Episode 12: Redeeming Your Airline Points for Cheap or First Class Travel

In this episode I am going to go over examples of how to search or travel. That you can redeem those points using the points that you have in your airline accounts. Mind you that what I'm showing you today is for those airline branded credit card points that are gone into your actual airline account. These are not for the generic bank travel credit cards with those points stay in the backside of your bank credit card account. But you do have the option to do transfer those to respective airline accounts should do so. 

Let's just get started. Pretty much I'm going to start with the three major legacy carriers and along I am showing one example of one non alliance airline. And then showing you also a foreign airline and how to use that to search for more redemption partners. 

We’ll start off with Delta. 

Delta personally isn't my favorite one to redeem much miles because the Sky Miles ratio with points to dollars isn’t really that great. However you may find some good deals on here. With Delta, you can go to the website Delta.com. It's not required to have an account to simply search for rewards but obviously you would have your own account in order to have points. 

To start you would be in the home page already by default. It will already show you book a trip area, and as you can see you can search for round trip one way multi-city. In the instance of how I searched for my round the world trip. I did all one ways. I'm going to do that as a first example. I am searching for a one way and I'm just going to arbitrarily put in New York to Paris. Usually a lot of people wonder when is a good time to find rewards. Any time that you're searching within thirty to forty five days usually the rewards might be and most likely will be gone.

If you search for two and a half months to four five months out. Then that's when availability most likely will be much more available. The past six months sometimes the awards aren’t going to be open yet just because the airlines are still waiting not really in a hurry to get rid of award seats. But then again that's just some generalizations. 

Sometimes it can fall outside of that time frame and window. Just for example let's say I was searching for an award coming up in the next three weeks, I'll search September 7th let’s see if there's any kind of award availability. For Delta they have sessions that says "Show price" in and then you would switch it from money to "Miles" and then I hit click "Find flights". 

And then let's see what Delta comes up with for September 7th 2016. And believe it or not there actually is a decent one way award that's still available that close. As you can see a nonstop flight in the evenings for redeye flights to arrive into Paris in the morning for Coach Classes, 37,500 points plus $5.60. And then if you wanted to fly in Delta Front class, it's quite a lot. 125,000 points. Really not worth the point per dollar spend on that.

The majority of these nonstop flights are operated by Delta. Going down here. There's Delta and then Air France which is there partner within Sky Team Alliance. That's pretty much how you search awards using Delta's website. 

Moving onwards with United Airlines. 

United their site is also set up similarly so that you're able to search for award travel. Again I'm going to choose the one way option. But again like I said you're more than welcome to choose roundtrip or multi-city depending on how you're going to set up your travel journey. I did use United once to book an award from Denpasar, Bali to Thailand and what I wanted to do was I knew eventually I would go back to Bangkok. But instead I wanted to visit some other place in South Thailand. I had typed in D.P.S. which is the airport code for Bali and then I typed in Krabi which is the city in the southern part of Thailand. And right here they have a chalk box for search for award travel and departure date I would just arbitrarily pick November 9th 2016. All right. As you can see there is no availability for November 9th. However as you can see in the calendar here United has kind of nicely put out. This blue bar means there is a saver award economy and then that five dotted lines means there's a saver or premium cabin.

I am going to click on November 10th and see the availability for November 10th. And out spits Saver and Standard Awards, and as you can see there is a great economy saver award only at 17,500 points plus $16.30 in taxes, and then as you can see the business saver award is 25,000 points. It's not really much of a big difference between the economy saver and business saver. I would almost more than likely want to choose the business saver award because why not sit in the front of the Thai Airways class. These airlines aren’t operated by United. 

They’re operate as you can see right here down below it all say operated by Thai Airways, and you're probably noticing while the duration of eighteen hours and ten minutes and actually this was the flight that I had chosen when I went to South Thailand. Unfortunately there was only one flight that flew from Bali to Thailand with Thai Airways that was the evening flight and I didn’t make it in time in order to have a connecting flight from Bangkok to Krabi, Thailand, at night time.

Basically I just booked a hotel near the airport just to stay overnight and then take my morning flight with the local airline from Bangkok to Krabi. But yeah the redemption rates are still wonderful. As I can see here its same as whatever I redeem back in March. That's how you search award travels with United. What you're going to find yourself doing wherever you search is that you're going to have to keep searching over and over again and if you do have flexibility that's even better because like I said when I first picked November 9th there was no award availability. But as you look at the calendar it will definitely show you other availabilities out there. Anyways so we'll move onwards.

We will go to a non-alliance airline example. 

I've got the Alaska Airline card by Bank of America. And one of the reasons why I wanted to collect Alaska Airline points was I've always wanted to fly with Emirates and they have an amazing business and first class cabin.

It was one of my dreams to just fly in a first class cabin but obviously I don't have the money to shell out and I've looked at Emirates sites what the regular price is for like a one way ticket for let's say from Dubai to New York and it's eleven thousand dollars one way. That’s quite a lot and it's the money that I don't have for now.  With Alaska again here they do by default book flights kind of screen and they also have a check box where you can click on these miles, and like I said I also searched one way as well on my flight journeys. 

Let's say that I wanted to go from Dubai, DXB is there airport code to JFK. I’ll do one way because on my around the world trip that was my last city plan on my way back. And I'm just going too arbitrarily pick again November 9th let's say and click find flights and let's see what Alaska has pulled up. As you can see you can redeem your points with these partner airlines with Emirates. They also have ones pulled up for British Airways. And if you're not sure again who Alaska is partnered up with or who you're able to redeem with.

You can always look on the site. Airline sites usually have filter results where you're able to simply filter through the different airlines that they are with and with Alaskans for instance they are partnered up with Qantas, Korean Air, KLM, Emirates, Delta, British Airways, American, Air France and so and so forth. As you can see main cabin redemption rates is 42,500 plus $60 in taxes, and then if you move on to business class it jumps up to 82,500 points and $61 in taxes and then First Class is a 150,000h points. 

Believe it or not at one time and when I had booked this a year ago, their redemption rates for all these classes were a lot lower. At the time I was able to book a first class at a redemption rate of 90,000 points for one way and adding another leg to it, I was able to do two legs with the Alaskan Airlines redemption with Emirates Airlines for just a 100,000 points. 

It's quite changed but Emirates business class is still great 82,500 points is not a bad redemption rate. And when you look below you might be thinking well oh wow like British Airways 80,000 points to fly first class from Dubai to JFK via a stopover in LHR. 

But notice this high taxes and fees $343 for a Coach, and $419 in taxes and fees for first and business class. It's because British Airways does a fuel surcharge and also the high airport tax at London Heathrow causes these taxes to be very high and it's quite exorbitant. Really it's not really worth using your Alaska Airline points redeem with British Airways because it's quite high to be paying $340 dollars in taxes just to redeem your points okay. Later on I actually explain to you that it's going to be similar when we're looking at American Airlines website and the actual British Airways website when we look at their how we find our travels on sites. As you can see this is great. 

Another tactic is like I had mentioned before if you added an extra leg to this redemption and it works only as long as you leave from the states or return from the states. I want to show you this example what I did before. I am going to change the search. It's going to be multi city instead. Instead of coming from Dubai I'm going to be coming from Barcelona which is the city that I went to before I went to Dubai and then I entered into Dubai, and then I’ll leave from Dubai and returned to J.F.K.

Let's Like I said arbitrary say November 9th for Barcelona to Dubai and then Dubai to New York. Let’s say a week later November 16th. Let's just see what they come up with. All right so there you go. As you can see remember before the redemption rate was just 45,000 points. But add only 2,500 more points and you still get a free flight between Barcelona to D.X.B. I mean you have to pay the taxes which is $87 dollars but still quite a savings. 

Instead of just simply rebooking these two flights separately with an award travel that you would have to spend perhaps 45,000 points for each of the flight legs, instead now you combine them. That is a cool tactic to try to use that may work with Alaska, with United and Delta or any of the other airline award travels. Definitely do not hesitate to kind of explore that option, and then as you can see the partner business jumped from that eighty five thousand to a hundred four thousand so just adding about twenty thousand more and then you kind of like I said have an extra free flight along there. The taxes jump a little bit more but not by much.

The taxes before was sixty seven at twenty dollars still really much worth it and using your points to get to these free flights, fun being able to fly business class in Emirates for just one hundred five thousand for two flight legs. All right so that is how I did searches with Alaska for the points that I had with them. 

Now we are going to move back to one of the last legacy carriers which is American Airlines. 

And again front page they make it easy for you to check out award redemptions. I am going to do one way, I am going to do redeem miles. I used lots of American Airline points actually to travel between Asia to Australia within Australia and Australia to Singapore and then from Thailand to Jordan and then Jordan to Greece to London to Spain, and so the airlines that I flew with them was pretty much Qantas, Royal Jordanian, British Airways and actually one little leg from Taipei to Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific.

Let's just start with that. I'm going to do one of the routes that I did which is from Bangkok to Amman which is the capital of Jordan. I'm going to like I said arbitrarily pick November 16th and remember redeem miles check this here and I did a one way search and I am going to search right now. Okay cool. American Airlines divides it up with miles, savers and the business first miles saver and they actually have one more category to the right which is this pink category. That will be the first mile saver. Now as you can see you can click on Show full calendar and it pulls up all of the redemption rates for the entire month and there's great redemption rates. It's just 25,000 points. 

If I move on to the next month more. I'm just click on December 6th and we will just check out the options that are there. You can see there's one direct flight from Bangkok to Amman on their Boeing 787 and if you switch over to the business first its 40,000 points to redeem in business class. 

If I had done let’s say click on advance search and did a multi-city, if you want to do multi city with American Airlines you will have to click on advance search. If I started in Hong Kong and went to Bangkok then Bangkok to Jordan. And I will just arbitrarily pick a random day in December, December 7th. Make sure that AA plus, AA advantage versus airlines is clicked and if you're not sure which air carriers American Airlines presents with their awards on their site then you can click here a list of participating award carriers. 

Notice that this list is actually small. Air Berlin, British Airways, Fin Air, Qantas and Royal Jordanian Airlines. And that there's more airlines that AA is partnered up with because they are part of this one world alliance. However not all one world alliance partners share their awards with each other. What you're going to have to do is you're going to have to go into other partner sites to kind to find these rewards. 

I'm going to show you guys that example when we get to the British Airways site. 

Notice that they also present awards from the other partner airlines like Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. All right so let's do the search. They have separated it. As you can see there's an economy saver here. There is a business saver here. Not much of a difference between seventeen thousand five hundred and twenty five. I'm going to the pick November 15th and then December 6th. I'll just simply pick the coach rates. All right. And then as you can see. It first calls up Hong Kong to Bangkok with World Jordanian. This is pretty much how the American Airlines or travel search is going to look like on their site. Now let's just say that you can't find. Let's say you want to find an award flight from the U.S. to Japan but you can't really find anything here because Japan Airlines is part of One World but there awards are not displayed here. 

In order to search for the award airlines on British Airway website, you do have to have an account, you can't just search on it without an account. Do signup with them to get an account or if you're going to get points with them. If you're not in this Executive Club page, make sure that you have it over in executive club and click on my Executive Club. 

And then to search there's on the left hand side it says book with Avios for money, and I am going to switch this to book with Avios on how to default and to check on flights and do one way search, and I'm just going to arbitrarily pick at the time I was searching between Hong Kong to Brisbane or Taipei to Hong Kong. I'm going to pick Taipei to Hong Kong. And I'm going to find some flights. As you can see it pulls up their partner airline Cathay Pacific and they have divided it up into three different classes’ economy, premium economy and business class. Certain dates plenty of flights from Taipei to Hong Kong and plenty of availability. If you click on them then you'll be able to see what the economy obvious points it is and as you can see for this very short flight which is just under two hours only 4,500 Avios points plus $15 in taxes and fees. Very great redemption rate.

If I click premium economy it ups it to 6,750 Avios points and if I up it one more time it's only 9,000 Avios points to fly in their business class cabin. 

I will show one more example here. I am going to go down here and click start again, and I also have done a search from Honolulu to Sydney. See if there's any availability showing up with British Airways. And there is availability just in their economy class and it pulls up as. As you can see there's an error in the system. Usually you might have to try this one or two more times but if it continues giving errors definitely contact them and they'll be able to help you out. 

I'm going to change this up and actually do a new search and do from L.A.X. to Tokyo. And see what flights would be available. British Airways gives you an option to pick up your journey with stopovers. If you want to stop over somewhere else then you can choose to, but I'll force pick No I don't need to continue with stopovers, I just want to see what these options are going to be. Alright so British Airways also can list off peak and peak hour periods for British Airways flights. I can tell that there's going to be British Airways flights here. These are expected. There is an outbound connecting so you can go from LAX, stopover in Heathrow Airport and then Heathrow to Narita, but they're showing their partner airlines first nonstop.

You can see the American Airlines nonstop flight. That's at 11:40 in the morning or Japan Airlines at 12:05 pm. I want to click on American Airlines and see what their redemption rate is going to be, there redemption rate is 25,000 Avios points for a one way journey. Not too bad, $5 in fee. Japan Airlines also 25,000 in Avios with a slightly more expensive on taxes and visa. 

Well remember what I mentioned with the British Airways fuel surcharges. Let's see how much that is right here. Look at that. 35,750 Avios points plus $577 in taxes and fees. Basically I usually rarely ever had booked flights with British Airways using trip points and I usually just book using British airways with their other airline partners.

That is pretty much what I did for one month whole month was I basically went through all these different websites and kind of just like typed in the airline routes that I wanted and kind of fisted out in terms of how many points I would have to use if I could fly coach or if I fly business or first class. And then the taxes and fees cost and play around with that. 

And for those who are just doing one ways or round trips then it's pretty quick and easy. In finding the dates for those who are doing a lot more around the world trips like I have where your kind of pricing out twenty five different flights and they can get a little bit more complicated but it's never impossible. Just take some time to do research and backwards and forwards. I really hope that this episode is kind of long but I hope it was really helpful in seeing how I was able to book these flights. 

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Do you use airline website or travel search engine to book flights?

Just comment and let me know if you guys have any questions that you want me to address. 

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If you missed, Episode 11: Understanding Airline Alliances & Partnerships Before Redeeming Points

Next, Episode 13: Finding the Worth of Your Airline Point Redemptions

Follow me @hustletoparadise to stay up to date on future episodes of Travel Hacking with Hustle to Paradise.

(Introduction photo courtesy of Omar Prestwich found on Unsplash)