USVI-On-Line

Well the airlines are not cooperating with frequent flyer miles. We have them
and can't use them!!! Have stayed up a few nights trying to book our 2012 trip with no luck.
Agents now just say "sorry not in the system" even before they look!
My question is for all you travel experts out there: Have you booked one airline
for outbound and a different one for the return? We have never done this, but
might have to! I did get one nice agent who told me the flights to St. Thomas
are being cut back in a major way. After March 31st no non-stop on Saturday
with United! Would appreciate any advice. We have 11 months so I should
probably calm down, but I used to be able to secure the reservations right away.
Flights costing major $$$ right now from Chicago. Have to let the villa agency
know our dates and it has been a bit of a challenge.

No advice but I share your frustration.

Our work/vacation schedules aren't very flexible so we typically need to travel over the weekends. I have not been able to use miles to get to St. Thomas. I gave up and have been giving them away to people I know who need tickets and can work the airline system.

As much as we hate it, we have had to switch to flying to SJU or SXM and then taking a flight to STT or EIS depending where we start our vacation. About 3 years ago it became impossible to find the low miles deals to STT for some reason. Probably a result of cutting back flights.

US Air out of New England same issue. Frequent Flyer coach class on Saturdays is 40k miles down, then for the flight back most Saturdays the seats for miles aren't available. If I go Wed to Wed, 17k miles each way.....

Last son out of high school this spring and into college, next year we try to book away from weekends....

I am not certain What the issue really is. The reason is that you said that they tell you, "sorry not in the system" and you are booking 11 months ahead. For most airlines, there are no reservations available more than 330 days ahead of the date of the flight. That means that you have to wait until 330 before the return flight to book a round trip ticket. That would be something that a reservation agent would know without having to check. Could it be that what they are trying to tell you is that it is too early to book that trip?

I have not booked a half of a ticket with one and the other half with another. I don't know why you could not. The potential cost may be that they both take enough miles for a round trip and you end up paying for two full tickets and getting one.

Good luck. Let us know how this comes out.

JIM

Thanks all for the replies. I did the 330 days out exactly and no luck.
Got the outbound, but no return. One gal had it, put me on hold for 10
minutes and then came back on the line and said sorry lost it- it has
become a bit of a joke. I had my husband call and use his advantage number
for the return and I think we may have had some luck. Interesting how
the computers now pick up all this. They also have "caller id" Agents used
to be so nice and now they just ignore you. Oh well. We are excited just to be
going back!

I hope you got it all worked out..What airline are you booking ?...if you dont mind me asking

For what it is worth, I work on our trips to STJ about 6-8 months out. My only 2 choices are AA & Delta from DFW. Not all that competitive with each other. For some of the trips, including our upcoming October trip, I've been able to get the best deals from AMEX Travel. They sell seats on both airlines and I can mix my points with dollars in any ratio to cover the ticket costs. They seem to clear more reward seats than either airline for me. Maybe check it if you have any AMEX points? Or just check them anyway to see what fares they may have. Not pushing them, I just have a lot of their points to use.

I agree with the others that booking a trip with frequent flier miles seems more difficult this year.

In March of 2010, I booked our American flights from DCA to STT with frequent flier miles for travel in early January 2011. No problem. Plenty of availability.

This year, I started checking in February, just to see what was available at the economy level (35,000 miles) for early January 2012 from DCA to STT. There were no flights available until January 17. I checked every day through April, hoping that something would open up earlier than January 17. Never happened. The availability of STT flights at American never changed over these months, and still hasn't.

In early May, I finally gave up checking the AA site daily (and pestering AA reservation agents) and just used 30,000 extra frequent flier points to get the early January flights we wanted.

Good luck, frequent fliers!

TM

rpplano wrote:For what it is worth, I work on our trips to STJ about 6-8 months out. My only 2 choices are AA & Delta from DFW. Not all that competitive with each other. For some of the trips, including our upcoming October trip, I've been able to get the best deals from AMEX Travel. They sell seats on both airlines and I can mix my points with dollars in any ratio to cover the ticket costs. They seem to clear more reward seats than either airline for me. Maybe check it if you have any AMEX points? Or just check them anyway to see what fares they may have. Not pushing them, I just have a lot of their points to use.

I also use Amex. We run a lot of business expenses through our card and their point system is nice.

I just booked a trip to St. John for next April and was able to use FF miles with United to STT (the flight is actually on US Air, but had to book through United). I had to book the outbound flight first (right at the 330 day time period), then keep that flight on hold until the return flight opened up for booking 10 days later). A bit of a pain, but the airlines don't want to make anything easy. One reason you're having so much difficulty is that they release such a limited number of FF seats - they're obviously more interested in paying customers, or forcing you to use additional miles and/or money. If the flight is not available on your primary airline, make sure they check their partner airline flights also.

One American reservations agent told me that the reason I'm not seeing available frequent-flier flights for the dates I wanted (early January) is because "they haven't loaded them into the system yet."

Other agents debunked this comment, however, saying that the early January flights had all been claimed by other fliers and there wouldn't be any more early January flights added.

Rather than decide which agent had the real inside scoop, I just used more miles to get the dates of travel we wanted.

TM