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Rachel Yuan of Prince of Travel told us at an FTU that Etihad releases award space in waves. I’ve been checking some trips for the past two months with no result.
This Saturday I noticed some close-in awards for travel 4-11 days out.
Come Sunday, there appeared multiple business class seats on many dates across the coming year for Chicago, Washington-Dulles, and New York-JFK, with less for Toronto. I’ve not extensively checked other routes except Abu Dhabi – Maldives, which has spotty availability. I saw some first class awards for Washington-Dulles; I haven’t done deep research on that route since from many home base Seattle I won’t position farther east than Chicago.
Book With Air Canada Aeroplan
I’ve only seen this space on Air Canada Aeroplan. I’ve ticketed two trips so it is not phantom space.
Warning: watch out for Air Canada mixed cabin results. If ‘mixed cabin’ is in red text that is over 50% not in premium cabin. You can mouse over the text to see what percent is in a premium cabin.
I went for fast and easy with Amex instant transfers to Aeroplan.
The Aeroplan call center is only open 7 am – midnight Eastern so I missed out on booking a stopover (Aeroplan allows stopovers to award for an extra 5k miles). When going to the Maldives, it is 100k for North America to Maldives without an Abu Dhabi stopover. With a stopover it is 105k. Booked separately it is 85k + 25k = 110k so rather than risk the space vanishing I booked a trip as two separate tickets so we can have a few days in Abu Dhabi. For other itineraries, the difference between stopover price and separate one-ways may be greater.
Book with Other Programs?
Etihad Guest has their usual absurd-o-pricing that you think is a typo that added too many digits.
American Airlines I haven’t seen the space.
Other programs I haven’t tried.
Etihad’s Wonderful Seat
In May we flew Chicago – Abu Dhabi – Maldives on Etihad’s A350. It is the most comfortable airline seat I’ve experienced. Even the mattress firmness is adjustable. The lounge at Abu Dhabi is a sad thing, so don’t book extra connection time for that.
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I cant seem to finds anything from IAD. Is there a easier way to see the whole month.
@Ank – desktop version of Air Canada site is better than app. There are some paid 3rd-party tools that can more efficiently show a bunch of a dates, too.
Do you know if this goes into October/November 2023? I tried on aeroplan and didn’t see anything.
@Cecilia – no one that I know of has their booking calendar out father than one year so today you won’t be able to book farther than July/August 2023.
[…] Travel Chai reports that Etihad business class award space has opened wide up. Etihad has business class award space broadly available from New York JFK, Chicago O’Hare, […]