Booking reward tickets can seem confusing at first, but it’s actually not too bad once you start. In order to get the best value, you’re looking for “Saver Fares.” These are the fares requiring the least mount of points.
Remember Lesson 4 about flexibility? If you want to get the most travel for your points, you need to look at whole months when booking and usually plan at least a few months in advance.
Note that often times you can book a flight on a partner airline, often for less miles than the partner actually charges!
Since living overseas, I’ve had excellent results with Singapore AIrlines. The Dubai – Australia and Dubai – Auckland routes, connecting in Singapore, offer excellent availability and service.
Singapore Airlines’ travel rewards program is known as KrisFlyer. Singapore accepts transfer points from all the major transferable point currencies: Marriott, Chase, AMEX, and Citi. This makes it really great if you have a low balance on one account to combine it with points from your other accounts.
Taxes and fees are usually low when booking a ticket through Singapore on a flight operated by Singapore. Watch out for Lufthansa operated flights booked through Singapore KrisFlyer operating in or out of Europe, the fuel surcharges and taxes can get ridiculous.
Booking Hawaiian Metal through AA
American Airline (AA) miles are incredibly easy to accrue thanks to a liberal credit card policy. Hawaiian Airlines miles are also easy to accrue, but it some cases it makes sense to book the Hawaiian operated flights through AA and save some points.
Here’s an example of Honolulu, Hawaii to Auckland, New Zealand (HNL-AKL). It’s booked through AA.com with AA points, but flown on Hawaiian Airlines.
Often the same flight in business class for 1 person round trip is only 130,000 AA points, but 160,000 Hawaiian points.
You may read online of “Hawaiian metal.” This means the fare may be booked through American, but the airplane, which is made of metal (actually composites and aluminum mostly these days) is painted with HA colors and is operated by Hawaiian.
One tool I’ve found really useful for finding award tickets is Expert Flyer. I pay the $9.99/month for the Pro version, but the free version is great to start with to understand and learn more about booking tickets.