Award Booking Guides
Are you ready to use the miles & points that you’ve collected? Booking your first trip with miles is an exciting reward for taking the time to pursue this hobby!
Booking domestic flights is relatively straightforward. All you have to do is search on the airlines’ websites, and select the option to use miles. Don’t forget that it’s best to book several months in advance. You can get flights later than that, but you’ll have to be flexible. For example, you may have to leave town on a Tuesday instead of a Friday.
However, it can be more challenging to book international trips using miles & points. But I’ve put together some step-by-step guides that will make it easy! And if you want to save time, you can hire an award booking service to do the work for you.
If you really want Big Travel with Small Money, international flights are the way to go. That’s because you have the opportunity to book luxurious First Class and Business Class seats that would otherwise be very expensive!
When you’re taking long international trips, it’s best to book segment-by-segment. It’s like putting a puzzle together. And when you’ve completed it, you get an amazing trip!
Why Are International Flights Tough to Book?
1. Multiple Segments
Segments are routes the airlines fly for your trip. For example, if you want to fly to Paris, a segment might be New York to London, and then London to Paris. International flights often include multiple segments. Matching up dates and times on several segments can get complex.
2. Airlines Don’t Always Show Partner Award Seats
You can often use your miles to book flights with partner airlines. However, it can be difficult to find partner award seats. That’s because not all partner award seats show up when you search online.
For example, the American Airlines site doesn’t show Cathay Pacific award seats. But you can find Cathay Pacific partner availability on the British Airways or Japan Airlines website. And once you find award seats for your dates of travel then you have to call American Airlines to book the flight.
3. Agents
For the most part, airline booking agents aren’t motivated to help you. It doesn’t help the airline if you get the highest dollar value out of your miles. Agents have a lot of customers to help throughout the day and their goal is often just to move onto the next customer as quickly as possible.
Award Booking Guides
In these step-by-step guides, you will learn airline award booking rules, routes, partners, and how to get the most value for your miles.
- Alaska Airlines
- American Airlines
- British Airways
- Etihad Airways
- Lufthansa
- Starwood Hotels
- United Airlines
You can also check out my Ultimate Guide to AMEX Membership Rewards points for all the ways to get to Europe and India with AMEX Membership Rewards points.
Airline Award Flight Booking Links
Sometimes you have to dig through various websites to find the award booking page. Here’s a list of direct links to save you some time (some airlines may require you to log-in first):
US Airlines
- Alaska Airlines
- American Airlines
- Delta Airlines
- Frontier Airlines
- Hawaiian Airlines
- JetBlue
- Southwest Airlines
- United Airlines
- US Airways
- Virgin America
Non US Airlines
Paid Award Booking Tools
These sites charge for services that can help you book your trip like a pro.
- Award Nexus – a useful tool for searching Star Alliance and oneworld at the same time
- ExpertFlyer – search for award flights and set alerts for when award seats open up
- KVS Tool – award search software that you download onto your computer
Award Booking Services
It can take hours to book multi-segment award tickets. I enjoy this part! But not everyone does and not everyone has the time. If you need some help you can use an award booking service.
And I’ve put together a list of some award booking services & their prices.
A reader wrote about their experience with award booking services and offers 6 Tips for Using Award Booking Services.
You can use these Award Booking Guides to help turn your travel plans into a reality!
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