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An Expert Guide to Finding Award Availability

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An Expert Guide to Finding Award Availability An Expert Guide to Finding Award Availability Useful tools and time-saving strategies to find reward flight availability or secure an upgrade on your next flight 1 September 2015 Expert Guide to Finding Award Availability | 2 Executive Summary The most rewarding part of collecting frequent flyer points is spending them! Your hard-earned points can be used in many exciting ways, such as flying to exotic destinations all over the world for (almost) free! Or, if flying in comfort and luxury sounds appealing, your frequent flyer points can also secure an upgrade to Business or First class on your next flight. Frequent flyer points can be extremely valuable; but often the most difficult part is being able to use them effectively. If you’ve ever tried to use your points to book a free flight, you’ll know how frustratingly difficult it can be to find available reward flights. The number of award seats released by airlines is limited, so finding the needle in the haystack that is award availability can be a great challenge indeed. Luckily, there are numerous tools and strategies that can be used to find and secure the free flights you’ve worked hard to earn! This Guide will demonstrate a number of time-saving techniques using freely available resources provided by various airlines, that can be used to search for award availability quickly, accurately, and thoroughly. The Guide will also explain how to take advantage of the features of three powerful online tools that take the hard work out of finding award availability. These tools and strategies will help you to discover reward seats on flights you may have otherwise overlooked, while saving you many hours of searching. (AFF members are also entitled to free and/or discounted accounts on some of these tools!) Using frequent flyer points to upgrade to the pointy-end of the plane presents similar challenges. Upgrades are limited and it is not always possible to secure an upgrade to Business or First class. But don’t despair! The Guide explains how tools such as Expert Flyer can be used to maximise the chances of a successful upgrade. The Guide will focus on redeeming Qantas Frequent Flyer and Virgin Australia Velocity points, however the featured tools and strategies can be applied to any frequent flyer program. If you’ve been saving up for that dream flight in business or first class, you can’t afford to miss this Guide. Using the tools and strategies outlined in the Guide, you’ll never miss out on the perfect free flight again! © Australian Frequent Flyer, 2015. All rights reserved. September 2015. Expert Guide to Finding Award Availability | 3 Contents Executive Summary .................................................................................................................... 2 Chapter 1: Use points for free flights ........................................................................................ 5 Qantas Frequent Flyer ........................................................................................................... 6 Oneworld awards ............................................................................................................... 6 Virgin Australia Velocity ......................................................................................................... 7 Other programs ...................................................................................................................... 7 Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer ............................................................................................... 7 American Airlines AAdvantage .......................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2: Introduction to finding Award Availability ............................................................... 9 Chapter 3: Find award availability on airline websites ............................................................ 11 Finding Qantas Frequent Flyer award availability ............................................................... 11 Qantas.com ...................................................................................................................... 11 British Airways website .................................................................................................... 13 Japan Airlines website...................................................................................................... 14 Award availability on other Qantas partners................................................................... 15 Finding Virgin Australia Velocity award availability ............................................................. 16 Other programs .................................................................................................................... 17 Oneworld ......................................................................................................................... 17 Star Alliance ..................................................................................................................... 17 SkyTeam ........................................................................................................................... 21 Alaska Airlines website .................................................................................................... 22 Chapter 4: Find award availability using specialised online tools ........................................... 23 KVS Availability Tool ............................................................................................................. 25 Use and features .............................................................................................................. 25 Pros & Cons ...................................................................................................................... 30 Subscription options ........................................................................................................ 30 Award Nexus ........................................................................................................................ 31 Use and features .............................................................................................................. 31 Pros & Cons ...................................................................................................................... 33 Subscription options ........................................................................................................ 34 Expert Flyer .......................................................................................................................... 34 Use and features .............................................................................................................. 34 © Australian Frequent Flyer, 2015. All rights reserved. September 2015. Expert Guide to Finding Award Availability | 4 Flight Alerts ...................................................................................................................... 37 Pros & Cons ...................................................................................................................... 37 Subscription options ........................................................................................................ 38 Chapter 5: Upgrade success strategies .................................................................................... 39 Qantas Frequent Flyer ......................................................................................................... 39 Virgin Velocity ...................................................................................................................... 40 Star Alliance & SkyTeam Upgrade Awards ...................................................................... 40 Upgrade waitlists: Use Expert Flyer to predict the chances of a successful upgrade ..... 41 How to interpret Expert Flyer flight loading data ............................................................ 42 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 45 Appendix: A complete summary of airline availability by website ..................................... 46 © Australian Frequent Flyer, 2015. All rights reserved. September 2015. Expert Guide to Finding Award Availability | 9 Chapter 2: Introduction to finding Award Availability Although points in any frequent flyer program can be used to fly on any partner airline, award flights must be booked directly with the program where the points were originally earned. For example, an award flight using Qantas points to fly on British Airways must be booked through Qantas. It is usually possible to book award travel online, however it will be necessary to call the airline in cases where availability is not displayed online. In addition to the number of points required for any redemption, it is usually necessary to pay any taxes with cash. Some airlines (e.g. Qantas, Singapore Airlines and British Airways) also impose fuel surcharges on top of the taxes. Other airlines (e.g. Virgin Australia, American Airlines and Alaska Airlines) do not levy fuel surcharges. It is usually not too difficult to find award availability during off-peak travel times, on domestic flights or in economy class. But due to very high demand (and limited supply), it may be difficult to find available seats: On popular long-haul routes, including flights to Europe, South America or the USA In premium cabins (Premium Economy, Business or First class), especially on
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