I have a confession to make: I’ve barely slept all week. In fact, I’m writing this post in the wee hours of the night after spending hours putting together one itinerary after another for our Million Mile Madness challenge. It’s become an all-out obsession in trying to thread the needle and create the perfect itinerary that can compete with what I think Greg and Stephen are going to cook up. Along the way, thanks to reader help, I’ve learned a few things that I think will be useful bits of information to store away for a rainy day. Before I forget what I’ve learned, I wanted to put several random learnings into a post here.
Don’t neglect airline apps
On this week’s podcast, I shared the fact that I have a habit of using hotel apps to search for availability and make reservations but that I almost exclusively shop for flights on a computer. I’m constantly reminded that I shouldn’t be exclusively in either realm, and this week was the latest reminder of that fact.
I had been trying to connect some nots on the trip and I wanted to book an award ticket from Taipei to Jakarta (I’ve since abandoned this iteration of my plan I think). I used AwardTool.com to run an award search and I was surprised to find that the best deal shown was flying Taipei-based China Airlines, which would cost just 26,000 Air France / KLM Flying Blue miles and about $33.
I went to AirFrance.us to confirm that this was available before I transferred points. However, unfortunately, it said that there were no available flights.
I thought that must have been a mistake, so I hit “search” again. The page initially moved forward to a calendar, but then returned to that “no flights available” message. I figured that AwardTool must have had something wrong and I didn’t think much more about it.
However, later in the day, I decided to run the searching using Pointsyeah.com. Sure enough, Pointsyeah showed the China Airlines flight available (note that the flight costs 26,000 Air France / KLM Flying Blue mils, but you’re seeing a 20% transfer bonus from Amex reflected in the number of points you’d need to transfer (22,000).
I thought for a moment that it must be phantom availability. However, I scrolled a bit further and noticed that Pointsyeah also showed Delta having access to the same flight.
With two partners showing access to that space, I no longer thought it could be phantom. Both Award Tool and PointsYeah said that there were six available seats on this flight and they’re available to be booked with multiple programs. I figured that it had to be real.
Readers have many times suggested using apps when desktop sites don’t work, so I gave the Air France app a try. To my pleasant surprise, while the Air France website said no flights were available at all, the Air France app showed that flight available in both economy (13,000 miles) and business class (26,000 miles), and it wasn’t even the only flight option available.
More of the story: also try searching in an airline or hotel program’s app as well as the desktop site.
Second moral of the story: award search tools are incredibly useful. In the days before award search tools, I would have only searched this on desktop and thought that there simply weren’t any seats available. I would have missed out!
Expedia.com displays airline fare classes
If you read my “Frequently Asked Questions” post about the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion the other day, you already picked up on this tip, but it’s been incredibly useful for this challenge and probably will be again in the future. Many airline booking engines — both online travel agencies and even airline websites — make it somewhere between “really hard” and “absolutely impossible” to figure out the fare class that you’re booking. Expedia.com makes it really easy. Just click the “show details” button underneath the flight information and it shows the fare class.
I usually don’t care about fare class, but this challenge is showing me that sometimes it matters. Not all of the carriers / routes I’ve searched have shown up on Expedia, but when there’s an Expedia link from Google Flights, it’s making my life much easier!
There are some terrific SkyTeam bargains departing or passing through China
If I’ve learned one thing from this challenge, it’s that SkyTeam is expensive. If I’ve learned two things, it’s that the Chinese SkyTeam carriers can be ridiculously cheap.
Take for instance this Xiamen Airlines itinerary from Seoul, South Korea to Jakarta, Indonesia. Note that this fare would not qualify for the SAS EuroBonus competition (the cheapest Xiamen fares don’t earn any EuroBonus miles).
That’s about eight and a half hours of flight time — and a 23.5hr stop — for $114. That works out to paying less than $13.50 per hour.
It’s not just limited to long economy class flights: there are also some terrific bargains on short business class segments within China. Take for instance this business class flight on China Eastern Airlines that can be booked in business class for just $104.
While that’s just a recliner seat and just a 1hr and 40 minute flight, that’s nonetheless dirt cheap to fly up front.
The challenge with flights like that is that the cheapest prices on flights like that tend to from smaller online travel agencies. The difference in price from one to the next can raise an eyebrow.
One reader explained the disparity saying that agencies outside of China mostly only have access to full-fare business class whereas entities based in China or owned by Chinese entities may have access to discounted business class fare buckets.
For the purposes of this competition, that’s really tricky. I can’t see for sure what the fare class on the above itinerary is with eDreams or Trip.com. I bet that since this is a business class cabin, the fare bucket is probably qualifying. However, in the interest of playing it safe, I’ve been planning to avoid booking via unknown OTAs in favor of booking somewhere where I can find the fare class information (whether that be directly on the airline website or an OTA like Expedia that displays the fare class, which has led to having to pass up some very tempting bookings!
It’s worth noting that I may have been accused of playing it too safe on matters where a million miles are hanging in the balance, but I probably won’t lose too much sleep if I earn a million miles :-).
Don’t forget the secondary airports
This challenge has been an excellent reminder that many cities have more than one airport. Sure, I know that New York and London have multiple airports. And I know that Oslo has two (or at least that Ryanair sold me a ticket to Oslo that certainly didn’t land anywhere near the “Oslo airport hotel” that I had booked!). And I learned all about Bangkok’s Don Mueang (DMK) airport during our 40K to Far Away challenge when I bought an Air Asia ticket from Tokyo to Brisbane with a layover in Bangkok expecting some cheap street eats only to find out that an Air Asia ticket through DMK doesn’t allow you to leave the airport.
But perhaps that Air Asia snafu and my previous Ryanair experience have fooled me into the errant thought that secondary airports are only for low-cost-carriers like Ryanair and Air Asia. did you know that Seoul, Bangkok, Beijing, Istanbul, Shanghai, and Taipei all have more than one airport? Spoiler alert: I knew about some, but not all of those….and the discovery of new airports has certainly influenced my planning process (thanks very much to helpful readers!). It turns out it isn’t just low cost carriers that fly to secondary airports after all.
About those low-cost-carriers in Asia though….they sure to make it hard to book SkyTeam flights!
It always pays to read the comments
I’ve long been an advocate of reading the comments. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve learned something just by reading what people have to say about it.
Nowhere is that likely to be truer than in the comments on our journal posts. I’ve intentionally avoided looking at the comments on Greg’s and Stephen’s posts so as not to take ideas that were meant for them. However, I have to say that the comments on my journal post have had a masterclass worth of tips regarding routes, booking channels, nested flight options, and a lot more. When this whole thing is over, I look forward to spending time reading through comments on Greg’s and Stephen’s journal posts to see how readers helped them and what I can learn there, too.
As a reminder, whether you’re looking to add your two cents of help or you’re just curious to read what others have been cooking up, you can go to our journal posts here:
And don’t forget to keep an eye on our Million Mile Madness hub page for all the latest developments.
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