Happy to help here. This is where we get into the complex world of points.
So with United, you're going to have a very hard time finding a first class flight for Zürich to Atlanta route in September. The only possibility is Lufthansa first class with a connection, but Lufthansa doesn't release their first class product to partner Star Alliance airlines (like United) until a few days before departure.
United does not have international first class anymore. SWISS almost never releases their First Class to partners.
You cannot book Air France first class with United because Air France is part of SkyTeam and United is part of Star Alliance.
You cannot book British Airways first class because BA is part of OneWorld. Not that you would want to, British Airways first class usually carries fees around $800-$1,000.
If you are married to just United, then the best tool is the United website award search. Roame shines when you need to search across multiple airline website at the same time.
mmhmm. That shouldn't happen. Could you let me know where you are seeing this? Because I just did a quick search and didn't see that transfer option in the flight details.
So, if you're only booking economy flights, there could be a cash where the 25% points back makes. But we boil it down, Amex offers 1 cent per point and with the 25% back, you get 1.25 cents per point.
1.25 cents per point is decent for economy, but you can often find economy flights for 1.5 cents per point when you transfer to an airline partner (sometimes even higher).
The real delta in value comes from business or first class redemptions where sometimes you can realize 5-8 cents per point for business and 12-20 cents for first class.
From a pure numbers approach, you're usually losing out when redeem points on the credit card travel portals. BUT you get to save time by booking any cash fare availability.
None taken! We're focused on speed and providing the best travel product to our users so they can save time/money. Like PG says, only raise money if it will accelerate your growth.
I get it. So we categorize any mixed fares by the highest class. We do offer a premium percentage filter to sort based on the percentage of the itinerary in business or first class
Got it. I just checked and don't see it on Roame live search.
80K points booked via AA and including JAL leg to Tokyo, sounds like a JAL First Class from SFO to Tokyo saver fare with an Alaska domestic leg thrown in.
If that is the case, it could be that the flight was booked or in someone's cart in between your search and going to the website. Japan routes are extremely popular right now.
I had similar issues with SFO-LHR on August 14th, and the issue (probably) was that the result had mixed cabins (business SFO-LAX, economy LAX-LHR), and the airline site (Qantas) didn't obviously display the same result. Probably it would have if I'd finessed the search on Qantas bit more, but I don't think your target novice user would figure it out.
As a side note, I despise seeing mixed cabin results for routes like that when I'm searching for business/first, where it's one hour in business and then 10 hours in economy. As far as I'm concerned that's an economy flight, or "economy mixed" at best. I know this is a standard practice for travel sites, this is just my particular hobbyhorse to rant about when searching for points flights. I'm guessing the "premium" slider somehow is supposed to deal with that since bumping it up removes that route from the search results, but the intended use of that slider is pretty nonobvious to me.
I get it where you’re coming from, but points travel could actually make air travel more efficient by helping fill capacity on planes.
Airlines would otherwise be flying planes with more empty seats without points redemptions. And airlines don’t like cutting routes because they will lost out to new competitors (JetBlue is a great example of a new entrant) or will lose their airport slots.
So with United, you're going to have a very hard time finding a first class flight for Zürich to Atlanta route in September. The only possibility is Lufthansa first class with a connection, but Lufthansa doesn't release their first class product to partner Star Alliance airlines (like United) until a few days before departure.
United does not have international first class anymore. SWISS almost never releases their First Class to partners.
You cannot book Air France first class with United because Air France is part of SkyTeam and United is part of Star Alliance.
You cannot book British Airways first class because BA is part of OneWorld. Not that you would want to, British Airways first class usually carries fees around $800-$1,000.
If you are married to just United, then the best tool is the United website award search. Roame shines when you need to search across multiple airline website at the same time.