The AwardFares calendar is one of the easiest ways to find great award redemptions. Today we’ve enhanced the calendar to show additional “special” dates (beyond the normal 60 days). You can now browse 400+ routes during Christmas and New Year between December 20th and January 8th.

We’ve added the possibility to filter for specific flight numbers (Or parts thereof) when searching. For example, let’s say you want to take a trip on the famous Island Hopper flight across Hawaii. If you just search for the route, HNL-GUM you will find both direct flights as well as the Island Hopper.

It’s now possible to search with date ranges. Start by selecting a start date as usual. Once you’ve done this a new “Until when?” box will appear. Now select a second date to create your date range.

Based on all the feedback we have received after the launch of the new AwardFares UI, we are now releasing some improvements that should make it easier to build journeys. We hope you will appreciate these improvements, and please keep sending us feedback!

Earlier this year nearly all Thai Airways long-haul award availability disappeared. Now it seems most of that availability is back, especially on the Paris (CDG) - Bangkok (BKK) route. There’s lots of availability, including both Business and First during the next couple of months.

Copying/exporting journeys has been available in AwardFares for a long time. To do so, simply click “Copy” and you’ll receive a text description of your journey:

During the last few months we’ve been working very hard on a completely new version of AwardFares with many new features and improvements. Today we’re launching the new version to everyone together with a new Diamond tier.

On Feburary 18 EVA Air launches their new European route to Milan (MXP):

With the opening of Beijing Daxing airport (PKX) LOT Polish Airlines is the first Star Alliance member offering award availability to the new airport. Starting on October 28 they will be moving 4 of their 7 weekly flights from Beijing Capital (PEK) to Beijing Daxing (PKX).

Go to the December 2019 version instead

I was recently offered a surprise operational upgrade on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Lisbon. This gave me a great opportunity to try out Lufthansa’s short haul business class. Since this was a surprise upgrade, and the business class part of the cabin is the same as the economy class, the review will be a bit shorter than usual.

After flying economy to New Zealand I decided it was worth to spend some miles on a business class flight back to Europe. With some luck I managed to find a routing via Taipei and Paris. The first leg of the journey from Auckland to Taipei was an Air New Zealand flight in a 787-9 Dreamliner in Business Premier.