When I posted about our planned trip to France and Belgium next year, I mentioned that I had booked us a flight home from Paris to Washington on Air France, but I did not as of yet have a flight booked to get us to Europe. That changed rather quickly last week when I took advantage of first one, then another award flight alert.

I first received an alert from Thrifty Traveler that there was award space on Condor for 55k Alaska miles plus $35 in taxes and fees per person. I found a flight from JFK to Frankfurt on the date we needed and went ahead and booked it. While it would require two positioning flights (one on each end), I had yet to see any award space on that date, which is the Friday before Labor Day. The only nonrefundable portion of the booking is the $12.50 per person partner booking fee that Alaska charges, but that was a small price to pay for having something booked. I had been wanting to try Condor, a German airline that has all new long-haul planes and what looks like a nice business class product.

It became pretty clear that it wasn’t the best option though. A well-timed flight to JFK from Atlanta was going to be expensive on either Delta or JetBlue. We would then have to switch terminals and go through security again. I would also have to book a cash ticket from Frankfurt to Paris as it wasn’t worth paying the taxes and fees to book an award ticket on either Air France through Flying Blue or Lufthansa through LifeMiles or Aeroplan.

All that hassle didn’t matter in the end. The following afternoon, I received an alert from Straight to the Points that there was JetBlue Mint Studio space for multiple people including on the Boston to Paris route on the date we needed. I was able to book this through Qatar Privilege Flyer (which uses Avios) for 78k plus $10 per person. Of note, even though all of our Avios are in our British Airways household account, the transaction went through fine without transferring the Avios over to Qatar. JetBlue has Mint Suites on its A321neos flying this route. The food and seat get very good reviews. The flight time was also much better than Condor, arriving in Paris at 9am rather than 5:30am.

I then was able to book a much cheaper flight from Atlanta to Boston compared to the JFK options. It was $159 per person, and because I am still a Mosaic 3 member until the end of this year, I was able to select Even More Space seats at booking. The only possible issue is a fairly short 135-minute layover in Boston, but unlike JFK, we would not have switch terminals or go through security. JetBlue also notated our record to show that we have connecting JetBlue bookings although they could not actually link the reservations as I guess that’s beyond their IT capabilities.

So, we went from no award options to two different options in a few days. While the JetBlue option was more “expensive” in terms of miles, most of our Avios balance comes from a 40% American Express transfer bonus so the effective points price is around the same as the Condor/Alaska booking. We also eliminated having to book a positioning flight in Europe (which can be a hassle) and a complicated JFK transfer.

Don’t give up just because you are searching for award seats on a holiday weekend or a busy time of year. Something almost always comes up, and often when you least expect it. Subscribing to Thrifty Traveler or Straight to the Points (or both) is also a good idea to get alerted quicker than others to grab these seats before they get taken by others.

If you have questions about this post, let me know in the comments or send me an email at emptynestermiles@gmail.com. If you are thinking about opening a new credit card, please use one of my links.