No one likes overpaying for flights, even when you’re paying with points and miles. But the sad reality is you could very easily make the mistake of paying 50,000 miles for a flight you could have booked another way for only 7,500 miles.
So how do you make sure you’re always booking the best award option? Here’s our three-step strategy:
1. Focus on earning transferable credit card points. These give you the flexibility to choose from a variety of loyalty programs you can move your points or miles to. If one program has higher redemption rates or has been devaluing its currency, you can just use another program instead.
Struggling to keep track of each program’s transfer partners? Bookmark this handy page for reference.
2. Research the best programs for your route. Even if you know your transfer options, different programs charge different rates for the exact same flights. So you’ll want to be sure you’re going with the best option. Here’s a perfect example of how drastically different the pricing can be between two partner programs for the same flight.
3. Check award-fare tools. These can save you time and potentially thousands of points and miles, and some are better than others. Here are some of our favorites:
If you have a set route and date in mind, Point.me is a great tool that shows you all the different redemption rates for flights on that day.
If you’re flexible on dates and routes but just want the best price and product, I’m a huge fan of Seats.aero. In seconds, it can show you the cost of every award seat in 20 popular airline loyalty programs across an entire year, and it has a ton of neat tools to find the best seats at the best prices.
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