How far in advance do you search and book award travel?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here: thank you all, again, for great advice.

I’ve never heard of seats.aero until now, but I can see how useful that will be.

Very excited to have a new hobby obsessing over award availability!

Once you go on an overnight flight in a lie flat seat that you only paid $200 in fees and some points for, it's hard to go back.

It really is. The first time my wife had to fly premium economy to Europe she almost had a meltdown after years of being spoiled.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here: thank you all, again, for great advice.

I’ve never heard of seats.aero until now, but I can see how useful that will be.

Very excited to have a new hobby obsessing over award availability!

Once you go on an overnight flight in a lie flat seat that you only paid $200 in fees and some points for, it's hard to go back.

It really is. The first time my wife had to fly premium economy to Europe she almost had a meltdown after years of being spoiled.

Yeah although it's funny, don't even mind an 8 hour daytime flight in economy, as long as the kids are say age 5+. The big change since 10-15 years ago is having cheap tablets/in seat screens with access to either stuff you downloaded or the 200+ movies from the planes system. So much better than a single movie (or sometimes 3 options like United had) starting at the same time for everyone on the plane, can't pause it, if you don't like it, too bad Oh yeah and reasonably good $75 noise cancelling headphones, again makes a huge difference on a long flight. Give me the tablet, headphones and a row of 3-4 seats with just our family, so I am not hip-to-hip with a stranger, and economy is fine on a daytime flight. That is actually one way people are wrong about "air travel being worse than ever".

[Anonymous]

Oh oh oh. I love this game. Where do you want to go and what type of reward are you using? It is heavily dependent on that.

Do checks on seat.aero now to see what next year would be like and go from there. I get a lot of Amex points via work so I monitor deals when transferring points to make the multiply. You have to be careful to know what you want though since some reward flights won't let you upgrade a reward flight so it may be better to buy an economy ticket and use rewards to upgrade.

I know some people find it stressful but I like doing it.

[Anonymous]

I just found business class tickets for this summer - to Rome on United. Shocked that I could use points so close in.

[Anonymous]

OP here: I don’t mean to shock you, but I only ever fly economy. I am a miles miser.

I am 100 percent certain that if I ever sat in the front of the plane, I could never go back to economy, and then I could never travel overseas again.

[Anonymous]

Maybe I’ll get a business class ticket one day when I head to Switzerland. To my Dignitas appointment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here: I don’t mean to shock you, but I only ever fly economy. I am a miles miser.

I am 100 percent certain that if I ever sat in the front of the plane, I could never go back to economy, and then I could never travel overseas again.

Respect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:don't even mind an 8 hour daytime flight in economy, as long as the kids are say age 5+

This is the right answer. Lie-flat business class for the red-eye to Europe, but economy on the way back.