Comments on: Seven ways to find the cheapest flight https://wickedcheaptravel.com/2016/01/12/how-to-find-the-cheapeast-flight/ for those who just want lots of free flights Sat, 07 Jan 2017 22:08:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: marinakcheung https://wickedcheaptravel.com/2016/01/12/how-to-find-the-cheapeast-flight/comment-page-1/#comment-77 Tue, 26 Jan 2016 19:06:12 +0000 http://wickedcheaptravel.com/?p=563#comment-77 Seriously loving your blog Mark 🙂 and so glad to have met you and the awesome that you are. Keep it up!!

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]]> By: mark https://wickedcheaptravel.com/2016/01/12/how-to-find-the-cheapeast-flight/comment-page-1/#comment-24 Mon, 18 Jan 2016 06:07:11 +0000 http://wickedcheaptravel.com/?p=563#comment-24 This is great to know, though for now, I’m trying to avoid things that fall under the category of potential airline oversights that need to be fixed

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]]> By: s kaulana https://wickedcheaptravel.com/2016/01/12/how-to-find-the-cheapeast-flight/comment-page-1/#comment-23 Mon, 18 Jan 2016 06:05:01 +0000 http://wickedcheaptravel.com/?p=563#comment-23 Great post Mark, love the start of your blog here! Just wanted to highlight a variant of #5 that your readers might appreciate – adding third legs in order to drop fuel surcharges from the total itinerary. Nice summary here: http://tinyurl.com/j57dbq4

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]]> By: mark https://wickedcheaptravel.com/2016/01/12/how-to-find-the-cheapeast-flight/comment-page-1/#comment-21 Sun, 17 Jan 2016 05:00:49 +0000 http://wickedcheaptravel.com/?p=563#comment-21 Hi Tory,

Thanks for commenting! This is a topic I will be addressing this upcoming week 🙂

A few initial thoughts, though:

-Just as airfare tends to be higher during holiday season, award availability also becomes more limited, and unfortunately, there isn’t (yet) any magical way to get the airlines to release more award availability for that time of year. As you probably can see, this routing itself generally has quite a lot of award seats available as a one-stop on United through EWR, ORD, or IAD. But even looking as far as next Christmas, I can already see that there is extremely limited availability among Star Alliance carriers who have released award seats (though United itself does not not make seats available this far in advance). That being said, if you’re already sure that you want to do this same trip next Christmas, award seats through United open up 331 days in advance, and 338 days for American and Delta (which fly this route one-stop through ORD, DFW, and DTW), so it’s possible that the limited amount of one-stop awards for this route could be snapped up very soon (though sometimes airlines do release award seats later). This isn’t even a uniquely Star Alliance issue, as I’m also seeing limited availability heading into next Christmas on oneworld and SkyTeam.

-While it might not be too helpful for this particular routing (nor do I know how you were looking for awards), keep in mind that while you can book award flights on Singapore Airlines and Shenzhen Airlines using United miles, they will not appear in the United online award search tool (I’ll get into this more next week).

-Sometime this year (all they’ve said is “early”), Alaska Airlines will allow you to book award tickets on Hainan Airlines. In theory, this means that you could use Alaska Airlines miles to book an award flight from TPA to PEK via SEA (flying Alaska on the first leg). Whether this becomes a reality is less certain.

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]]> By: TL https://wickedcheaptravel.com/2016/01/12/how-to-find-the-cheapeast-flight/comment-page-1/#comment-20 Sat, 16 Jan 2016 22:47:37 +0000 http://wickedcheaptravel.com/?p=563#comment-20 Great advice! I’d love if you can share some of your wisdom in booking award tickets. I had a lot of trouble trying to find an award flight from TPA to PEK over xmas on UA…eventually had to connect in FRA, which added to my travel time by a significant amount and an additional layover in NKG.

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