[Bobby]

I am a travel rewards newbie and from the searches I have done, I’m not finding anything close to that. I checked on British Airways because that is highly recommended, and it seems that most of them are fixed at 1.25. Checking United and Delta is even worse at less than 1 cent per point.

I am also located in Arkansas, so I would need to fly to one of the major airports to be able to get these itineraries.

I looked at flights to Orlando, Hawaii, Europe as I would like to go to those places and my local airports don’t even show up on the award flight searches.

Am I doing something wrong or is it just really difficult to find good travel rewards flights?

[Jai]

You have to look for award availability with sites like point.me, pointsyeah, roam.me, etc, award availability are limited, a lot of people checking constantly and book right away. Often you have to look a year in advance, unless you want to wait five weeks before your trip, then you have to be flexible, it’s not guaranteed, there will be availability.

Hawaii is best booked through Singapore airlines 11,500 if there’s award availability, used to be 8K, flying with United Airlines. Orlando, just checked SW airlines, you can transfer your UR points there. You can book, then when price drop, you can change and get your points back.

Europe is best booked through Air France, usually 50K in biz class and 40K with 25% transfer bonus.

[Matthew]

Periodically Chase will offer a boost of up to 50% to certain transfer partners through there ultimate rewards portal.

Such as Marriot or Hilton or some Airlines. Just have to keep an eye out.

Sometimes booking through chase portal with pints is a bit higher.

[Amy]

Newbie here who hasn’t been able to find a good use of my points for 2 years now. There are several things I also learned about the travel points game, to get the benefits (business or first class seats) you see other people posts about:

1. You must be flexible with your time. I work a regular 9 to 5 job full-time with only 10 days of vacation a year. Most of these business class flights are offered last minute and only one-way.

2. You must live in one of the airline hubs: ATL, LAX, SFO, NYC and ORD, to get the good deals. Otherwise, you have to buy another ticket to reposition. Again, if you have limited vacation days, that means wasting your time flying.

3. You must be willing to devote a lot of time to finding that needle in a haystack, especially if you’re a newbie. I’ve spent weekends just going through each airline loyalty program site, ie, Flying Blue, KrisFlyer, Avios, with nothing to show for it.

4. It’s only worth it if you can find a good flight within the same year you opened the card, otherwise, you need to pay the annual fee which technical lowers your redemption value since it costs you more and more each year you own the CSP (Amex Gold, etc.)

[Author]

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