Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
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Air Tahiti Nui has launched a new route between Tahiti and Seattle (two times per week) and awards are wide open! As reported first by JT Genter at Award Wallet, it is often possible to find 2 or more business class seats per flight. This is an awesome way to get to Bora Bora (which requires another flight on similarly named, but different airline Air Tahiti) or even to stop-over before flying onward to Auckland New Zealand.
Award Wallet found availability for 2 business class seats on many flights between October 2022 and August 2023, including many in December, January, and February.
The best ways to book these flights are with Alaska or American Airlines miles. Alaska charges 60,000 miles one-way for business class and allows a free stop-over on a one-way award. An awesome option would be to stopover in Tahiti and then fly onward to New Zealand, for example. With Alaska you can also include a free positioning flight on Alaska Airlines itself to get to/from Seattle, but you can’t include a second partner on the same award. AA charges 80,000 miles and does not allow stop-overs, but they do allow mixing and matching partners at the same price (so, for example, you could theoretically get to Seattle with a mix of AA and Alaska Airlines flights and then go onward to Tahiti for the same 80,000 miles one-way).
If interested in securing normally impossible to get winter awards to Tahiti, jump on this now!!! Both Alaska Airlines and AA allow free award changes and cancellations.
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“With Alaska you can also include a free positioning flight on Alaska Airlines itself to get to/from Seattle”
Try as I might, with Alaska’s site, all I get is a blizzard of nonsense. Searching one passenger, is there an award flight from PPT to SEA? Yes. Is there an award flight same day 2 hours later from SEA to my destination? Yes. Can I book PPT to my destination? No. There are no seats. Can I do a multicity search? No, there are no awards. Ever. Wait, those awards exist? Yes. Can I haz them? No.
Did you trying calling? Maybe a phone agent could book it?
Was trying last night but I couldn’t get it to book with a connection to SEA/LAX on AS despite seeing a separate award space. I was even willing to travel all the way from BOS in Y then onwards in J to PPT. Anyone able to book this with a connection on the same award in J?
Annnd its gone!
It’s been available for quite awhile. Was also good availability on a couple of their other routes (which fortunately did not get publicized) & has since dried up.
I’ve got RT business class flights booked but the issue now is hotels…i don’t see any decent points redemptions in Bora Bora for January or February
Just pay for it. Its not too expensive
Is Alaska’s 25$ partner booking fee refundable? I was told by alaska rep that it is only refundable within the first 24hrs.
It’s $12.5 per person, and it is not refundable, no matter what. I had a booking on AA through Alaska and the AA flight was rescheduled to depart 3 hours earlier than original plan. I called Alaska and told them the new time didn’t work for me and that I’d like to cancel the booking. They said they couldn’t refund the $12.5 fee but gave me a discount code of $50 per person to compensate for that amount. I don’t have much use for the discount code, but I took it since anything can happen within a year and I may find myself on an Alaska flight.
If Tahiti is the destination; 80K AA miles is a steep price to pay for an 8-hour flight from West Coast to Tahiti on an ok product. I booked an economy flight which was quite good for 25K Qantas miles and $25 in taxes and fees. J-class on the return for 69,500 miles and $300 (ouch). Qantas points are very easy to earn and the economy flight is one of the few good uses of Qantas points.
Good point. Keep in mind that AA will charge 80K even if flying from the east coast through Seattle to Tahiti.
Same with Qantas points. It was 25K in economy from JFK-LAX-PPT with first leg on AA metal and 2nd on Air Tahiti Nui, As for J-class I was only able to find availability from PPT to LAX on return and had to book a separate ticket for LAX to JFK leg in economy