Find Flights for Me Recap: Week ending 3/29/26

As the conflict with Iran continues, there’s been widespread fallout in the aviation industry. In addition to major flight disruptions, route changes, and cancellations, the cost of energy has skyrocketed in the last month. I would personally try to avoid flying through the region if possible until there is more visibility on the situation.

Airlines are extending their cancellation policies for flights in the region or just straight up cancelling flights to the region. Lufthansa has cancelled flights to certain cities through October 24 (Abu Dhabi, Amman, Beirut, Muscat, Riyadh, to name a few); Delta cancelling flights to Tel Aviv through September; and United adding a flexible policy and likely cancelling a lot of flights to Dubai and Tel Aviv through mid-June. The Israeli Government is also limiting TLV to 1 departure per hour with a maximum of 50 passengers. Not a comforting message. Either it’s safe to fly or it’s not… Anyways, these all point to no positive sign for an ending of the conflict in the near-term.

The Middle Eastern-based airlines are especially hurting and their flight count is still down meaningfully vs. February 27 (day before the conflict started).

Ever wonder why booking the same award flight on one program might cost $5.60 in tax/fees on one program or $1,000+ on another?

It’s because many airlines and their award programs will add their own fees in the form of “fuel surcharges” or “carrier-imposed charges” when booking award tickets (or for cash tickets). Some airlines review these charges on a quarterly basis and others will sporadically review them. However, with the cost of jet fuel rising over 100% since the start of the Iran conflict in late February, I would expect airlines, especially ones already imposing surcharges, to raise their charges off-cycle given the situation. Here’s a Redditor giving us a history lesson (with a touch of AI), and it hints at a grim near-term potential for fees.

Cathay already announced their plan to raise fuel surcharges twice, and another Redditor and Thrifty Traveler also noticed that Air France/KLM’s program Flying Blue raised fuel surcharges as well ($100+ each way for business class awards). Expect more airlines to follow suit at any point. So if you are on the fence on booking an award flight and can deal with the airline’s change/cancel policy, it would be better to book now and figure it out later before the costs go up.

Which airlines have surcharges for awards?
A very non-definitive list but these airlines have surcharges on their award flights when booking through their own program. It gets a bit tricky to track booking awards through partners as it is widely variable.

1) Air France/KLM
2) ANA
3) British Airways
4) Cathay Pacific
5) Emirates
6) Japan Airlines
7) Lufthansa Group (Austrian, Lufthansa, Swiss, etc.)
8) Qatar Airways
9) Singapore Airlines
10) Virgin Atlantic

Earlier this week, it appeared that you could book 2 or more JAL first class award flights on Alaska with availability nearly every day. Even on the flashy and fancy new A350s and for only 110k Alaska points each way. However, this was too good to be true and if you made it to the final checkout page and tried to pay, you would get hit with an error message.

That award flight never really existed, even though you saw it with your eyes. A phantom award flight. Like a ghost.

What causes this issue and how can you avoid it?
Airline IT infrastructure apparently is still run on technology infrastructure built as early in the 1970s. With how complex the global travel ecosystem has become with global airline alliances, there are times when the signals get mixed and you’ll see on the front-end award availability that doesn’t exist.

So how can you generally avoid phantom flights? Before transferring your hard-earned points and not being able to reverse the transfer, you’ll probably want to do this if you think the flight you found is a phantom award. 1) Check to see if the same award flight is available on other partners. (Is that JAL first class available on AA, Alaska, and BA?). 2) Tests the award booking beforehand, by clicking to see if you can even book it without getting an error (doesn’t work with Alaska Airlines as you need to click all the way and pay before you know). 3) Call the airline you plan to book with to confirm availability before transferring points.

Common phantom flights
1) Swiss business class flights on United
2) JAL business and first class flights on American or Alaska
3) Delta One flights on Air France/KLM

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United Airlines has been in the news a lot in the last month with new seating improvements. United already highlighted new Polaris seats last year and the configuration will start flying on April 22 on the SFO-SIN route. United, taking a page out of Air New Zealand’s offering, will offer SkyCouch Relax Row, a way to lie-flat in economy. This is expected to launch sometime in 2027.

ANA also recently showcased their previously announced cabin configuration for their 787-9s at an in-person event. This includes a new business class called The Room FX. OMAAT previously indicated ANA would hope to launch these in August 2026.

If you can position to Toronto this summer, you can snag a round-trip flight between Toronto (YYZ) and Rome (FCO) for around $1,650 round-trip per person on ITA business class. There is also a slightly higher but potentially worthwhile cost (saves on trains) by booking a multi-city booking so you can fly into Rome and out of another city.

These flights are on ITA’s A330 neo in a 1-2-1 layout. Review here from Luxury Travel Expert.

Availability for the ~$1,650 R/T flights start in early to mid-July through mid-August. You can also book for ~$2,000 in April to May.

Seat selection starts at $175 CAD (~$125 USD).

Tip: Need time to think about if you can go on the trip, book a fare lock for ~$22 CAD (~$16 USD) to hold the fare for 48 hours.

How to book
Search for flights on Google Flights

1) On Google Flights, put in dates and destinations (YYZ to FCO)

2) Click on the calendar view and choose your trip length. Some flexibility in trip length can help lower the price to the ~$1,650 R/T price

3) Get creative and use Google Flights multi-city booking and you can fly into Venice (with connection in FCO) and fly back from FCO to YYZ for ~$1,800 R/T.

4) Book the flight directly with ITA. Boom

Other tips

When you book a cash ticket, you can earn points and status towards a loyalty program, depending on the fare class. This is a business light fare which is a “P” fare class, according to ITA Matrix. However, ITA is moving into the Lufthansa Miles & More program on April 1 so the earn and credit rates are likely to change. I like to use the site Where to Credit to figure out which program to credit my one-off cash flights towards.

Need help finding deals? (affiliate link)
Check out seats.aero, a search engine for all things award travel. View award availability for flights for the next 60 days for free. Subscribing unlocks a full year of availability and helps you get the edge over others. You can also set alerts, get access to an invite-only Discord community, and find hotel award availability.