Be Flexible When Redeeming Your Airline Miles
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Redeeming credit card points and miles to pay for airline travel is a great way to get around. There are some challenges when it comes to finding flights though. You generally can't pick just any flight, on any day, to any location. Being flexible is one the best ways to redeem those points for their maximum value. Our recent flight to Poland is an excellent example of this. Keep reading to see how being adaptable will help you with your points and miles.
“Being flexible is one the best ways to redeem those points for their maximum value.”
Be Flexible
We like flying American Airlines. Their international rates are reasonable, and we can often find flights out of our small regional airport. So we usually start there. We're going to Poland in August and wanted to redeem our points for business class travel. Here are our options on July 31, with AA points in economy and business class.
Economy costs 30,000 miles, one way, with a few stops.
Business is 57,500 miles, one way, with even more layovers.
So the flight options aren't great, but the business class version is even worse than it seems because it travels through London Heathrow airport. Why is that bad? Because AA flights that stopover at LHR, pass the cost of fuel surcharges on to you. How much does that cost? Look at the checkout page below.
The flight still costs 57,500 miles but the fuel surcharge is over 600 dollars extra!
So we obviously didn't pick any of those options. How did being flexible help? Well, we adjusted our departure day to July 29th and the destination city. By doing that we found this great option to fly into Paris.
We picked this much better option, direct from DFW.
And no expensive fuel surcharges.
But we're trying to end up in Polad. Why are we flying to Paris? Because Paris is a great flight hub for Europe. Good business class flights are plentiful to Paris, and they usually avoid LHR and the fuel surcharges. Warsaw Poland is a short two-hour flight from Paris that only cost us 55 dollars each. Since we were flexible, we could bump up our departure date, spend a few days in Paris and then continue on to Poland very cheaply.
Flights to almost anywhere within Europe, are cheap and plentiful from Paris.
“Since we were flexible, we could bump up our departure date, spend a few days in Paris and then continue on to Poland very cheaply.”
Conclusion
We realize that not everyone can be as flexible with their plans as we can be. Jobs, kids or other travel considerations can force you to be stuck with specific travel dates. But when it comes to points and miles, being flexible is the best way to get where you're going while at the same time paying very little. Are you able to be flexible with your travel dates? Would you like us to produce more content on points and miles? Let us know below in the comments.