Well, I promised and I have delivered. When I made a bunch of updates to the database for the Award Maximizer search tool last week, I said I was also working on adding two new programs: EVA Air Infinity MileageLands and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club.
Both of these programs have a few complexities up their sleeves. Virgin Atlantic is like Alaska Airlines: every partner has its own award chart. So for now, I’m only showing the cost of awards for travel actually operated by Virgin Atlantic. If there are specific partner awards you’re more interested in, let me know. This was added last week.
Next up was EVA. The chart for Star Alliance partner awards that Infinity MileageLands publishes is actually not too bad. It’s actually in Word, so the work was mostly copy-and-paste. But I am still working my way through all details, and there may be more charts for other partners coming later.
Asian carriers — at least in my experience — are always much more complicated. Until I finish researching this program, which is new to me, check out Travel Is Free if you have questions about routing rules.
Then someone alerted me to take another look at Avianca. I didn’t think this needed attention, but lo and behold they’ve split the U.S. and Europe each into three different regions. It’s crazy. For some reason they’ve grouped Washington with half the East Coast. Anyway, I’ve updated both the pricing and the region tags so you should now get correct pricing for Avianca LifeMiles, as well.
As I said before on social media, I’m working on a partner on a new tool to make the award booking process even simpler. But that won’t be ready for a few months yet. Continue to keep me updated if there are any omissions or errors in the new database.
