Booking Award Flights 101
Now that we are sitting on a good sized pile of points and miles, how do we use them? This is something that has taken me over 10 years to get really good at doing. There are a few ways to do it and of course, the easiest way won’t always give you the results you are looking for.
The easiest way? Go to your airline’s website, search for the flight you want to take and hope they have seats available for a reasonable amount of points. Here, I searched Washington Dulles (IAD) to London Heathrow (LHR) next week with United. I was able to find a business class seat for 80,000 points. Not bad, but there is better- you just need to know how to find it.
United has a pretty great calendar view that shows you the lowest price for each date during the week. Tip: go in and select the 30 day calendar view. Having flexible travel dates is key. You might not be able to get where you want to go on the exact date but if you go a day before or a day after you’ll generally be able to have more luck.
Tip: I typically search one way flights. There might be availability when you want to leave but not when you want to come home. If you were to search for roundtrip, it either wouldn’t come up or would show as available, but much more expensive. Another reason to search one way? You may find a flight on United with no return, but you can book with another airline. If you get lucky and find the flights you are looking for on the outbound and the return, you can always book it as a roundtrip itinerary.
Let’s say we have to get home that following Saturday. Well, United doesn’t have anything reasonable. They only thing they are showing is a flight for 157,000 miles. If you’re sitting on more miles than you know what to do with, that may be ok, but we can do better.
Luckily, there’s another carrier that flies from LHR to IAD, Virgin Atlantic. And they have a business class seat for sale for only 35,600. Don’t have Virgin Atlantic miles? No worries, they transfer 1:1 from Chase and Citi. Knowing where and when to transfer points is a game changer.
You may notice £628.91 in taxes and fees which is not ideal. That’s one downside to Virgin Atlantic as well as some other carriers, like British Airways and Emirates. They charge a pretty hefty surcharge which can be listed as a “Fuel Surcharge” which is just a way for airlines to make more money.
You can see in the fare breakdown where all the costs are going. For this business class ticket that would normally cost £6,696.91, £450 of that is a ‘Carrier-imposed surcharge’. Additionally when flying out of the UK, you also have to pay a £191 UK Air Passenger Duty. That APD is based on the distance of your flight as well as the class of service. Adding in the rest of the taxes and fees adds up to that £628.91. If your travel dates are more flexible, you could always find another airline to fly home on or if you could connect in another non-UK city, you could significantly reduce that £191 APD fee as well.
With this trip you can see how important it is to not have all your eggs (miles) in one basket (airline frequent flyer program). Would you rather pay $9,000 or 115,600 points plus $768? You know my answer.
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Next Up
We will start to learn how to book more complicated award flights. Check out Booking Award Flights 102
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