The Magic of Co-Terminals

If I haven’t said it enough before, I will say it again: it can be really tough to find award seats priced at the “low” or “saver” levels. This is particularly true if you’re traveling to a popular destination during a popular time on a popular day. There is always plenty of availability to Fairbanks or Minneapolis in the winter, but not so much to Hawaii.

Airlines don’t exactly make it easy to search for award space either. Consider Delta. The only flexibility they offer in award searches is by date, and they will often only display their own flights in award searches (rather than partner award space that could be available at a lower mileage redemption level). This means that if you’re searching for award space in cities with co-terminals, you could miss out on a whole host of options.

What is a co-terminal, you may ask? In some cities, there are multiple airports and these are all considered the same airport for the purpose of calculating a fare or award (e.g. they are not considered an “open jaw” which may result in a higher fare or not be allowed under award rules). This is really important when it comes to Delta awards (along with certain other airlines such as Korean Airlines) which require a roundtrip purchase. So, if you pick your co-terminals correctly, you can fly into one airport and out of another and it’s considered a roundtrip fare to the same cities.

Here is an example for a November flight from the Los Angeles to the New York areas. When I search for availability between Burbank and Newark on the Delta Web site, these are the options that are presented:

Delta.com Burbank to Newark award space

No saver award availability?

As you can see, it’s a couple of awful itineraries that take pretty much all day and cost 32,500 miles, which is considerably more than the 25,000 mile “saver” award level. The Delta Web site only searched for the exact cities I input. This was, I’m sure, for my convenience.

Now let’s try the same search on the Alaska Airlines Web site:

Alaska Airlines availability calendar

Plenty of seats now!

For this particular itinerary, there were many, many more options available on the Alaska Airlines Web site than the ones I selected here. However, you’ll notice a difference. The outbound flight is an Alaska Airlines flight with a conveniently scheduled connection through Seattle, and it is exactly from Burbank to Newark. However, for the return flight, there isn’t any availability from Newark to Burbank. Instead, I need to use the co-terminals of JFK Airport in New York and LAX Airport in Los Angeles. Neither of these would be my preferred airports in these particular cities, but because the flight is a non-stop flight, it more than makes up for the extra time spent on the ground.

bur-sea-ewr-jfk-lax map

“That’s fine,” you might say, “but I have SkyMiles and need to book these awards on the Delta Web site. So how does this really help me?” Fortunately, if you know the exact flights that you want and their availability, you can usually book them on the Delta site using the multi-city search tool. I described in detail how to do so in this post, and for this sample itinerary the same technique worked just fine:

Delta bur-sea-ewr-jfk-lax itinerary, 25,000 miles

Now it’s only 25,000 miles!

What cities are considered co-terminals? It depends on the airline you are flying. Most airlines operate under similar rules, though. Here is a list of cities that United Airlines considers co-terminals:

  • BWI-WAS (Baltimore, Dulles and Washington DC)
  • FLL-MIA (Fort Lauderdale and Miami)
  • FLL-PBI (Fort Lauderdale and Palm beach)
  • MIA-PBI (Miami and Palm Beach)
  • LAX-ONT (Los Angeles and Ontario)
  • LAX-BUR (Los Angeles and Burbank)
  • LAX-SNA (Los Angeles and Orange County/Disneyland)
  • ONT-BUR (Ontario and Burbank)
  • ONT-SNA (Ontario and Orange County/Disneyland)
  • BUR-SNA (Burbank and Orange County/Disneyland)
  • NYC-EWR (New York LaGuardia, New York JFK and Newark)
  • NYC-HVN (New York LaGuardia, New York JFK and New Haven, CT)
  • NYC-HPN (New York LaGuardia, New York JFK and White Plains, NY)
  • NYC-ISP (New York LaGuardia, New York JFK and Islip/Long Island, NY)
  • EWR-HVN (Newark and New Haven, CT)
  • EWR-HPN (Newark and White Plains, NY)
  • EWR-ISP (Newark and Islip/Long Island, NY)
  • HVN-HPN (New Haven, CT and White Plains, NY)
  • HVN-ISP (New Haven, CT and Islip/Long Island, NY)
  • HPN-ISP (White Plains, NY and Islip/Long Island, NY)
  • OAK-SFO (Oakland and San Francisco)
  • OAK-SJC (Oakland and San Jose)
  • SFO-SJC (San Francisco and San Jose)

Co-terminals are really useful for finding award space, but they also often work for paid fares. Suppose there is a really great sale fare, but it’s sold out for the dates you’re checking. Before you give up and pay a higher fare, check whether a co-terminal is available. If a fare is sold out to New York JFK, try Newark, LaGuardia, Islip, New Haven or White Plains. You might find that there is still availability to smaller and less popular airports.

Co-terminals also exist outside of the United States. For example, Heathrow and Gatwick airports in London and Narita and Haneda airports in Tokyo are considered co-terminals by most airlines. If there is more than one airport in the city where you are visiting, it’s worth checking whether a nearby airport might qualify as a co-terminal and including it in your searches.

Is there ever a time you shouldn’t use a co-terminal? Remember that there can be considerable distance between the primary airport in a given city and its co-terminals, and public transportation may not be readily available. For example, even though Ontario and Burbank airports are co-terminals, they are 52 miles apart! In LA traffic, this can be a 3 hour journey. Look at a map and figure out ground transportation before using an unfamiliar co-terminal, or you could be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Free Flights Via Canada

Frequent flier miles are relatively easy to get, but they are pretty hard to use unless you’re going to Alaska in the winter or Phoenix in the summer. Availability is very limited, particularly to places where a lot of people travel and during peak travel times. After all, if airlines can sell the seats, they don’t have much incentive to give them away for free. As someone who likes to travel to nice places during peak times, it can be challenging to find free flights. It’s not impossible though, if you have a little creativity.

“I can get you to Costa Rica,” said the US Airways Dividend Miles agent, “but I can’t get you back to Seattle. I’m just not finding anything.” I wasn’t surprised. I was signed up for a 4 month academic exchange at the top business school in Latin America, and I didn’t want to pay for an expensive ticket to Costa Rica. I would be leaving from Seattle, flying to San Jose, and then returning two days before Christmas.

You can almost never find frequent flier ticket availability around Christmas. Not even if you call 330 days in advance (when most airlines open up seats for the next year). It’s next to impossible. Still, I went through the motions. “Are you OK for time?” I asked. With the agent answering in the affirmative, I asked “OK, can we try to find the flights one by one? Let’s see where I can get from San Jose, and then let’s see if we can find a way to Seattle from there. I’m really flexible, I just want to be home for Christmas. I have only seen my family once this year. I’m sure you can understand.”

US Airways telephone agents are pretty friendly and most of them I have spoken to genuinely want to help you get where you’re going. The company more or less gives them the latitude to help people, because everyone using them is paying a booking fee so the service is paid for. However, most of the agents formerly worked for America West, a fairly small airline based in Phoenix with few international flights, and agents are sometimes not very familiar with US Airways partners or geography. Additionally, their computer system only looks for direct routings (a very common scenario). This means a lot of potential options don’t show up.

Fortunately, I was prepared when I made the call. Before I called, I first researched the airlines I could use to get to and from Costa Rica (StarAlliance airlines at the time; note that US Airways is leaving StarAlliance 3/30/14). The following airlines had service from North America:

  • Air Canada
  • Avianca (aka LACSA and TACA)
  • Copa
  • United
  • US Airways

I also looked at the routing rules. Flights to and from Central America are not allowed to route through South America, but can route through Central America and/or North America. This meant that in order to get to and from Costa Rica, I was allowed to make any number of connections in Central America and North America necessary to get back to Seattle.

US Airways was out. No availability to Seattle via Phoenix. United was also out, no availability via Houston, Newark or Chicago. Copa could get me as far as Miami, but this isn’t a hub of any StarAlliance carrier in the US and there was no way to get to Seattle from there.

“Air Canada?” the agent said incredulously. “I’m not sure if you can do that… well, the rules say North America, I guess that includes Canada. That’s creative, but I’m not seeing any availability… hold on, wait a minute!” exclaimed the agent. “I think I may have found something!” A flurry of furious typing, a deep breath, and he said “Got it! OK, here is what I have for you,” he began to explain. “I have never heard of this airline before–LACSA? You will fly with them to Toronto with a stop in San Salvador. You’ll have to overnight in Toronto, I don’t see any way around this, I checked everything. But then I have you on a nonstop flight on Christmas Eve from Toronto to Seattle. Do you want to book it? You’ll be home for Christmas.”

Yes, I wanted to book it. I could use my Marriott points to stay overnight in an airport hotel. Later, this turned out not to be necessary, because there was a very significant schedule change in my itinerary. This is a get out of jail free card allowing an award ticket schedule change (note that this is the only reason that US Airways will change an award ticket after your trip has already started). I watched seat availability like a hawk and as soon as a seat opened up on the Toronto-Seattle flight on the 23rd, I grabbed it.

yyzTransitSure, it was a little out of the way, and I had a 6 hour layover in Toronto, but my trip took only one day and–most importantly–I flew for free and I did it during the peak Christmas travel period. All I paid was tax on a ticket that would have cost me over $1200 (via the most direct route) if I had paid cash. I just had to think outside of the box a bit. Most Americans don’t think of Avianca and Air Canada as their first choices to Central America.

Fast forward to today. I will be flying from Kunming to Los Angeles in May, using an Aadvantage award seat and flying on Cathay Pacific. I plan to attend a conference this July in New York, so I took advantage of the free one-way domestic award loophole that is available with American Airlines international itineraries. On international Aadvantage awards, American Airlines allows one stopover in the North American gateway city. If you are flying with Cathay Pacific, this means you can stop in Vancouver, San Francisco, or Los Angeles on the way to your final destination. American further allows you to use any partner airline to get to your final destination from the North American gateway city (this is different than some other airlines, which only let you fly on their own planes when you use one of their partners).

I was hoping to find a red-eye flight leaving on a Thursday night, so I wouldn’t need to spend money for a hotel on Thursday for a Friday-Sunday conference. Unfortunately, the only flight that American had available was a flight leaving at 6am, connecting in Dallas, and going to Newark. I do not like taking flights at 6 in the morning, and I do not like connecting in Dallas. However, American Airlines allows unlimited changes to Aadvantage award tickets as long as you do not change the origin or destination cities, so you can grab a flight that isn’t ideal (so you at least have something) and then tweak the itinerary if something better opens up.

Tonight, I was researching my upcoming flight with Cathay Pacific, and I noticed that they have an unusual route. Flight 888 from Hong Kong to New York stops in Vancouver, and you can actually book the segment from Vancouver to New York. “I wonder,” I thought, and after verifying that I could catch a connecting flight from Los Angeles to Vancouver on Alaska Airlines, I called in to make the change. “Cathay Pacific from Vancouver to New York? Are you sure?” the agent said. Answering in the affirmative, I could practically hear the agent’s jaw drop as he said “Well, look at that, you’re right! And yes, there is a connecting flight on Alaska Airlines. There is a difference in the taxes though, it will cost another $35.10.”

yvrTransitI was happy to pay $35.10 to avoid a 6am departure from Los Angeles and a connection in Dallas. I also expect to get a decent night’s sleep on an internationally configured Cathay Pacific flight. And I will have a few hours to enjoy a nice dinner in Vancouver and maybe even visit friends before the flight. And all of this for remembering our polite Canadian neighbors and all the excellent additional flight options that their airports can provide.