Award Travel
I know all too well the frustration that occurs when wanting to book award flights. Where do I start? How do I know which points and miles to use? What airline program has the best redemption? These are many of the questions that I had when starting out.
For today’s post, I’m going to pull back the curtain by showing you how to put an itinerary together. The steps are straightforward and will make your booking process more efficient. Hopefully this framework will work well for your next trip!
Transferable Points
I have recently focused my strategy by only accumulating transferable points. Why? Because I value being able transfer my points, that convert into airline miles, to the airline with the best redemption. Airlines are continually devaluing their award programs meaning more airline miles will be required for award travel.
Echoing what The Points Guy shared in his recent credit card inventory article, I recommend earning points across multiple transferable programs. Transferable points give you flexibility. This strategy works well when you are starting out.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is my go-to starting place. Why Wikipedia? The site lists every airport, that I am aware of, along with Airlines and Destinations serving each airport. This information is extremely helpful.
I’ll start with a recent example of the flights I booked to Italy. I started out by googling “largest airports italy” and clicked on the Wikipedia page at the top of the google search page. The Wikipedia page for that search yielded the airports I was looking for.
With the list of airports in hand, I clicked on the 5 largest airports by Total Passengers to see which airlines fly non-stop to the US. For example, when you click on Rome Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport (FCO) and click “Airlines and Destinations” in the “Content” section on the left, the page will bring you to the airlines servicing the airport.
I will then scroll through the list of destinations to see if any US airports make the list. The first airline providing non-stop service to the US is Alitalia. Alitalia flies non-stop to Boston, Miami, New York and Chicago (seasonal). I’ll do this for every airline and every airport that has non-stop flights from Italy to the US.
Award Hacker
Award Hacker was not a resource I was familiar with until last year. This tool searches for the best point redemption programs based on a number of inputs. The inputs include Departing and Arriving Airport, Route Type, Cabin Type, Number of Stops, Frequent Flyer Program and Off-Peak Award.
Using our Italy example, I keyed in JFK (New York) in the Departing and VCE (Venice) in the Arriving Airport slot. I followed that by selecting Round-Trip for Route Type, Business for Cabin Type, Non-Stop for Number of Stops and left the remaining inputs blank.
The Award Hacker results page from that search yielded three options. Option 1 shows Korean Air requires 80,000 Korean Air miles to fly non-stop from JFK-VCE on a Delta operated flight using Transferable Points from UR (Chase Ultimate Rewards) and SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest). Option 2 shows Air France (Flying Blue is the Air France program) requires 125,000 Flying Blue miles to fly non-stop from JFK-VCE on a Delta operated flight using Transferable Points from MR (American Express Membership Rewards, UR, TYP (Citi ThankYou Points) and SPG. The third option shows Delta requires 140,000 Delta miles to fly non-stop from JFK-VCE on a Delta operated flight using Transferable Points from MR and SPG.
If you’re still with me, prepare to have your mind blown. Korean Air charges 80,000 Korean Air miles to fly the exact same Delta operated flight that Delta charges 140,000 Delta SkyMiles for. This is exactly why I recommend collecting transferable points. If you only had Delta SkyMiles, you would pay a 60,000 mile premium to use SkyMiles instead of Korean Air miles.
Using Award Hacker before or after a google search is a personal preference. I like knowing what programs to have on my radar before a google search. For the Italy example, I searched “best points and miles italy” and the results page lists the blog posts related to this topic.
When you read through the posts, a pattern will start to emerge. The recurring theme of programs and redemptions to use should match the results you find when using Award Hacker. For me, a google search confirms that I am on the right track.
Now that I know Korean Air has the lowest non-stop business class redemption, I google “how to use korean air miles on delta”. The results page will show me exactly how to transfer my points, how to search for an award ticket, what fees will I need to pay, etc.
Award Search
Korean Air is an airline partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards. This means that when I earn Ultimate Rewards points, from credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve, I can transfer those points directly to Korean Air. After the transfer occurs, the Ultimate Rewards points become Korean Air miles. Ultimate Rewards points transfer to Korean Air miles instantaneously at a 1:1 ratio (ie. 10 URS = 10 Korean Air miles).
Another important point to remember is airline alliances. Korean Air is a member of the SkyTeam alliance. Delta is also a member of the SkyTeam alliance. This is the reason Korean Air miles (Ultimate Rewards) can be used to fly Delta. The miles with one airline can be used to fly any other airline in that alliance. Separately, airlines also have partnerships with airlines outside of their alliance. Booking flights with airlines outside of an alliance typically requires a phone call to book a ticket.
Flying Delta using Korean Air miles requires you to find saver level award availability on Delta first. When you find the lowest level award on Delta, search for the flight on Korean Air. Richard Kerr, founder of the Award Travel 101 Facebook Group, covers the best websites for searching SkyTeam availability in this article. He is a wizard using points and miles and I can’t recommend enough any content that writes.
Conclusion
When I was new to points and miles, it felt like drinking from a firehouse. There’s the earning side with credit cards, flying airlines and hotel stays and the redeeming side with loyalty programs. The intricacies and complexities of each program can make the process challenging.
Was this article informative? Is there another area within the points and miles space that you’d like to see covered? If yes, please let me know in the comments or by sending me an email pointswithq@gmail.com.
Thanks for stopping by!
