My final ANA sweet-spot award booking

I just booked what may be my last ever ANA flight award. I booked Newark to London, Dublin to Toronto, Toronto to Detroit all in business class and all for 88,000 ANA miles plus $72.87. That’s an awesome award booking. But I don’t plan to fly it as booked. Let me explain…

Background

Many years ago I transferred a bucketload of Amex Membership Rewards points to ANA in order to book ANA first class to Tokyo for my family of three. But then we made other plans and I paid 3,000 ANA miles per person to cancel the award and redeposit the remaining miles. Year after year the points sat there waiting to be used. ANA miles are awesome for the right circumstances, but those circumstances were slow to reveal themselves. The only reason the miles didn’t expire was that they were extended a few times during the pandemic. I finally used the majority of those miles to book a Star Alliance Round the World Award for two as part of the 3 Cards 3 Continents Challenge in 2022 (read about the trip here, and about the ANA booking here). But I still had 86,000 ANA miles left over, and they were set to expire very soon…

When we learned about ANA’s upcoming award devaluation (details here), I wasn’t concerned for myself. The award chart changes won’t happen until April 18th. My 86,000 ANA miles were set to expire March 31st. And with ANA, there’s no good way to extend the validity of expiring miles. I needed to find a use for my miles ASAP, but the devaluation wasn’t a factor.

The Award Placeholder Plan

I tried and tried to find a good use for the miles with my planned travel, but I failed. Instead, I decided to book flights that I can hopefully use in the future.

The good news is that I can book an ANA award now and change it for free later. The bad news is that I can only change the date or time of the flights, but I can’t change the carriers or the route. If I cancel the award after March 31st, I won’t get any miles back because they’d all be expired.

I considered many options for my miles. Ultimately I decided to book a Star Alliance business class round trip to Europe for 88,000 miles. That’s one of ANA’s many great sweet-spots that’s becoming a little less sweet on April 18th (it will then cost 100,000 miles round-trip, which is still a great price, but not as great).

Having decided to book a round trip to Europe, I transferred 2,000 additional Amex points to ANA so that I’d have exactly the required 88,000 miles. That transfer took a few days to complete (as expected). Then I had to decide where I wanted to fly to, and where I wanted to return from (those are not necessarily the same answer!). And I had to find award availability far into the future so that I’d have plenty of time to find a date that works for me and to change the flight to then (yes I could have alternatively kept pushing the flight back, but that would be a hassle).

Outbound to London

Where to fly to was the easy part. I have a trip to London planned where my wife and I are already planning to fly separately and I have a freely cancelable AA award booked for my outbound flight. United doesn’t yet have award availability for the flight I want, but I’ve noticed that they open up a lot of award availability within two weeks or so of each flight. At least that appears to be true for the Newark to London flight I’m eying. So, I picked an open date in February 2025 with the expectation that I can move the departure to the date I actually want if award space opens up. I didn’t include the Detroit to Newark positioning flight with the ANA award for a reason: it’s possible that the Newark to London award will open up but that the Detroit to Newark flight will not then be available for partner award bookings. If so, I’d be stuck. I wouldn’t be able to cancel the first leg to Newark and I wouldn’t be able to change the second leg of the trip to happen before the first leg. I’d hate to lose out on the important part of the award just because of this otherwise cheap little flight! So, I separately used 6,900 United miles to book Detroit to Newark on the day I’m hoping to fly.

If the flight to London doesn’t open up in time (according to ANA, I need to make changes at least 96 hours before departure of the flight I want), I’ll cancel my 6,900 point Detroit to Newark award and I’ll simply wait for another opportunity to fly to London in the future. Fortunately, my wife and I go to London often, so that shouldn’t be too hard. Plus, it’s easy to get to pretty much anywhere else in Europe from London if we want to end up somewhere else.

Return from Dublin, Stopover in Toronto

Figuring out the return flight plan was the harder part. ANA requires booking round trip awards and so I couldn’t simply book two separate one way awards. But for our London trip, we already have not-easy-to-refund plans for our return, so booking a return from London didn’t seem like a great idea. Plus, the UK imposes a large tax on passengers departing the UK in premium cabins. I didn’t want to pay that if I could help it. I ultimately decided that the ideal departure airport was Dublin. My wife and I have been eager to visit Ireland but it hasn’t yet fit into our plans. Maybe by having this return flight on the books it will force us to finally book something! And, if not, we could potentially use the flight later by returning from elsewhere in Europe, through Dublin.

I couldn’t find any business class award availability from Dublin on United except very close-in, but Air Canada had plenty of availability from Dublin to Toronto in February 2025. Toronto is close to my home airport, Detroit, so that should work well.

I could have booked Dublin-Toronto-Detroit all-together. The award space was available like that. But… I didn’t want the Toronto to Detroit leg tied to the Dublin-Toronto leg. When I find a Dublin to Toronto flight that I actually want to fly, it’s possible that the Toronto-Detroit leg won’t then be available. I don’t want to lose out on the more important flight if that happens. Instead, I added a free two day layover in Toronto to the award. That way, when I find a good real-world use for the Dublin to Toronto flight, I can go ahead and make that change even if the Toronto to Detroit leg isn’t available. And then I can continue to monitor that final leg to see if award space opens up and then grab that. That’s the plan anyway!

Summary

I finally used up the last of my ANA miles just in time before they expire at the end of this month. I booked placeholder business class flights that I hope to use. It’s very likely that I’ll at least use the flight to London, but I’m less certain about the return from Dublin. That’s OK. Even if I only use the outbound flight, I’ll have at least gotten decent value from those near expiring miles. And if I manage to use the whole award, I’ll have wrung out great value one last time.

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