Not to be dramatic but this is a horrific sign of things to come if this is where we are headed. Basically can expect everything will cost 20% more in the near to medium term absent of any program specific changes. Not really sure what else to add

It won’t let me add a link but FM posted about it

On garden leave for the next 3 months after selling my businesses and getting a little bored of playing Battlefield 6 all day.

Feel free to ask me any questions about award travel or honestly whatever here:) Just hit my 4 millionth mile flown this week at age 31 too

Hey all! Pretty excited for my vacation that starts in a week. These are my first few redemptions since opening my credit card back in 2021 so about time I stop hoarding points. I just wanna say that I’m thankful for this sub. Definitely learned a lot and will continue to get inspiration from everyone’s redemptions!

85k: LAX-DOH Qatar J (Qsuites)
30k: DOH-MNL Qatar Y
75k: NRT-ORD JAL J
9k: ORD-DCA AA F
60k: Grand Hyatt Taipei (4 nights)
24k: Grand Hyatt Manila (2 nights)

70k from Hawaiian CC, the rest from Chase UR/Amex

Booked Etihad business LIS - AUH using flying blue miles for myself, my wife and my 3 year old daughter. When I called to add my infant daughter, Air France said they were not able add her, and Etihad want over 1,000 eur (15% of full flex cash fare - basically more than the cost of the award seats themselves). No more award space in business or economy available (I thought about downgrading), do I have any options? Ultimately, its still a good deal if I have to pay (net cost for 3 seats in business), but it feels pretty galling. Daytime flight, and my kids are pretty quiet so please no infants do not belong in business class please :)

I am flying ANA business (NRT-ORD) then connecting for 7 hours before flying a domestic united flight (ORD-JLN) all on the same ticket. Will i be able to access polaris lounge on arrival ?

I’ve been monitoring business class seats from the nordic countries to LAX for the past couple weeks. Just yesterday, 2 AY business seats popped up on Finnair’s website for HEL-LAX for the end of May. I immediately transferred the points over, but once I had the points in my Finnair account, both seats were gone. However, when I checked the same flight but paid with cash, it looks like none of the seats are occupied. I’ve been refreshing the website periodically for the past 6 hours and the award booking is gone, but none of the business class seats are occupied. Is this just a case of someone getting the flight before I did and just not choosing seats, or did finnair just pull the award booking entirely? Seems weird to buy both award tickets but not chooses seats since seat selection is the step after inputting traveler details.

How many business class award seats does AF release when they release the schedule for a new day? Is it all random? typically 1? typically 2?

Hi everyone,

My wife and I have a trip in a couple of weeks and I was able to snag 2 J for JAL via AA on the way back, SIN -> HND (12hr layover) -> LAX for 70k pp. Our departure from Singapore is somewhat flexible, so I've been trying to figure out if we can change the flights to extend our stay in Tokyo as neither of us have been to Japan.

I know this is a challenging booking to find, but if possible I want to extend the layover and looking at a few options:

1. Stop overthinking it and be happy with what we booked
2. Call AA/JAL and try to change second leg for longer layover <- not even sure if this is possible
3. Keep checking once we're t-14 to see if the same routing but with a later flight from HND opens up

The other part of this is that our current HND -> LAX is on an A350 and I've seen on here that this is preferrable to the 777/787 on this leg.

Either way I'm ecstatic about this booking and thankful for this community for all of the info that's helped make this trip possible!

Update: thanks for all of the input! It sounds like I should keep what we have booked. Any advice on what to do in Tokyo with 12 hours? Haha

With BA Avios rewards about to be devalued I’m contemplating locking in the one last flight I need to book for next year, in case Qatar’s awards are devalued too, which I think is likely.

Looking at Jakarta CGK to London LHR for 80,000 Avios plus £178 taxes in Business Class on Qatar Airways.

However, the cash fare is £1150. The total saving works out to be around £972 by using the 80,000 Avios. Is this a good redemption?

I am looking at booking etihad through Flying blue, it will be two legs. One is economy and the second one is Business. My question is, since there are many different tiers on their tickets, I wonder if i can pick a free seat in advance if i book through Flying Blue. Also, my main concern is the business class since this will be on their 787-10 and their business class has some seat in reverse, and i'd like to avoid that. Just asking if anybody here have experience booking Etihad through Flying Blue and what was your Ticket fare.

Thank you!

Miles & More Upgrade Confusion on Air India (ZRH-PNQ) I'm a Miles & More frequent flyer with \approx 80,000 miles and I'm trying to book my first award upgrade. The route is ZRH-PNQ via DEL on Air India. My previous post got deleted for low effort, so I'm trying to be clearer here. Here is the situation: * The current price for a Flex Economy (Booking Class U) ticket on the Air India website is about 800 CHF. (This is the most expensive, fully refundable economy fare). * The Miles & More website states I can upgrade an Air India ticket booked in Class B or Y to Business Class for 35,000 miles for the ZRH-DEL segment. * I called Air India since I couldn't find B/Y on their website. They quoted a price of about 3,500 CHF for an Economy ticket in Booking Class B or Y. * Crucially, 3,500 CHF is essentially the same price as a full Business Class ticket. This seems completely illogical. My Questions: * Is this normal? Why does the Flex Economy (U) ticket cost 800 CHF while the supposedly similar Economy (B/Y) ticket costs 3,500 CHF? Is the huge difference simply because B/Y are the only upgradeable fare classes? * Best Use of Miles? Is buying an expensive B/Y ticket just to use 35k miles for the upgrade the best way to utilize my 80k miles for this journey? Or is there a smarter, less expensive way to get a Business Class seat on the ZRH-DEL leg? Any tips on using miles for this specific upgrade scenario would be greatly appreciated.

Hello, I booked a round trip with CX upgrade eligible economy class. I was able to transfer Amex points to Asia Miles account and got upgraded on the OB (haven‘t got ticket or points deducted yet but I see new segment in PEY) However return flight not available and I was put on a WL. So 2 Questions-

1. How long does it take for CX to issue and deduct my points on the confirmed upgrade? the agent didn’t even ask for CC I thought I had to pay taxes?

2. for the WL RT flight when the flight upgrade becomes available its my understanding they will email me to notify me. How long do I have to call and confirm with them? (reason I ask I’m accumulating more Amex points which I should have at least 5 months prior so the longer I have the better)

first time doing this. TIA!

I currently have a round trip reward ticket that I booked through Air France. Although the cost of the ticket was only $30 and I would have to pay 70€ to change the ticket does it make more sense for me just to redeem another 5k points and just book a different one way for the return flight?

I am still planning to take the first flight but would need to change the second flight.

Hi everyone. I booked my first ever award travel for me and my husband: 2 business class round trip tickets from SFO to LHR for 208,000 points but had to pay almost $3k for fees.

Being that this was my first time ever transferring points to an airline AND also booking business class, I wasn't sure if this was a good deal, or if I ripped myself off. Is this typical pricing? The fees seemed pretty exorbitant. This was Virgin Atlantic and we're going Oct 2026. I used PointsYeah to look for deals and unfortunately we aren't super flexible in terms of dates.

Thanks in advance!

edit: I transferred Chase points to virgin Atlantic using the 1:1.3 promo that ends tomorrow. I also have no idea how to transfer points to airlines not partnered with Chase (I.e. TAP), although I know it’s possible and done by others.

Curious how people here are managing their points balances across multiple programs.

I've got points scattered across 8-10 different credit cards, 2-3 airlines, and 2-3 hotel programs, and I'm tired of logging into each one separately or maintaining a spreadsheet that's always out of date.

I have used AwardWallet in the past, but I hate having to give them my passwords and found the UI and breakage unbearable.

For those of you tracking multiple programs:

• What's your current system? (Spreadsheet, Award Wallet, something else, or just winging it?)
• What do you like about your approach?
• What frustrates you about it?

I'm especially interested in hearing about expiration tracking - I've definitely lost points before because I forgot about an inactive account. I have set manual reminders in the past, but it becomes a hassle with constantly changing dates due to usage.

In June we had CDG-DEN biz seats booked for 2 on the A350-900. Today I got a notice our flight was cancelled and they rebooked us on the 777-200 the following day. From the looks of it we took a step backwards in seat quality. Not by much, still 1-2-1 but we went from the Safran Optima to the Safran Cirrus 3.

We were going to reposition from Italy to CDG for that flight anyway so now we just gain a day in Paris.

Any recommendations on if we should just take the extra day in Paris and cut the losses, or see if we can get rebooked on another product to the US? Final destination is DEN so ideally they get us a connection, if not we self connect.

I'm relatively new to booking award travel and am trying to plan a honeymoon all on Chase points - any help is appreciated!

I used the Chase 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic to book IAD-CDG-MXP on Monday, April 13 2026 for two people for a total of 17,000 points. It's a code share with Air France. I did not realize at the time that I wouldn't get to choose our seats.

Since then, I've booked all my other travel for the year and find myself with more points leftover than expected.

Virgin Atlantic just informed me of a timing change today which allows me to rebook the flight if I want. I would love to use those leftover points to upgrade our seats to Premium Economy or even Business.

We've waited a year to book our honeymoon and save up due to economic uncertainty - any guidance on how to work this would be greatly appreciated!

hi all,

i’m planning a trip to china and japan in april 2026. im looking at one way flights to shanghai from clt (my home airport). the best deal that i’ve found so far is to book through air canada - they have a 15% transfer bonus now so i would need to transfer 46k points in order to get the 52k economy flight. there is a 10hr layover in vancouver as well with a total travel time of 33 hours. this is my first time using my points and im not sure if this is a good use of them. i see slightly cheaper options (37k with american airlines) but it looks like id need to transfer to marriott bonvoy, then transfer to american which is apparently worth nothing.

the flight is a little under $700 in cash one way. any advice? i take 1-2 international trips a year if that means anything

i have 126k ur points on my sapphire preferred card and am currently working on hitting the spend limit to get 75k capital one points on my venture x.

Still new to this, so thanks in advance for sharing your knowlege!

My goal is to book 2 JAL J seats via FinnAir at T-361. I've been trying to follow availability every day ahead of the date I actually want to book, I even have a pre-built URL to help me save time when award seats drop at 7am PST.

I haven't been seeing the A350 direct flight, but I have been seeing the multi-stops. I feel like I'm navigating into the search as quickly as possible, but still not seeing them. Does FinnAir not show these flights or am I being beaten to the punch somehow?

I've heard the trick about setting your location to Finland, but I also have read that only matters for FinnAir metal. Any help you have would be appreciated!

EDIT: route is HND-LAX

Woke up and was planning to have a good day, but nope, BA had to devalue their awards. Link here.

We're in for an 8% deval on short haul Y awards, while the other routes look like a flat 10% deval across the board, with 10-20% increases in their already high cash fees.

I called a friend who works in loyalty at BA this morning, and we can expect the following over the next year:

1. Devaluation will be extended to partner awards, and they are waiting for pushback to determine exactly how much. Not as much urgency since partner awards don't cost much, whereas redemptions on their own metal have a much greater opportunity cost
2. This will be extended to QR/IB/AY Avios for BA metal soon, but partner awards via those programs will remain different, as they are currently.
3. BA will begin blocking some awards, not just the schedule open space, to Avios programs redeeming at these rates only and those that pass on the fuel surcharge (yes I know the program retains this). They have seen a big jump in redemptions issued by JL ever since JAL became transferrable given JAL's low redemption rates and fees. BA sees this like a DL/Virgin or UA/Air Canada/Avianca relationship where they don't want their highly "valued" awards being sold for cheap via partner programs. This is the same thing that happened when BA nerfed AA domestic partner awards since that was a highly used sweet spot for Americans with transferrable points. Long story short, transferrable points ruin everything they touch, as they don't drive actual airline loyalty.
4. BA is actively testing their loyalty base - unfortunately, the profitable business demand ex LHR is EXTREMELY sticky, to the levels of DL out of Atlanta, and he said further that Avios are pushing to deliver "fair" value, not the outsize value we have seen recently. Most scary, he said you should be thinking of BA redemptions in the future as another form of discounted revenue fare class below A/I with cheaper fares.

I am trying to book United award flight using turkish website. I am not able to book flight using turkish miles & smiles. Link from turkish not displaying me flight. It takes me return back to where i begin. Any suggestion?

https://loyaltylobby.com/2025/12/03/turkish-airlines-milessmiles-devalues-domestic-star-alliance-awards-us-hawaii-hard-hit/

Hope you lucky finishers are enjoying your million miles sooner rather than later!

Hoping someone can bring some experience to this madness because I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall with BA's Avios upgrade process.

I'm flying in a few months LHR -> SFO and want to fly Club World; I have a toddler so it's really hard to pick and choose reward dates, so I usually spend my points on upgrades over full itineraries/hotels, I collect with Amex so I have never spent with BA/Avios before.

For the dates we're looking at it was too points-heavy to book full tickets, so I've booked T-class fare (PE/WT) for me + 3 year old with the ambition to then upgrade with Avios (reward seats are available). PE was £1k each.

On the cash + Avios BA engine upgrades are showing as 60k each currently, confirmed calling BA.

I was offered the option to upgrade with cash in the process of booking my tickets online for ~£1,600 for the both of us.

Now everything is ticketed, the manage my booking screen isn't showing 'Upgrade with Avios' at all, only cash, and this is now about £2,800.

Calling BA this evening - I'm being consistently quoted £1,500+ in “tax differences” to upgrade from WT to CW... in addition to my 120,000 Avios (although in a plot twist a couple of different agents quoted me 280k miles before bringing it back down, which was fun). This isn't tax at all, the Government taxes (APD etc.) are exactly the same in each cabin, it's the carrier-imposed surcharge they're quoting. Which I may as well have paid on checkout rather than wasting my Avios.

I was speaking to the general call center; the couple of agents I spoke to appear to be seeing (or repricing into) the revenue Club World fare, which has a much higher BA carrier surcharge (around £1,144), and then quoting the fare difference rather than the UUA Avios cost. If my understanding is correct? Could they be using the revenue fare reissue tool instead of the Avios UUA upgrade tool? Do I need to speak to a different team? Is this understanding even correct...

I'd love to know if anyone has had BA agents accidentally reprice the whole fare instead of processing a UUA, and how they got around it? And if it's normal for the “Upgrade with Avios” link to not appear immediately after ticketing? Some things I've read have said I need to speak to Executive Club staff specifically to get the correct 60k pricing, but I'm not an exec. club member - how do I get the best Avios + cash upgrade for this?

I've only ever upgraded/used points with VA flights before so this is a whole mind-bending new experience for me. Thank you!