Plan Your Next Trip With Travel Rewards Credit Cards

Most airlines begin redeeming miles for seats almost a year in advance of the flight. For example, American Airlines and Delta allow you to book a flight 331 days in advance. So, if you’re looking to cash in on travel reward credit card points, or your card’s frequent flyer miles, check for availability very early.

Airlines generally don’t provide reward seats for every flight, and some only offer a few discounted-rate seats on each flight.¹ If no rewards seats are available, you may want to consider traveling different routes or adding a stop. For example, instead of flying from San Francisco to Madrid with a single stop in New York, you may find a reward seat by traveling through Minneapolis and Amsterdam. Another strategy is to use alternate airports for departures, arrivals, or both. Calendar grids at airline websites may display routes, dates, and redemption levels at-a-glance. You may be able to change airports and criteria to avoid checking each date manually.

• Tip: The more flexible you are, the more options you’ll have to use your travel rewards credit card points.

Almost every airline has occasional reward sales, offering discounted mileage-redemption levels for flights and sometimes fare classes. Make sure you receive promotional e-mails from your favorite airlines so you know when such sales are taking place.

However, if you can find a great fare—say, a discounted business-class or first-class ticket—it’s sometimes a better deal to buy the ticket outright and accumulate the miles. The actual monetary value of a frequent flyer mile can vary widely from one airline to another, and at different times. Valuations and redemption methods are complex, but you may hear the range is typically between about 1 to 1.2 cents per mile or even 3 cents.²

• Tip: Sign up for e-mails and notifications and keep an eye out for flash sales at an airline’s web site. Follow sites that specialize in travel news, such as View from the Wing.

Combining miles and dollars can help if you don’t have enough miles for a reward ticket. It also may open up seats that aren’t available when booking only with miles.

If you’re short a few miles for the award you seek, you can buy the miles you need from the airline. However, this approach is often pricy. Unless you only need to buy a few miles for that award, or the airline offers a steep discount for the miles, it may be better to make up the difference by making a few purchases through the airline's shopping mall or its retail partners. These purchases can generate miles that appear on your account within a few days.

• Tip: Think about how you can purchase or earn a ticket in the most cost-effective manner possible.

Airlines team up in alliances that honor each other’s airline miles credit card rewards. To find out, you can use a tool such as Google Flights to slice and dice your way through airlines and routes, filtering results by alliance. You can try calling the airline’s sales department to explore routing and partners. Airline websites may not display all the partner and flight options available.

Explore transferring rewards miles or points directly to a partner airline, rather than placing them into your main airline’s frequent flyer account and then redeeming them with a partner. That approach may allow you to get the same ticket for less.

• Tip: Check out all of your alliance’s flight and travel options before redeeming.