I just participated in this week’s Condé Nast Traveler Podcast (@CNTraveler) along with Tiffany from One Mile at a Time as well as Mark Ellwood, Ryan Craggs, and Brad Rickman from Condé Nast.
The topic this week is: Points Part II: What to Do Now That You’ve Got Them and follows last week’s episode on earning the miles.
If you listened to this week’s Podcast, I mentioned a bunch of sites I use when looking for award space.
ExpertFlyer: a paid tool for checking award inventory by airline and setting up alerts to notify me about available seats. Offers a 5 day free trial.
Award Hacker: – enter the origin and destination you’d like and it will show you how many miles the trip will cost with any airline’s frequent flyer program and how you might be able to transfer miles there.
Didn’t mention but had in my head….
Award Ace: similar to Award Hacker above.
Award Nexus: a paid tool for checking actual availability on a variety of sites (for example, all Star Alliance carriers) in one search..
I also referenced this article on How I booked a $29,000 airline ticket for $46.
Have questions? Please join the discussion in the MilesTalk Facebook Group for real time feedback! You’re also welcome to tweet at me @MilesTalk on Twitter
Please, wich paid tool do you think is better for search for award inventory, ExpertFlyer or Award Nexus? I use today only ExpertFlyer.
And please tell me the main differences between both.
Thank you!
@Enore: They don’t promote it well but you can actually try AwardNexus for free is you have a Flyertalk account. https://awardnexus.com/user/signup
It is very different from EF. AwardNexus will run a search for you across various airline sites that check alliance availability. So you could say I want LAX-SYD on these days +/- 1 day and then if you have OneWorld miles you can have it check British Airways, Qantas, and JAL all at once for real time availability. But you use points each time and so you will only get a few handful of free searches every 90 days with the free membership. I would say, it’s good to have the free account in a pinch but I would save my money for Expert Flyer.