How to book award travel

One of the best perks available to people who are enrolled in a frequent flier programme is the opportunity to spend miles on “free” travel. We put free in quotation marks because there are usually some costs associated with this travel and these differ from airline to airline. Knowing what to expect before you start saving those points can help prevent some costly surprises when it comes time to cash in on those rewards.

Generally, US Carriers have been very generous with their redemption rates, and they don’t pass on fuel surcharges and high fees to customers trying to book with miles. The three big players all have a tiered reward system offering flight rewards for fewer miles on off-peak dates and with advance purchase; than booking for flights at peak travel times and closer in to the date. United airlines is perhaps the most simple of the carriers, offering saver and standard rewards. American Airlines offers MileSAAver awards but further distinguishes between Peak and Off-Peak within this category. In addition to MileSAAver, AA offers AAnytime awards at 2 levels dubbed Level 1, and Level 2. Additionally, in times of peak demand, awards may cost more miles than at these two levels, and it is not clear when this is or how much it will be.

Both AA and United publish charts that give an indication of how much a ticket will cost beforehand. Delta does not. To find out how many miles you will need to spend in the SkyMiles programme at Delta, one needs to actually go in and make a booking. Delta is perhaps the least transparent of the three loyalty rewards programmes mentioned here.

In Europe and Canada, carriers are more often likely to add a host of fees and surcharges to reward bookings. That’s definitely not to say that all carriers do it, but major carriers such as British Airways, as well as AirFrance/KLM, and Lufthansa all add in fuel surcharges to their members’ rewards tickets. This can sometimes mean that the cost of your reward ticket ends up only being fractionally less than the cost of the full-out purchase of a ticket.