Fly from Los Angeles to Nairobi, Kenya for $866 round-trip, including all taxes, on Turkish Airlines. This fare is available for travel on select dates in fall, from October through December.

Tickets require a Saturday night minimum stay.

See our Fare Details for booking info.

Fly from DC to Sacramento for $240 round-trip, including all taxes, on Southwest Airlines. Travel from late August and onward. This fare is valid for travel 7 days a week. Tickets require a 14-day advance purchase. No minimum stay.

See our fare details for booking info.

Another gem from Turkish Airlines, this one for summer travel from the West Coast. Fly from Los Angeles to Munich for $637 round-trip, including all taxes. Available for Tuesday/Wednesday travel on select dates. Fares slightly higher in mid-August. This is a hidden fare, meaning you'll have to select higher fares from the calendar to reveal the lower fare on the following page. Sneaky!

See our Fare Details for booking info.

Another one from Turkish Airlines! Fly from Chicago to Rome for $743 round-trip, including all taxes. This fare is available on select dates in October. Slightly higher fares available for travel in September.

For booking info, see our Fare Details.

Starting May 27, look for Alaska's nonstop seasonal service from both Seattle and Los Angeles to Sun Valley. Service runs through Labor Day. Special intro fares available for travel Mondays through Thursdays, as well as Saturdays, from May 30 through September 11. Tickets require a 21-day advance purchase. Seats are limited and may not be available on all flights.

Los Angeles to Sun Valley $258 round-trip, incl. all taxes

Transfer your Amex Membership Rewards into your Delta SkyMiles account and earn a 50% mileage bonus! This offer is good for first-time transfers only, through May 31. For those transferring 50,000 points or more, you'll receive an additional 25,000 Medallion Qualification Miles. That's enough to earn Mediallion status and all its perks - preferred seating, unlimited upgrades, and waived baggage fees.

So many of Delta's flights require higher mile spends than the average minimum, and this is an great way of getting around that! Not a SkyMiles member? No problemo! Enroll now and enter your SkyMiles number here.

Fly from Chicago to Istanbul for $505 round-trip, nonstop, including all taxes, as part of a sale from Turkish Airlines. This fare is valid 7 days a week, from October through February, with exception to peak holiday blackout dates.

For booking info, see our Fare Details page.

Fly from Providence to Raleigh for $169 round-trip, nonstop, including all taxes on Delta Airlines. This fare is valid for travel 7 days a week, with a 330-day travel period. Tickets require a 14-day advance purchase. Available from late August and onward. Some itineraries may require a connection.

For booking info, see our Fare Details.

By Ramsey Qubein

Special to Airfarewatchdog.com

Are you finding it hard to use your Delta Sky Miles? You're not alone. Some frequent flyers refer to SkyMiles as "SkyPesos" because they continue to lose value. Also frustrating to frequent flyers, Delta's relatively new three-tiered program of Low, Medium, and High does not list all of the "Low" award options during a search.

Low awards are the lowest price mileage award ticket. Medium awards (the most common on Delta's online availability calendar) charge a premium in miles, but are available on almost every flight, making them popular for people who want to travel at specific times. High awards are the most expensive, but are available for every seat even if a flight is almost sold out. So if you really have to be somewhere and want to use miles, the High award is sometimes the only option.

What Delta.com does during an award search is price out the cheapest options. Problems arise when connecting flights have different availability (the Low award is available on the first flight from Orlando to Atlanta, for example, but only High awards are available on the connecting flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles). The web site prices the mileage needed according to the higher award. All of a sudden, that ticket you thought was going to "cost" 25,000 miles from Orlando to Los Angeles is now 80,000 miles! That's because Delta.com prices it according to the highest availability. If you have the patience to play around with it, or have flexible travel plans, you can still find decent award availability.

While Delta's IT professionals are working out kinks to make the site easier to use, travelers should be careful to not waste their miles unnecessarily on "High" awards. There are much better uses for your Delta miles.

Delta has a partnership with V Australia (part of Richard Branson's Virgin group) offering some of the best award availability to Australia from the West Coast. V Australia flies nonstop to Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney from LAX, and award seats using Delta miles are easier to find on V Australia than on Delta's nonstop to Sydney. The cost is 150,000 SkyMiles for Business Class and 100,000 for Economy Class.

Or put your miles towards a trip to Tahiti on either Air Tahiti Nui or Air France, both of which offer nonstop flights from the West Coast. No other airline alliance offers two convenient methods of heading to French Polynesia. To find availability on these awards, you have to call Delta's reservations line. The cost is 150,000 SkyMiles for Business Class, and 100,000 for Economy Class.

A third valuable use of SkyMiles is an intra-Asia award ticket. While the value has diminished from past years, there are still decent awards within North Asia. North Asia includes China, Japan, and South Korea. For example, roundtrip flights between Japan and Korea are 15,000 miles in Economy Class and 30,000 in Business Class. Short-haul routes within China (less than 800km) are 12,000 miles in Economy and 15,000 miles in Business Class. Longer intra-China flights tack on more miles and diminish the value although this always depends on the actual cash cost of the ticket you are considering.

By Tim Winship
Special to Airfarewatchdog.com

Sometimes, the best "secret" is hiding in plain sight.

That's the case when it comes to the tricky business of redeeming frequent flyer miles.

The airlines have done a masterful job of training travelers to make their bookings online.  And for paid tickets, that works fine.  But when redeeming frequent flyer miles for free tickets, the airlines' booking applications often show no award seats available for your chosen route on your preferred dates of travel.  At that point, many would-be travelers just give up and opt to either buy a ticket or stay home.

The alternative: Pick up the phone and call the airline's reservations center.  A reservations agent can often successfully book an award trip that couldn't be booked on the carrier's website, using alternative routings or a mix of airlines to circumvent capacity bottlenecks.  Or they can sometimes exercise their authority to bypass capacity restrictions that limit award availability.  Res agents have the expertise and tools to do what you cannot do.

If the agent is successful in making the booking, you'll pay a service charge, typically $20.  It's a small price to pay if it makes the difference between getting where you're going and staying home.

Are you finding it harder to use your miles?

More award booking tips here.