I collect miles on each of the three major airline alliances. And recently, it seems that I have quite a bit of miles accumulating, and so I figured I'd redeem some of them for award travel. It turns out it's not always easy to book award travel. Sometimes, it feels like it's easier to just buy airline tickets the "normal" way.
I suppose it is easy to redeem award travel when you're travelling with the airline you have an account with. I suppose that is not surprising: it's their system, their miles, and their flights. Where it gets complicated is when the award travel is operated by a partner airline. As much as it would be nice that airline systems talk to each other, this is not always the case.
Last year, I booked award travel within Star Alliance, and it turns out that luggage was not included, even though the communication I received made it seem that luggage was included. So I had a little surprise the moment I arrived at the airport, and I had to first pay for luggage before I could check in.
And this year, I was trying to redeem award travel within Oneworld. And again, because I am redeeming an award ticket with a partner airline, there was a considerable waiting period involved. Airlines had to talk to each other, one airline had to get confirmation from the other airline, and so forth. In the end, it took a week (and a few phone calls to Customer Service) to finally get confirmation that the itinerary was ticketed.
Oh well, this isn't a major issue, of course, but I have to say that the experience of redeeming award travel is slightly more complicated than simply buying regular airline tickets. But hey, if you have a bunch of miles accumulating, then I say the trouble is actually worth it.
