if they flag you. Here in the US a kid in Florida recently tried to do this and ended up getting all over the news because they canceled his ticket altogether and he had to pay for a last minute fare to where he was trying to go. If you do it more than a couple of times you could apparently get blacklisted by the airline.

I realise there is a risk, but I'm only doing it once. I recall the old days, like some other members, when you could legitimately get a ticket issued somewhere cheap, and not use the first or last leg. I think it depended on the currency in which the ticket was issued.

 

I had a first class (no business class then), ticket, Lagos/London/NY/Rio/NY/London/Lagos, absurdly cheap. I started and finished in London, no-one minded. They were the old book tickets, you just tore out the First ticket, Lagos/London, and didn't use the last one. Happy days!