Booking Condor business class with Alaska miles

AS website has this problem of showing "phantom seats", which are actually not available. Sorry that this happened to you. I did get Condor redemption seats months in advance. However, I did so one seat at a time.

Did you get business class on those Condor seats? I see Premium Economy Available, on the last date at the end of the schedule next September, but no business class.

But I have managed to come up with enough British Airways Avios to book our next trip both ways, so will do that. So I will give up on condor for the time being.

I do not much like the new Alaska website for finding flights, whether revenue or miles. But I did benefit from the recent sale on domestic fares, and I do like the airline itself.

Lola, I used Alaska miles to book Condor Air business class flights twice last year. Both times the seats were broken and would not lie flat. Big disappointment!

Well that is unfortunate. When we last flew them, in early September 2022, the plane was a nearly new A330 Neo, and very comfortable. And the dinner was excellent.

Hello Lola:

I did get biz seats in Sept for travel next June. I think sometimes award seats show up randomly.

When you have Alaska miles and you want to use them on a Condor flight, do you book them through Alaska or Condor? I have the same question using Delta miles on KLM. Does help to call the miles issuing airline directly? Thanks in advance for the clarification.

Since no one else has answered Susan, I will report my experience using United miles on trips involving other carriers from the same alliance: I've always booked such flights on the United website.

However, I had an interesting experience in September while booking a one-way ticket from Istanbul to Washington-Dulles for an October flight. With a very few weeks' notice there were non-stop flights (two per day) available on the Turkish Airlines website virtually every day for about $600, including everything except the seat-reservation fee. I also looked at the United website to see whether there was frequent-flyer-ticket availability; there were no mileage tickets offered on those non-stop flights, though Turkish Airways connecting flights showed up (as they do for other destinations in Europe). I don't have a frequent-flyer number on Turkish Airlines, so I was unable to check to see whether that would have been a path to a non-stop mileage ticket.

The situation with Alaskan/Condor might be different. You should be able to confirm whether it's technically feasible to book a mileage ticket directly by going to the Condor website and trying to see mileage-ticket options by providing your AA frequent-flyer number. Even if that results in display of flights available, it's possible you will not have the same options as someone who's a frequent flyer on Condor.

To expand on the above answer specifically to Susan's questions...

When you have Alaska miles and you want to use them on a Condor
flight, do you book them through Alaska or Condor? I have the same
question using Delta miles on KLM. Does help to call the miles issuing
airline directly? Thanks in advance for the clarification.

First, I don't think there's any reason to call any airline involved. Nobody is going to provide any useful help.

If you have Alaska miles, you can only use them to book on Alaska's website. When you book award flights there, you should find most options to book flights on Alaska fights, but also (some) flights on Alaska's partners. Whether or not those are good options (that is, a good value) is a separate question (with no simple answers) but the mechanics of using the Alaska miles are relatively straightforward. Use Alaska Miles on Alaska's website.

Same for Delta. Use your Delta miles on Delta's website. There you will find mostly Delta flight availability, but some (usually much more limited) options to book partner flights, too.

As a general rule (there are exceptions), miles/points from any airline's loyalty program can only be used when booking flights through that airline's system. They can't be transferred to other airline programs and used elsewhere. That said, most airlines do have partners (some have many) and (sometimes) their partner flights can also be booked, but you do that through the program where your miles reside (so in the examples above, use your Alaska miles at the Alaska website, your Delta miles at the Delta website, etc.).

Some cautions and caveats: If you're not well-versed at playing this game of using miles/points, it can be a complex mess, full of frustrating gotchas, terrible values, limitations and tricks, but also with plenty of opportunities and occasional pleasant surprises (those positive experiences are getting more challenging to find). There are also a lot of outright liars and absolute charlatans online (including one website shared right here every day) seeking to "monetize" you, under the guise of "helping you" through sorting it all out for you. Caveat emptor when following bloggers. If you want to play the game, the best places for true, accurate, and detailed info is FlyerTalk, but that's a jargon-filled swamp and it requires some dedication, effort and patience (more than most people care to invest) to be successful.

Re acraven's experience with United points and Turkish awards: availability and price of award flights on Turkish Airlines using United miles fluctuates wildly - occasionally they are cheap and plentiful, often they just disappear for months at a time, for no apparent reason. But IME it's worth watching them, when the fish are running, it's worth going fishing. Redeeming Turkish miles via the Turkish system is more complicated (and expensive) and fraught with bad IT frustrations, and not for the faint of heart.

Personally, I've never flown Condor (have flown on Alaska and their partners more than a few times using Alaska miles). I often book flights on United (and many of their partners) using United points. IME, United is probably the easiest system to use, with the most useful partners – though United devalued their awards tremendously last April, really gutting the value of their miles, so you better bring a wheelbarrow full of them for a good award redemption...they're still useful (I just finished booking flights with United miles to/from Europe for a trip next September, with the return flights on Turkish Airlines). IME United miles are generally the best option for flights to/from Europe. But I also find American miles to be often useful and occasionally a good bargain (though almost never on flights to Europe, still often useful for Latin America or Asia). YMMV.

The situation described by acraven—-seeing seats available on the Turkish Airlines direct flight for $600, but none available for United miles—-is not at all unusual. Not all seats offered for sale are also available for “purchase”: with miles. Airline limit the number of seats they designate as “award seats” for the mileage program members, and when they are booked up there may be no more, aT least until someone cancels an award flight they booked earlier. Generally the airline’s award seats (ie on Turkish) are equally available to that airline’s partners (here, United), though there may be time differences in availability.

For example, British Airways, the airline I am most familiar with, releases 2-4 awards seats in business class on every flight 355 days ahead of the flight date. But those BA seats are mainly available to their loyalty program members only, because other airlines (like Alaska, with which I am also very familiar) have a booking calendar that only goes out 330 days. I have on several occasions been able to book BA flights in business class with my Alaska miles in low season (March, for example), which means no BA loyalty program member booked the seats when they were released 25 days earlier.

Condor’s partnership with Alaska is a bit unusual, as Condor is not part of the One World alliance, which includes American Airlines, British Airways, Alaska, and many others. Nor is Condor part of the Star Alliance, like United, Lufthansa, and many others. But if you book a flight on the Condor website, it can include a segment on either Alaska Airlines for a U.S. flight, or on Lufthansa for an intra-Europe flight. And one can book a Condor flight on the Alaska website, whether with miles or money. If a revenue ticket (with $$$) one will earn Alaska miles on the Condor flight.

When our son’s family in Idaho flies to Europe, they fly from Boise to either Seattle to Portland, and Condor from there to Frankfurt. But they cannot add a segment from Frankfurt to anywhere else, as that would be on Lufthansa and Alaska cannot do that.

I just did a random check on Alaska’s website for business class seats with miles on Condor from Seattle to Frankfurt and did find one! September 15 2024. But it in involves an Alaska Airlines flight to Cancun, and then Condor in business class from there. No other award seats in business class on Condor for the rest of September 2024.

But 2 weeks ago I gave up on finding the award seats on Condor for late September, and went ahead and booked them on British Airways. Then I used our Alaska miles to get us home from this month’s trip to Japan (we made a last-minute date change and Alaska just happened to have award seats on Japan Airlines on the date we need).