What’s the easiest way to book flights with miles?
36% Points with a Crew
30% Miles to Memories
34% Other
Booking award flights with miles can be straightforward if you follow a few simple steps.
Use the airline’s own website
- Search and book directly on the carrier’s site using your miles, which usually gives the best value and avoids extra fees.
- For airlines in an alliance, you can also search on a partner’s site (e.g., British Airways for Cathay Pacific) to see more availability.
- If online partner bookings aren’t supported, you can complete the reservation by phone, just watch for any processing fees that may apply.
Book for someone else
- Many programs (Air Canada, Air France, Alaska, American, Delta, etc.) let you enter another traveler’s name during the booking process, so you can use your miles without paying to share points.
- Log into your mileage account, start the reservation, and replace the passenger name with the intended traveler’s details; no extra fees are typically charged.
Avoid common pitfalls
- Do not try to convert miles to cash, gift cards, or merchandise, as this usually provides poor value.
- Stick to redeeming miles for award tickets on the airline or its alliance partners rather than using third‑party transfer options, which are rarely advantageous.
The easy foreign airline frequent flyer programs you should be using
On Monday, I published a post arguing that a popular transferable currency is relying too much on a single domestic hotel transfer partner. In the spirited response in the comments, a few people mentioned valuing familiar domestic frequent flyer miles over foreign programs. It was implied by some that domestic programs like United MileagePlus are easy to use and that foreign programs involve difficult hoops to jump through. While there certainly are some foreign carriers that make redemptions particularly challenging (which I’d argue isn’t always a bad thing as the sweet spots that require more effort are often more available!),
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