We've talked a lot about how to earn points - basic info and lingo, where to start, best beginner cards, elevated card sign up offers, travel partners (Chase, Amex, and Capital One), how to transfer points from the bank to a partner hotel or airlines as well as my personal rules of thumb for how many points you should expect to spend on a hotel or flight booking.
However, the time consuming part of using points can often be figuring out how to redeem them. There are many variables (and rabbit holes) to consider, especially compared to using points for hotels. Knowing how to search for award (points) flights, and what a "good" points price is, is a fundamental skill to maximize your points travel.
This post will take a deep dive into how we actually search for flights to book with points and walk you through the process I generally follow. I warn you in advance, this post is looooong, because I want you to know and understand all of the details so that you can repeat the process by yourself. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via Instagram @justcallmehaha or email: justcallmehaha@gmail.com
More curious about using points to book hotels?
This post covers the process!
Finding and Booking Flights with Points
Before going into detail, the general steps for searching and booking flights with points I follow are:
- Determine Wants and Needs
- Look up Routes/Airlines
- Search for Flights
- Verify Award Flights Exist
- Transfer Points and Book
These may seem obvious, but as with life, there are many different ways to come to the same results. My process varies a little, depending mostly on Item 1.
Step 1. Determine Wants and NeedsThe more flexible you are with your wants and needs, the greater the chances of you finding award flights, often at the best price.
To increase flexibility, consider the following:
- Travel dates: do you have to fly in/out on a certain day? Or can you put some wiggle room in your itinerary; adding a day or two to your trip? Or even considering a less popular time of the year to travel?
- Airports: generally it's ideal to fly direct whenever possible; but are you willing to consider flying from your home airport to another airport before a long haul flight to get a better price? (This is called "repositioning"). Are you willing to take a direct flight from your home airport to Europe and then take a quick/cheap flight to your final destination?
- Seat Class: is a business flight your priority? Or getting there as quick and cheap as possible?
- Number of Seats: Award seats can be limited. Are you willing to break up your group and seat some in business and some in economy? Or would you rather fly in pairs on different flights to get better seats or pricing and meet at your destination?
- BOOK ONE WAY flights! I know, this is *not* what you usually hear. There's been recent news how one-way cash flights are more expensive than booking roundtrip; however in the world of points and miles - booking one-way flights increases flexibility and therefore your odds of finding better priced award flights. Points flights generally do not cost more when comparing one way verse round trip. (It often nearly impossible to find great points pricing roundtrip for international flights).
In addition, your Needs will also be dictated by how many points you have and which airlines you can use those points to book with. Take inventory of your points with each bank and each airline.
Keep in mind, all banks have airlines and hotels they partner with, and while there is some overlap (such as Air Canada and Flying Blue), sometimes the only way you can book a specific flight is if you book through an
airline alliance. Of course, the easiest way is to have enough points available with a bank to transfer to a given airline to book directly; but often times, you may be able to book flights for less points if you book on an airline's alliance partner. This is why point diversification is SO important! And why my
top 3 beginner cards list spans across multiple banks!
For example, Chase is the only bank who transfers to United; but if you don't have enough Chase points to book a United flight; can you find that same flight on other Star Alliance partners, like Air Canada? Then you can transfer Amex or Capital One points to Air Canada to book your United flight.
I'll talk about airline alliances more below.
Step 2. Look up routes/airlines flying
If I know where I want to go, the first place I start to research is
Flight Connections. I know lot of other people who use Google flights - which can provide some of the same information: it will tell you what airlines fly where and the cash price for a given date. I prefer Flight Connections and I'll explain here what information I'm looking for and how I find it. I use the free version of this website to learn which routes and which airlines are available to get to my destination.
Flight Connection color codes their routes, so you can easily determine direct flight vs stopover routes. For example, when I simple input "Denver" as my origin, you can see on the left and on the map a variety of places I can fly to.
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Direct Flights: Let's say I wanted to go to Paris, departing from Denver. Once I input Paris as my destination, on the left of the screen, it tells me that Air France is my airline option to fly Denver direct to Paris, from May to Oct.
With this information, I would then move on to Step 3 and search on Air France and Air France's alliance partner airlines websites for a points flight.
In-direct Flights: Let's say I wanted to go to Lisbon, departing from Denver. Once I input Lisbon as my destination, on the left of the screen, it tells me there are no direct flights but gives me a list of cities I can fly through. Even this information is helpful to start your flight searches - you don't want to drive yourself crazy looking for a direct flight when it doesn't exist!
If you select one of the Stopover cities, Flight Connections will then show you airline options to get from your origin to your stopover city and then your stopover city to your destination. In this example, I could fly Denver direct to Munich on United or Lufthansa and then I could fly TAP or Lufthansa to get from Munich to Lisbon.
An alternative to Flight Connections is looking up routes directly on an airport website or looking up an airport code on Wikipedia.
Step 3. Search for flights
Depending on what kind of information Flight Connections gives me and what my flexibility is, I will either start my searches directly on the airline I want to fly on and then branch out to the airline's partnership in their alliance that my points transfer to OR I will use a third-party search aggregator.
Searching Airline Websites/Apps
For the Direct Flight example above (Denver to Paris), I would search directly on Air France's website for a points flight.
For the Indirect Flight example above, I have a few options. I know that Lufthansa does not have a direct bank transfer partner. So I can't move my Chase, Amex, or Capital One points direct to Lufthansa to book. BUT, I do know that Lufthansa is in Star Alliance, along with United and Air Canada! So I could go to either United or Air Canada's website and search for award bookings for DEN > LIS and/or DEN > MUC, MUC > LIS to see what my options are
Airline Alliances
Now, as I mentioned above, there are also Airline Alliances, which are groupings of airlines that have partnered together to allow you to book one airline's flight through another airline. Why would you want to do this? Because different airlines charge different points prices and have charge differently for taxes and fees! Or maybe you have points in one bank that you want to use but you want to fly an airline who's not a direct transfer point. Lastly, maybe there's a transfer bonus in the alliance of a flight you need to book that you could take advantage
This is an entirely separate post on its own; but it is important to understand and remember when booking flights. Keep in mind - yes, this is overwhelming and a rabbit holes! It's an intermediate skill to understand how to utilize
Keep in mind different banks have different transfer partners and this is a huge reason to use Airline Alliances. You can learn more about Airline Alliances here.
Third-Party Search Aggregators
A third-party aggregator is search tool that scans through multiple airline (or hotel) loyalty programs to report out flight availability bookable with points of miles.
These sites have free versions with limitations and offer a paid subscription that allows you to filter to meet your needs and set up flight award alerts. I have used Points.Yeah for free award flight alerts. Points.me has a free version if you're an American Express card holder, Amex.Point.me - however it's results are limited to flights that you can book using only Amex points.
I personally prefer Seats. Aero and am willing to pay the $9.99/mo fee for the Pro version when I'm in search of flights. It's also easy to unsubscribe so that when I'm not in need to book point flights, I'm not paying for a service I'm not using.
Here's an example of a Seats.Aero search. From our earlier example this is Denver to Lisbon:
You'll see the "Program" whom you would book with is American and Alaskan, Now Citi Banks transfer to American, but let's say you've just started in points and you're following my
Beginner Card List. So far you only have Chase and Capital One points. We can filter "Transfer Partners" for only those banks. That way, the results you receive are actually bookable with the points you have.
In this case, we get Qantas and Turkish Air as our top results:
You may have never even heard of Qantas (an Australian based airline) and maybe you're thinking, why would I fly a Turkish airline to go from Denver to Lisbon?!
Well, for Qantas, you're not actually going to fly on Qantas. You're going to utilize an airline alliance (
learn more here), the Oneworld Alliance, of which Qantas and American Airlines are members of you. You're going to click the "i" information button at the far right in the photo above, and receive the pop-up that you are actually booking an American Airlines flight, but booking through Qantas (who is a transfer partner with Amex, Capital One and Citi Bank. In our example, we have Chase and Capital One points, so we'd look to transfer Capital One points... but first, go to Step 4. Verification)
Note the "Book via" information below:
Pro's for Using Aggregators: Time saver! Instead of search individual airline websites one by one, you can have the website do the work for you. You can filter down results to meet your needs; such as the points systems you have, maximum duration of your flight travel, etc. These websites do the legwork for you, of searching through airlines and airline alliances, to identify the cheapest airline to book a flight with.
Con's for Aggregators: They are not always accurate! The data on their websites may not have refreshed and flights availability may not exist.... which takes us to the next step of Award Flight Searches
Step 4. Verify award flights exist
Before you move ANY points, you should do a "mock" booking to verify that what you want to book exists and that you know the exact points and cash price.
Go to the airline website that you want to book on, do a search for your exact dates, number of people, departure and origin cities, as well as seat class.
This not only ensures that the flight is still bookable ("phantom flights" are known to appear in aggregator results, where a flight is shown but the availability to book does not actually exist); but this also ensures that you know exactly how many points you need to transfer from the bank to the airline to book.
From the example above with Seats.Aero flight from Denver to Lisbon; you would log into your Qantas account and verify that the flight search results Seats.Aero provided is actually a real bookable flight.
Reminder, here's what Seats Aero told us exists:
And here's what Qantas search results yield; in this case Seats Aero was correct and we have verified the award flight exists. You can move on to Step 5!
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| Qantas Search Results |
Step 5. Transfer Points to Airline and Book Immediately!
As soon you find a flight you want to book; make the move and transfer those points!
In the example above, you'd move your bank points to Qantas and book your American Airlines flight!
Keep in mind, that points generally can only be transferred in the thousands and that once you transfer points, it's irreversible. IE - if you transfer bank points to a hotel or airline, the points are then "stuck" in the airline or hotel's program and CANNOT be moved back to the bank.
While most point transfers are instant, some can take up to a few days. Be aware of this when finding award flights you want to book. You can always google "how long to a points transfer from X-Bank to X-airline take". Some airlines will hold your flight while you wait for points to transfer and others will not. It doesn't hurt to call and ask!
When transferring points from the Bank to an airline or hotel partner, the name on the bank credit card must identically match the name on the airline or hotel account (and should also match the name on one's passport!). Because of this, you can't take your Amex points and transfer them to your Player's 2 Air Canada account.
Good to Know Tips
Here are a few more notes to consider when searching and using points to book flights.
Points Pricing Rules of Thumb: While you certainly will find flights priced higher than this, you can also find flights priced low than this amount of points also. Typically lower points costs can mean higher taxes and fees.
- Domestic flight, economy one way: 12,500 - 25,000 points
- International flight to Europe, economy, one way: 35,000-48,000 points* + taxes/fees**
- International flight to Europe, business class, one way: 65,000-80,000 points* + taxes/fees**
- International flight to Mexico, round-trip: 40,000-50,000 points + taxes/fees
*Note: being Denver-based, I use United as my basis of thought; however, you can often find much lower options if you're willing to do a positioning flight to fly out of another large hub airport. A positioning flight is a flight you take to for the sole purpose of getting to another airport to start your primary trip**International Taxes/Fees vary depending on the airport. For Europe, London Heathrow (LHR), is known to have the highest taxes/fees; often 2-3X's the cost of EU airports
Virgin Air and Flying Blue (Air France/KLM), often are cost less points for flights, but can have higher taxes and fees.
You CAN book a flight for someone else. If someone in your household has points or miles, they can book a flight for you, even if they aren't on the reservation. So in the above Transfer Points section, I say you can't take your Amex points and transfer them to your Player 2's loyalty account... but you can book a flight with your points for someone else if you need to.
Summary
As promised, this is ALOT of information, that hopefully is all valuable and will help you learn how to turn your points into nearly free travel!
If you're overwhelmed, don't worry - that's natural. Earning points can be easy, but redeeming points and understanding how to redeem to spend as little points as possible, and/or maximize your point value is a skill that comes with time and practice!
If you have points you're ready to use to book, but don't have the time or patience to go down the rabbit hole of possibilities that is award flights, I'm happy to do the work for you! Check out my award booking intake form!
More curious about using points to book hotels? This post covers the process!
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Looking for more information on points/miles? You can find all of my points talk posts linked here.
Curious what cards I (and/or my husband) have, and why? Read here!
