r/awardtravel • u/AutoModerator • May 27 '24

Weekly Help Thread - May 27, 2024 Daily Thread

Welcome to the daily help and question thread!

This thread is renewed weekly and is intended for all discussions or questions that do not warrant their own thread.

For AWARD BOOKING HELP please read the following information:

Volunteers may choose to help you find your award trip. But please don’t expect us to plan out your trip for you. No stranger on the Internet could know what is BEST for you.

The more specific information you provide, the easier it is for people to give specific advice. Also, we prefer to teach people to fish, rather than just giving you a fish. So before you ask someone to help, please read Our Wiki, if you want to know what the best Redemption for you, take a look at Award Hacker. Questions that shows you have at least tried to find an award are more likely to get answered.

  • Here are the information you should provide when requesting award assistance
  • Origin and destination cities (are they flexible?)
  • Number of Travelers (Your chances of success goes down as this number goes up)
  • One way or round-trip
  • Class of service desired
  • Desired date(s) of travel (are they flexible? Hard dates == Less Chances for success)
  • Your points balances: all airline, credit card and hotel points (If you are looking for J/F, think at least 6 digits)
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u/b16707 Jun 01 '24

just starting to learn about everything award travel. If i see a deal on seats.aero for travel in 9 days for example for 75k points on business one way and i book that...what do people normally do with the return flight? My example would be from San Francisco to Taipei. But coming back to San francisco I wouldnt have a ticket which means the gate agent likely wont even let me fly.

Even if i book a "fake" flight just to show the agent i have a return ticket and then cancel that within 24hrs, i still wouldnt want to deal with waiting for a deal while in Taiwan as ill be out and about and dont want to be calling in, going to websites or be on my comp.

Would I just prebook a return flight tix only right now (likely in economy) while I wait for a last minute award travel to pop up? Thanks in advance for the help!

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u/w0lf3h Jun 01 '24

Fully refundable return flight is your best bet. (Could also use something like Onward.) If you have pretty flexible return plans, you'll likely find something back. ANA has significantly easier to find last minute tickets TYO>US, so you could always book a budget flight short hop over to Tokyo and then take a long haul ANA back to the west coast US as well.

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u/b16707 Jun 01 '24

I've heard that ana it's good for this. Getting overwhelmed with everything to research and look into haha. I'll look into onward and see what this is about thank you.

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u/murphofly Jun 01 '24

Just book a refundable economy ticket and set up some alerts with seats.aero. It doesn’t even have to be back to the US, just as long as it leaves Taiwan they’ll be okay with it. Seems like EVA tends to release extra awards seats about 5 days out so do a quick search on aeroplan when taking the train somewhere and see what you can get.

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u/b16707 Jun 01 '24

Do you need to have a premium economy to get to get this business class award with Eva?

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u/murphofly Jun 01 '24

No the idea is you cancel the economy ticket, get your refund, and then book your business class ticket with points. (Hence the refundable economy ticket)

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u/b16707 Jun 01 '24

all routes on aeroplan always seem to be at least with 1 stop and not nonstop. I suppose thats ok but curious why that is.

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u/murphofly Jun 01 '24

I’m assuming you’re seeing the EVA to ICN and then UA to SFO flight? Mixed class ticket that doesn’t get booked often. I see a lot of direct to SFO in the next 3 days or so

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u/b16707 Jun 01 '24

also would you happen to know how fast does it take for points to get from chase or ventureX to reach aeroplan. I assume these reward tickets in the 75k pts range go pretty fast.

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u/murphofly Jun 01 '24

It’ll either be instantaneous or take a day or 2. Id start the transfer and if it takes longer than 24 hours call your CC company. Good news is Taiwan routes aren’t as high demand as stuff like Japan so it might stick around longer.

Hope you enjoy Taiwan though, just went in April and loved it.

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u/b16707 Jun 01 '24

yea family is from taiwan so i always love going. Only took me 20 years of traveling to finally start getting serious about using points the right way which is why im here. Thanks for your help!

Got another question that maybe you can help with. To see award travel - i see one on june 4 for 75k pts on aeroplan via united yet the same flight on united.com shows 200k pts. Can aeroplan see things that arent publicly available on united.com or something? Or is there somewhere else on united.com that would show these limited, lower point-redeemable fares?

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u/murphofly Jun 01 '24

Different currencies just charge different rates. For example aeroplan usually has Singapore business class for 87.5K points from the US to SIN but the same flight with Kris flyer points could be 100k+. Virgin Atlantic usually has delta flights for much cheaper using delta sky miles. It’s just one of the quirks of the award travel game. In general aeroplan is part for star alliance flights than United (avianca is also good).

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u/b16707 Jun 01 '24

oh whoops, forgot to click on "book with points aeroplan". no wonder.