Step-by-Step Guide to Booking Award Tickets
Jump to
- 1: Decide whether it is worthwhile to even start searching for award space
- 2: Check major alliances / frequent flyer programs for availability
- 3: When you are having trouble finding award availability
- 4: Choose the best program to book the available award space
- 5: Make sure it is still worthwhile to use miles instead of cash
- 6: Transfer your credit card points (if necessary)
- 7: Finalize your reservation
TravelStrategies:*Booking award tickets/TOC
Jump to:
- 1 1: Decide whether it is worthwhile to even start searching for award space
- 2 2: Check major alliances / frequent flyer programs for availability
- 3 3: When you are having trouble finding award availability
- 4 4: Choose the best program to book the available award space
- 5 5: Make sure it is still worthwhile to use miles instead of cash
- 6 6: Transfer your credit card points (if necessary)
- 7 7: Finalize your reservation
1: Decide whether it is worthwhile to even start searching for award space
If regular airfares aren't that expensive, it usually doesn’t make sense to use your points for frequent flyer tickets. You can pay cash for your ticket and save your points for another trip. Alternatively, if you have any points that work like cash, you can use them to "pay" for a regular ticket, without any out-of-pocket expense. With less expensive tickets, it often requires fewer Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, or ThankYou points to buy the tickets through the bank's travel portal than it would to transfer them to a frequent flyer program to book award tickets.
Before you start searching for frequent flyer award space, take the time to do a quick price check and make sure it is likely to be worthwhile to use your points.
- Do a quick search on Google Flights to check the approximate cost of a ticket. Don't bother spending a lot of time trying to find the lowest possible price. You are just looking to get a sense of whether the regular price for the ticket is low enough that it doesn't make sense to use your points. However, it is worthwhile to look at the individual flight results, rather than the absolutely lowest price. Sometimes, the "lowest price" is for some flights with very undesirable times or routes or with an unwanted airline. The actual price you would wind up paying, once you picked acceptable flights, might be considerably higher.
- Then do a quick search on AwardHacker to check the approximate number of miles required for an award ticket. If you don't already have a good sense of how many miles you would need to book an award ticket to your destination, you'll need to find out. The quickest way is to do a quick search on an "Award Pricing" tool like AwardHacker (more details below). Don't count on being able to take advantage of the program that requires the absolutely fewest number of miles. Look for the number of miles associated with a cluster of the less expensive frequent flyer programs.
- For coach tickets, it often isn’t worthwhile to use your points or miles. With the rise of low-cost airlines, ticket prices have dramatically dropped to many locations. At the same time, airlines have increased the number of miles you need to book award travel. If ticket prices are low relative to the number of miles needed for an award ticket, you are usually better off holding onto your points for later, using them for hotels or other redemption options, or simply using your points to pay for the cash fare.
- For business and first-class tickets, it almost always makes sense to use your points when you can. The cash prices for these tickets are almost always high relative to the number of miles that you would typically need for an award ticket. But this advice only holds if you would willingly pay the full cash price for the premium cabin tickets.
- The minimum value per point you should look for depends on the type of points you need to use—but 1.5 cents per point is a good yardstick. We would usually wait for higher values (1.75 cents) for our Ultimate Reward points and use most airline-specific miles at lower values (1.2 cents).
- Even if a cash reservation is a better deal, you can often still use your points for a free flight. Depending on what credit card you have, you can use Ultimate Rewards points at 1.5 cents each and ThankYou points at 1 cent each to buy any ticket through Chase's or Citi's website. If you have the Business Platinum card, you can book some tickets at the equivalent of 1.54 cents per point through Amex's site. Pay for Any Ticket Using Credit Card Points, Regardless of Award Availability.
1.5 cents per point is just a recommended starting value. The true value for your cutoff should be based on a reasonable expectation of how valuable your points will be (in the foreseeable future). You don’t want to hold onto your points forever, in constant search for more valuable redemptions. But you also don’t want to use them today, when you can easily get more value for them at a later time. If you find you are never taking advantage of your points, lower the cutoff value. If you find you never have the points you need, raise the value. For more details see How Much are Points Worth? TravelStrategies:*Booking award tickets/Box
2: Check major alliances / frequent flyer programs for availability
If it looks like it might be worthwhile to use your points for an award ticket, start your award search by quickly searching the major frequent flyer programs and see if you can find available award space.
- If you want to make it easier to find award space, consider using Juicy Miles. Unlike the normal method of finding award space, Juicy Miles allows you to avoid needing to search across multiple airline websites. You just enter your origin and destination and it searches almost all the major airlines. It doesn't always find every possible award seat, but it does a "good enough" job that many people will choose not to bother with a more time-consuming approach.
- Otherwise, you'll need to search on multiple airline websites to check for space on all the award options. If you have transferable credit card points like Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards points, you can book awards on over a hundred different airlines. Each airline's website only searches its partners and often not all of those. To search for space on most of the major airlines, you'll need to search at least one website for each alliance. But if you DON'T have transferable credit card points, you only need to search the alliance where you have available points.
- If you are planning to book flights on US-based airlines with the airline's own points, you should just search directly on each airline's website. Each of the US Airlines has a good website (at least for their own flights). Since, the prices for many routes are variable, searching on the airline's own website is the only way to see all your options. You can easily check Alaska’s, American’s, Delta’s, and United’s website, and any other airline for which you have points (such as Frontier).
- If you are planning to use a partner's points for flights on American, Delta or United, you want to search on a foreign airline's website. For anyone collecting transferable reward points, booking with a foreign airline's frequent flyer program is very common. As the US airlines have moved towards dynamic pricing, it can be hard to tell, on their own site, which flights are available to partner programs. Sometimes flights that aren't available at the lowest possible award cost are still available to be booked elsewhere. The best way to be sure is to simply search directly with one of their partners.
- For international flights, you should just start searching on the best websites for finding award space (not necessarily the frequent flyer program you want to use or the airline you want to fly). For example, if you are looking for ticket to Japan, are likely to fly on American or Japan Airlines, and are expecting to use your Membership Rewards points, you wouldn't search for award space on American Airline's website or on JAL's. You would typically use British Airway's website, because it does a better job of helping you find award availability across all Oneworld airlines.
- When possible, search one direction at a time. Most frequent flyer programs allow for one-way awards. As with regular airfare searches, if you search for one direction at a time, it is much simpler to track your different flight options. You might also find award space to your destination with one program and space back with another.
- As with searching for regular airfares, make sure to try alternate dates and airports. The more flexibility you have with your travel dates, the easier it is to find award space. Maybe you can leave or return a day or two earlier or later or travel one of several different weeks.
- Make sure you are searching separately for each direction. When you are looking for award space, you should never search for round trip travel. You may need to use one program to get there and another program to get back.
- Look for availability for your long-haul flight and work from there. Award searching sites will check for space on many different combinations of flights to your destination. But they never search all your options. If you are having trouble finding space, you can try to construct your own itinerary, by combining available award space on individual flight segments. Perhaps you can find award space that travels through a more out-of-the-way connecting point, which has a longer-than-normal connection time, or that makes an additional stop. Search Segment-by-Segment to Find Hidden Award Space.
- Space might become available later. Airlines can make award space available at any time. For premium cabin seats, airlines often don’t make award space available until close to the departure date, when it is clearer that they won’t be able to sell the seats. If you can’t find tickets now, there is a good chance you might be able to find them later. If you feel you need to lock in your tickets, you can purchase regular tickets now, and then if award seats become available, book the award seats and pay any penalties to cancel the seats you purchased earlier.
- If you have transferable credit card points, you usually have the choice of booking your award ticket using several different frequent flyer programs.
- Each frequent flyer program requires a different number of miles for the same flight. The required number of miles depends on the program you are using, not the airline(s) you are flying. For example, Delta charges 45,000 miles for Delta flights to Hawaii, but Korean Airlines only charges 25,000 miles for the same flights. Each program has “sweet spots” where you can use fewer than the normal number of miles to book an award flight.
- Each frequent flyer program also has different routing rules and fees. So, the program that requires the fewest number of miles may not be the best overall deal. For example, you’ll often want to spend more points to avoid fuel surcharges, you sometimes want to spend more points to get a free stopover, take advantage of low-priced change fees, or book a less common itinerary (that is only allowed with some programs). For more details and additional options, see our guide to 2. Choose the Least Expensive Frequent Flyer Program for Your Ticket.
- At any moment of time, each credit card program may offer a bonus for transfers to one or more of their partners. For example, Membership Rewards may temporarily give you 1,300 miles for every 1,000 points you transfer to British Airways or 1,250 miles for every 1,000 points you transfer to Air France. If you can use miles from one of these programs, it will usually be your lowest cost option. The best listing of current transfer bonuses is Frequent Miler’s Current Transfer Bonuses page..
- Particularly for flights to Europe, several popular programs offer promotional rates for different routes. It can be worthwhile seeing if any of these promotional rates apply to your trip, as the promotional prices usually require the fewest points of any option. Fly to Europe Using Half the Number of Miles Using Promo Awards.
- Normally, you should take advantage of whichever program offers the lowest combination of miles and fees to book your tickets. The fastest way to get some guidance is to check AwardHacker and maybe Milez. If you have been using Juicy Miles to look for award availability, it provides good guidance about which program to use.
- Try to use less flexible points first. Miles from individual frequent flyer programs are less valuable than flexible award points, so you may want to use them first, even if you need to spend a bit more miles on your trip. Similarly, there is an advantage to using up any ThankYou points, before using your Membership Rewards or Ultimate Rewards points. We would often be willing to use extra points, if it allowed us to use some points we've built-up in a random frequent flyer program, just so that we don't need to worry about the points expiring later.
- Before you started searching, you should have had a preliminary idea of whether an award redemption is likely to be a good value. The first step of our award booking process is to compare the approximate cash price of a ticket with the likely number of miles it would take for an award ticket.
- Adjust your initial estimate based on the details of your trip. Now that you’ve finished looking, you’ll know exactly how many points and dollars are needed to book your award ticket. Maybe the available award ticket has higher fees, requires more miles, or has a more inconvenient routing than you expected. If so, switch back to a regular airline reservation and save your points for later.
- Never use your Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, or ThankYou points to book award tickets when you would be receiving less than their "base values" per point. Below these values, you can spend fewer points by using them to buy tickets through the credit card company's travel booking site, rather than converting them into frequent flyer miles. The normal "base value" is 1.5 cents for Ultimate Rewards points (if you have the Sapphire Reserve), 1 cent for ThankYou and Membership Rewards points, 1.25 cents for Membership Rewards point if you have the Schwab Platinum Card, and 1.54 cents per point if you have the Business Platinum Card. When deciding what is best, you should lower the "cash" ticket price by factoring in the value of the new frequent flyer tickets you would earn. Pay for Any Ticket Using Credit Card Points, Regardless of Award Availability.
- Once you transfer the points, you can’t transfer the back again. For example, once you transfer your Ultimate Rewards points to United airlines, you are pretty much stuck with a bunch of United miles. You can’t transfer them back to Ultimate Rewards, you can’t transfer them to one of the other Ultimate Rewards airline partners, and you can’t transfer them to another of United’s airline partners.
- Before you transfer points, make sure that the award tickets are truly available. You need to call the frequent flyer program and confirm the availability with a sales representative! You don’t want any hiccups that would cause you to transfer your points and then not be able to use them to book your tickets. When you call, be prepared to provide the representative with the information about the individual flights where you found award availability.
- When points will transfer instantly, the safest way to book is to transfer them while you are on the phone with the frequent flyer program. Call in and start booking your trip with the customer service representative. Once they make your reservation, ask them to hold on for a moment, and transfer your points using your computer or phone. When the points show up, you can continue the booking process.
- Not all transfers happen instantaneously. While most Ultimate Rewards and Membership Rewards transfers happen nearly instantaneously, that isn’t true for every airline partner and there can occasionally be delays. Most ThankYou and Marriott point transfers take days, or even weeks, to conclude. If you are not able to put your award on hold, there is some risk that the award space will disappear before the transfer is completed. If there is award space available on many different flights around the same time, the risk is low; but if award space is scarcer, the risk is high. Even if transfers happen instantaneously, it can still take a few minutes to go through the process of transferring your points and finalizing your award booking and the space can disappear. Points Transfer Times.
- For non-instantaneous transfers, try to put the reservation on hold. Some frequent flyer programs will do this. Some won’t. Sometimes the longest available hold will be long enough. Sometimes it won't. If the award seats can be placed on hold, you don’t have to worry about them disappearing between the time you called in to check and the time you can make the reservation. When you have the representative on the phone to double-check availability, ask them about holding the tickets.
- To make the actual reservation, you may need to call in. Many frequent flyer programs won't let you book partner award tickets online (at least for some partners). Some don’t even support online booking for their own award flights. Even when online booking is available, you may not be able to book a more complicated routing through the website.
Unfortunately, it costs money to use. An ongoing membership is $30 per month, but you can pay $10 to use the tool for five days. If you are able to find award space and book right away, it can be affordable to sign up for $10 each time you are planning a trip. But, if you need to periodically check to see if award inventory is opening up, the ongoing membership rate is pretty expensive. Easier Award Search Using Premium Award Searching Tools.
Since all partners generally have access to the same award space, you can choose a partner that has the best website. Some program’s websites search all or most partner airlines and other websites will only search a small number of frequent flyer airlines. You want to concentrate on the most comprehensive and convenient websites. After you find availability, you can book your award using any of the airline’s partners, not just the website you used to find it.
| American / Oneworld | Delta / SkyTeam | United / Star Alliance | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Airways | Air France | Air Canada’s Aeroplan
TravelStrategies:*Booking award tickets/Table For a quick search, use the following sites. Before you can search for award space on British Airways, you will need to be signed in as a member of their program (but you don't need any points in your account).
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