A few weeks ago, I shared some tips for earning frequent flier miles. Next up is how to use these frequent flier miles to actually fly for free (also known as “award travel”). It is absolutely true that earning miles is only half the battle. You can accumulate miles forever and ever, but actually using them is an entirely different issue with its own complexities.
1. Work the dates. This one is pretty basic. Airlines can’t be flying around planes full of non-paying passengers, so they place limits on when and where you can fly using miles. During peak times, which are the times when people most want to fly and airlines are able to charge the most, airlines limit the number of “award seats” available on the plane. For a flight around the holidays, there may only be one or two seats for which you can use miles.
It is to your advantage to book using miles as soon as the flights become available. This timing varies by airline. For example, United Airlines first releases these seats 330 days in advance. You can call your airline to find out when they will release the seats. Booking far in advance is not only beneficial for getting a seat; advance bookings are also good for using the fewest miles possible. Wait, what?
2. Know the mileage tiers. Destinations are usually grouped by geographic region. If you book early using miles, you can go roundtrip to Europe for around 60,000 miles, within the US for around 20,000 miles or all the way to Australia for 80,000 miles. These numbers represent the fewest possible award miles you will be able to use to get to your destination and back to the US in Coach class. Once these tiers are booked up (this is called a “Saver Award” on United Airlines — see below), the airline starts booking the next tier up. Now Europe will cost you 110,000 miles and a ticket to a city within the US is now going to cost you 50,000 miles. These are “Standard” rates (see below), also known as “You’re getting screwed”.
The number of tiers varies by airline, as well as the tiers themselves. These tiers exist for all classes, too. So, if you book a business class ticket very early, you may end up using fewer miles than someone who books a coach ticket closer to the departure date. I booked a roundtrip business class ticket to South Africa exactly 330 days prior to my trip and I used 120,000 miles. That same ticket in coach could have cost me 160,000 if I had waited to book.
3. Get Creative. If you want to use frequent flier miles to book, you have to be willing to compromise. After all, you’re getting a free ticket! This may require you to have a layover in an unexpected city. For example, when we booked our honeymoon, we wanted to fly to Dubai from New York to meet our cruise ship, and then we wanted to return from the Seychelles back to New York at the end of our cruise. We had the following issues:
- There were no direct flights to Dubai using award miles.
- There were no flights from Seychelles to New York. As in, the airline did not fly this route at all.
Well, this itinerary is a little complicated for using award miles and thus we had to make some compromises and change some plans. When using award miles, it is often easier to book a round trip ticket. So, on our way home, we ended up paying for a flight from the Seychelles back to Dubai (stopping in Doha, Qatar for 12 hours), and we would then fly home from there. We decided on this option so that we could simplify the process by booking a round trip award ticket to Dubai. We also ended up with a layover in Frankfort on our way to Dubai and a layover in Vienna on our way back to New York. We didn’t mind at all because we had gotten such a great deal! Actually, we made a day out of our layover in Frankfurt.
4. Get even More Creative – Change your Destination. I don’t mean change your vacation, but rather, change how you get there. Think outside of the “airline route map” box. If you’re American, you probably have all of your miles on United’s Mileage Plus (for Star Alliance), American’s AAdvantage (OneWorld Alliance) or Delta’s SkyMiles (SkyTeam Alliance). So what if you are booking a ticket to a city where these airlines don’t fly? Use the following (real) scenario, taken from booking our trip to India this coming February:
Facts: We want to go to Goa, India and Kathmandu, Nepal for one week total in February. Our dates are not flexible, because we need to be in Goa for a wedding on specific date. Both Dave and I have enough miles to fly round trip for free. Go!
First off, the logistics of getting to Goa were impossible. It is a small city and practically no large airlines fly there. So, we immediately realized that we need to be looking for flights to Mumbai or Delhi. We could then fly from there to Goa on a discount Indian airline. We also realized that it would also be impossible to get an award ticket home to New York from Kathmandu, Nepal. We then began playing with all possible options flying from New York to Mumbai or Delhi, and then home from either of those cities. We could then take care of all internal flights on our own, once we got the flight to India for free using our frequent flier miles. We began exploring both Lufthansa, which flies New York to Mumbai via Munich, Germany, and also Turkish, which flies Delhi to New York via Istanbul, Turkey.
In the end, we are flying New York to Munich on Continental Airlines and Munich to Mumbai on Lufthansa. We then fly Mumbai to Goa on Jet Airways. To get to Kathmandu, we fly Goa to Mumbai then Mumbai to Kathmandu. We return to New York by first flying from Kathmandu to Delhi on Jet Airways, Delhi to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines, then Istanbul to New York also on Turkish Airlines. Phew! $560 per person for all of these flights. Oh, and Jet Airways is in Star Alliance, so we earn miles on all flights we paid for.
So how did we actually book this crazy itinerary? The next tip is the most important of them all…
5. Call, Call, Call. If you try to book award travel through the airline’s website, you are not going to see options like we created for our India trip above. These itineraries are too complex, involve multiple partners and are frankly too much for a computer system to handle. You need a real person. Yes, you’re going to have to pick up the phone and call a representative. It’s going to be terrible, yes. You are probably going to have to call more than once. You will get a representative who will have no idea what he or she is doing. They will make up complete lies and fictional airline policies. Thank them and hang up. Call back and hope for someone better.
The best advice for all of this nonsense is to be aware of all of your options. This means finding possible flights on kayak.com then calling to see if those specific flights are available. Research airline routing on wikipedia. See if flying to other, nearby cities is an option. My husband once tried to use his Delta miles for a trip to Turkey. Delta could get him to Istanbul for free, but there was no availability for his return flight back to New York. Well, turns out he and his friends also wouldn’t mind hanging out in Moscow for a day and award tickets were available for him and his two friends to fly on Aeroflot (a Delta partner) from Istanbul to New York via Moscow. So, they flew to Moscow, hung out for the day, and jumped on their connecting flight back home to New York. Zero dollars spent and a bonus day in Russia. Score.
Airlines miles are fantastic thing. They have taken me, or will take me, to Germany, Czech Republic, Croatia, Dubai, Brazil, India and South Africa…not to mention domestic flights to Puerto Rico, San Francisco and Buffalo, NY. If you have any other tips for booking award travel I’d love to hear them! I’d also love to hear your success stories!
Great tips! Especially the part about getting on the phone… pretty much the only way I’ve ever been able to book award tickets.
Definitely. The best part is that you get to call like 4 times – awesomely efficient.