Traveling with an infant (less than 2 years old) comes with its own planning, excitement and anxiety. Infant ticketing is most inconsistently defined by various carriers and the rules for the award cost for infant vary wildly specially for international travel. The good news is having knowledge of infant ticketing rules on awards can help decide whether its worth the comfort of traveling on award ticket. There are 3 ways in which carrier want to charge for the infant's on award tickets:
It is important to note that most often it is the ticketing airlines which decides the price of the infant ticket and on an award flight the ticketing carrier might be different than the operating carrier. Also if you have multiple carriers on award ticket than it might complicate ticketing the infant and best advice would be to avoid such award tickets. So, given the above costs and "gotcha's" for premium cabin award it is best to go with the ticketing carrier which either charges in "miles" for infant or has a flat dollar or mileage cost. Given that premise below are the best carriers for award ticket solely based on "Infant" ticket cost (Note: You will still need to weigh if it is best carrier based on award ticket cost for the parent and award availability). Aeroplan (Star alliance): Aeroplan charges flat mileage or dollar amount based on class of service for international travel on any of star alliance partner awards:
British Airways (Oneworld alliance): British Airways charges 10% of mileage cost of Adult award ticket + taxes & fees. Do note that the taxes & fees are typically same as what would be applied to adult ticket, so depending on the operating carrier it may or may not be the best deal but definitely better than paying 10% of revenue fare. Virgin Atlantic (No alliance): Virgin Atlantic charges below amount depending on class of service:
Most other carriers charge 10% of revenue fare which can make it prohibitive for infant tickets if you are looking for Business class or First class awards. You can always book an award ticket for the infant but you will need additional award seat available and have to shell out the same mileage amount as the adult award ticket. So, choose wisely the ticketing carrier for award when travelling with infant otherwise it may well break your budget. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.
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We know all miles are not created equal and each mileage currency have some unique features. Virgin Atlantic is one such program which shines in certain areas where Delta Airlines might want to give you some hard time. Delta Airlines publish flash deals for using your miles to book tickets at a discount mileage, but some of these deals go unadvertised or last longer than what Delta Airlines make you believe. Since Delta no longer publishes a award chart you might not know if the price displayed is the actual price or a "flash deal" price. Also most of these flash deals are for round trip and so one-way trip will not necessary be half the miles of round trip ticket. Also Delta Airlines is known to add dynamic mileage pricing component and thus the price might be higher than what you should actually pay. Here is an example itinerary for Los Angeles (LAX), USA to Narita (NRT) / Haneda (HND), Japan in Delta One Suite. As you can see the round trip price is 120,000 Delta Skymiles for few dates but if you want to book just one way that price is 78,000 Delta Skymiles instead of half price of 60,000 miles. Here is where Virgin Atlantic miles would come handy. Virgin Atlantic is a Delta Airline partner and as of recent pass has started displaying award availability for Delta Airlines on its Virgin Atlantic website. The good news is Virgin Atlantic has access to same level of inventory as what Delta Airlines has and it does not add the dynamic pricing what Delta does. So, if you wanted to book just one-way ticket it would cost 60,000 Virgin Atlantic miles for the same award from Los Angeles (LAX) to Narita (NRT) / Haneda (HND) above. Let's check another example where Delta applies Dynamic pricing. Here we are looking to fly from Delta non-stop flight from Portland (PDX) to Narita (NRT). Delta Airlines want to charge 125,000 miles for the below itinerary. Interestingly Virgin Atlantic still wants 60,000 miles only! The other great thing about Virgin Atlantic miles is that they routinely have 30% transfer bonus when you want to transfer your American Express points to Virgin Atlantic miles so you end up getting better value than with Delta Skymiles.
So what is the downside of using Virgin Atlantic miles? Virgin Atlantic charges mileage cost based on segments, so adding segments would add up the price for the mileage redemption. Also if you enter source and destination which does not have direct route then Virgin Atlantic does not show any availability. But with all that quirks you get a great redemption value and yes, do not forget that Virgin Atlantic charges a reasonable change / cancellation fee of only $50! Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website. |
AuthorI love traveling / backpacking. This blog focuses on below 3 aspects of travel: This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
December 2020
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