How To Evaluate Award Flight Options

Booking travel can be straightforward. Go to your preferred website, find your desired flight, and book with cash. Let’s pretend I want to go from Miami to Barcelona on October 29th in a lie-flat business class seat. I could go to the American Airlines website and find my desired flight would cost me $3,057.

Unfortunately, my budget does not allow me to buy a $3,057 flight. Without knowing about points, you would find me in the $556 economy seat. My back aches from just typing about it!

Options For Using Points

Thank goodness I know about points! Let’s look at my options for the same exact flight using points. Starting my search on PointsYeah I see that I have 3 options for the same exact flight.

Option 1: American Airlines

The first option is booking through American Airlines for 57,500 AA miles and $753 in fees. The points rate for business class seats is awesomely low, but AA miles are somewhat hard to earn because you cannot transfer points from any bank to AA.

I usually use my AA miles as a last resort, and often, when I have booked a flight with AA, I continue to look for alternate options until the day before my flight. I am not positive I want to use my AA points for the trip to Barcelona, so let’s look at other options.

Option 2: Alaska Airlines

Alaska Airlines miles are also very valuable, and only recently have they been easier to earn. Similar to American Airlines miles, you cannot transfer points from any bank to Alaska. The search results do show the ability to transfer from Amex Membership Rewards, but you need to read the fine print to learn how.

Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines are merging, and you can currently share points between the two airlines. You cannot directly transfer points to Alaska, but you can transfer Amex Membership Rewards to Hawaiian Airlines. After you transfer the Membership Reward to Hawaiian Airlines, you can then transfer the points to Alaska.

What I don’t love about the Alaska points option for this flight to Barcelona is the fee increase to $1016. Let’s continue looking.

Option 3: Qantas

The next option from PointsYeah is booking through Qantas. The good thing about this option is that I can transfer points from Amex Membership Rewards, Capital One, and/or Citi. If I did not have 90,000 points in any one account, I could combine them in my Qantas account to book this flight.

Similar to Alaska Airlines options, what I do not love about booking with Qantas points option for this flight to Barcelona is the fees increase even more to $1073. Let’s continue looking.

Option 4: British Airways

From the AA and PointsYeah search results, I can see this flight is on British Airways metal, but PointsYeah does not show point options for British Airways. I could use an aggregator that does show British Airways Avios results (Point.me), or I could just go to the British Airways website and see how many Avios I need for this flight.

I would need 122,250 British Airways Avios for this flight if I booked through British Airways. I can transfer points to British Airways from Amex, Capital One, and Chase. If the only points I had were Chase Ultimate Rewards, this would be my only points option. Although this option requires the most number of points, the fees are the lowest, at $500.

Summary Of The Options

How To Decide Between The Point Options

Everyone has opinions about how you should and should not use your points. I like to maximize the value of my points but my husband just wants to avoid paying cash, even if that means using more points. (This is why I don’t let him make our travel reservations.)

Remember, there is no right or wrong way to use your points. Choose the flight and booking option that works best for you.

Happy Travels!