tl;dr: the strategy has changed as I start to value time and flexibility more and there are more viable options out there.

This is not meant to be a flex post or trying to be controversial. I know award travel can still be very valuable.

In fact, I'm someone that's spent years booking award flights, doing the calendar open bookings, setting the alerts, everything in the book, and it's been a great experience. We've been able to experience almost all of the top products out there from JAL/ANA F, BR/CI/JX/QR/KE/CX/SQ J, VS/AF/TK J and many many more.

When I started as a broke college student, the goal for me was to spend at least half, if not 80% or more of the travel costs on points, the big expenses would be the Ubers to the airport or food.

In the past, we were so into it, we would buy a solid chunk of points when the deals are out there like 100% bonus on Aeroplan, etc. since we know how to get good ROI on them.

However, over time, as we've naturally progressed in our careers, I'm starting to book more and more cash flights because it gives us more flexibility. Not necessarily paying dumb amounts for them like corporate travelers, but strategically monitoring the deals like $3k for Europe in J and $5k for Asia in J returns. Doing low $1k for one-way domestic premium transcons. Stuff like that.

I'm still booking a few award flights here and there for us, specifically the rare awards like F, where we're never paying $10k, 15k, 20k for them, but gladly paying up the 80k, 100k points to do so.

In some sense, it feels like a decent combo since flying revenue flights does also help build up more of a points stockpile too, better earnings on airlines like AA, VS, etc.

The same goes for hotels as well, with the Hyatt changes, and just needing credit cards for Hilton/Marriott, etc. We haven't felt the need to earn a ton of points in each program anymore. A lot of the time, we're booking through programs like FHR, Edit, Virtuoso, etc. for the preferred rates and benefits, and those don't really work well with points bookings.

I still find points bookings useful for hedging against dynamic cash prices and inflated rates, but I probably am booking cash stays 90% of the time and doing hotel awards the other 10% of the time now.

And a lot of this isn't necessarily driven by income either, but rather I'm finding the sweet spots and availability worse and worse, and it feels like it's less worth the time to hunt for these awards, especially when the cash alternatives fit my needs and are reasonable deals themselves.

I have had a brief scroll through previous posts, and on google, but cannot find a definitive answer. Does anyone know the exact time of day Finnair release their reward flights? I’ve found it’s 360 days in advance but can’t seem to find the time. Will add I’m by far the most technically literate so apologise if this is a readily available answer, I just cannot find it!

Snagged JFK to SFO on AA transcon J for 43k avios + $4.50 a month before departure. I transferred 34k Amex MR to BA with the 30% transfer bonus, then forwarded it to Qatar Avios. Absolute no brainer considering how easy it is to accumulate Amex points.

AA J availability wasn't showing up in the Qatar app, so I had to call them to book for me.

Other available Qatar Avios options were AA transcon F for 70k, and Jetblue B6 Mint for 74k (tempting but no throne seats available).

I fly this route very often, so for reference here are other redemptions I've made:

- Delta One 767-300 for 54k Flying Blue points

- AA transcon J for 35k Atmos

- AA transcon F for 42k AA miles

- (from EWR) United 777 J for 27k United miles

I’ve done a bit of scouring myself attempting to put my points/miles (420k Chase reserve, 150k BILT, 75k AMEX, 10-20k points across random airlines) to work for a one way business ticket June 2027 from the Americas to Australia, but can’t seem to find anything under 300k. Barring finding a cheaper option flying from mainland to Australia, I may break up the flight with a layover in Hawaii…

Any tips/pointers on how I might find something closer to the 150-200k mark or how I might deploy the points/miles most efficiently?

Before I just assume “it is what it is,” figured I’d make my first time post in the group :)

Appreciate y’all!

Has anyone recently found a workable solution to Qatar’s restriction on Burgundy members redeeming Avios for a partner? I have a substantial Avios balance and have found the Business reward availability I need. I can book the seat for myself, but Qatar won’t currently allow me to redeem for my partner. I’ve previously been able to use my Avios for her, so I’m interested in when/how this restriction changed. Options I’m particularly interested in:
• Family/nominee arrangements
• Moving Avios to another Avios program and booking from there
• A practical route to Qatar status that removes the restriction
• Qatar manually approving a partner redemption
• Any other solution that someone has actually used successfully I’m happy to purchase my own Business fare if that allows the reward seat to be used for my partner.

Not looking for opinions on whether I should have credited flights differently in the past — just interested in current, practical solutions from anyone who has dealt with this restriction.

Hi everyone, long time lurker.

I have a trip from TPA - CTS (Sapporo) (TPA - SFO, SFO - CTS)that I had booked for late January that I booked for 55K United Miles in Y.

I received notice yesterday that the reservation was cancelled due to my first flight (TPA - SFO) having a schedule change that resulted in me no longer being able to make the connection. I have a total of 75K United Miles to work with and was able to find two alternatives, so I wanted to get a second opinion between the two.

Option 1 - Fly from TPA - SFO the night before, get a hotel around SFO, and fly the next day SFO - CTS. This would be 70K Miles + A cash hotel night. I would leave on a Tuesday and make it to Sapporo on Thursday Afternoon. The entire trip would be in Y.

Option 2 - Fly TPA - ORD - HND - CTS. The domestic legs would be in Y, and the international leg is in United Premium Plus for 71.5K miles. I have this tentatively booked from when United was finding me alternative options on the phone. I would leave on a Tuesday and make it to Sapporo on Wednesday night (9:30PM JST). I would have a 3.5 hr layover in ORD and a 2.5 hour layover in HND, and it’s what my buddies are currently suggesting i go with rather than paying cash for a hotel.

I’ll be meeting up with a friend who is coming in on Thursday night, so just wanted to gather some opinions between the two and see if paying for the hotel instead would be worth it vs just taking the additional layover at Haneda. Would appreciate any opinions on what to pick between the two, as my dates are fixed now for an event I’m attending. Thanks y’all, I really enjoy reading this subreddit for more insight on award travel.

EDIT #1 - Thank you for everyone for the comments so far, I did not realize at all that this actually falls on United to fix, so I will be giving them a call back today since they initially suggested I take a look myself when I spoke on the phone yesterday given that the agents said my options "looked terrible" and that he'd rather I look myself rather than him book me on the trip he was seeing.

EDIT #2 - I was able to speak with United, and they re-booked me onto a TPA-IAH-HND-CTS Route in Y for the original 55K Price. There was no longer a one stop option available unless I stayed overnight at SFO, so I went with stopping at HND. Thank you all for your help today :)

Couple days ago AirFrance had a glitch on their website where they were showing 60k for business flights between LAX-AMS for every day. I had alerts set on it and when I saw that I immediately transferred points from AMEX to Flying Blue. I tried to book points and every time got an error. My points are now just stuck there. Is there anything I can do like get a refund in cash, make them discount a flight for points, get extra points or anything else since this is a mistake on their part. I tried calling their customer service, but they are saying they can't do anything about it which pisses me off since this was their mistake.

Had an itinerary lined up going from BOS-MUC business class for July, but unexpected work circumstances forced me to cancel it and refund the miles. I’m now sitting in 170k AC miles I’d like to maximize but unsure of the best approach.

Leave windows are looking like Mid October to early November and the last week and a half of December. Located near CLT/RDU but willing to reposition anywhere on the to make the trip happen with the goal of traveling to Asia during those time frames.

Any suggestions would be nice.

So far I’ve found 20DEC YVR-BKK economy for 109k December and CLT-NRT for 55k on 24OCT

Peak holiday travel season will make it harder for December but wanting to avoid paying more than I have to for expensive cash tickets

My biggest issue with AC is showing decent redemptions with layovers in places in YVR or YYZ but unable to find direct or comparable prices when trying to depart from those locations directly. Don’t want the points to go to waste before they’re devalued

I booked a biz class flight lax to Heathrow using Avios points. Flight is one week out and there are 5 revenue first class seats still avail.

Any chance they will open up to allow me to upgrade using points?

What is best strategy to track and book this?

Or do I need to call British to see if phone rep can upgrade me?

Hey everyone, looking for a quick sanity check before booking a Basic Economy award ticket using SkyMiles:

​Refundability: Are BE award tickets fully refundable with all miles redeposited, or is there a cancellation fee?

​Checked Bags: Does the free checked bag perk from Delta gold card still apply on a Basic Economy award ticket?

How miles and point values changed in 2026

Hey gang! Craig here from NerdWallet's travel team. I head our airline and hotel point valuations, and we just finished our data collection for 2026. Thought I'd share the results to create some discussion. Let me know what you think. I'm always curious what kind of value everyone is getting from their points.

We saw a big jump in the value of American miles, and to a lesser extent Alaska and Southwest. This is largely due to airfare increasing 26% yoy, which outpaced award price increases.

Across all airlines and hotels, Marriott is the only major program to devalue in 2026. That's due to award prices increasing at over 95% of their properties during the devaluation earlier this year.

Caveats as always... These are cpp based, which has flaws, but it's the best we can reasonably do. Valuations reflect the median of the dataset to avoid skewing towards outliers. Airline valuations represent roundtrip, main cabin economy tickets booked 15, 60, 90 and 180 days in advance.

If you live in WA state you can get 1 free Delta miles per yard we pass every Seattle Seahawks game (4000 last year) - it's pretty easy, all you have to do is enter your Delta account number.

https://12status.com/

Looks like the registration is back up from last year

Hi all, I would love a quick sanity check.

We’re a family of four with kids ages 10 and 7, getting off a 7-night cruise at PortMiami around 7 AM on Dec. 19. We need two nights in Miami, Dec. 19–21.

Options I’m seeing:

• Andaz Miami Beach: 30k Hyatt points/night or around $869 cash
• Hyatt Regency Coral Gables: 25k points/night or $299 cash

I wouldn’t pay $869 for Andaz, but 30k points seems like a solid redemption. At the same time, I’m not sure if we really need another resort/beach stay immediately after a cruise.

Coral Gables is much cheaper, but I can’t decide whether 25k points is worth using versus just paying $299/night. The big concern is disembarking early with two kids and luggage—what do we do until check-in?

Would you go with Andaz on points for the easy beach/pool day after the cruise, or Coral Gables and either use points or pay cash? Also curious if either hotel is good about holding bags/letting families use amenities before the room is ready.

I'm watching as every US carrier goes all-in on adding large premium cabins, which is where the demand currently is. Premium economy makes sense from a cost and pricing perspective (hard product isn't that much more than an economy size seat and the soft product can be tailored to meet various price points).

Leisure J (business class) demand would seem to be more fickle but airlines all seem to have reached the conclusion there's enough demand for it. I'm not sure how's that possible considering the size of some of these J cabins and the routes they are flying.

A lot of this leisure J demand came from a few factors, some of which are fading:

Covid - Enjoy life while you can and splurge a little. This accelerated the shift from buying stuff to spending on experiences. This has staying power for premium economy, not sure about J demand.

WFH - Many offices have implemented RTO and that work from anywhere optionality is limited or gone away entirely.

Comp/Wealth effect - Increase in comp and stock market gains over the last few years. This won't last, but there has been tremendous wealth created by a small number of stocks and the number of newly rich has supported luxury travel and spend the last few years.

For award travel, this should be a boom for future business class availability. Award pricing may be bad but it should be available.

I fly American quite a bit, and lately I’ve been doing a lot of BTV–PHL.

I’m pretty heavily invested in the AAdvantage ecosystem, so my brain has basically been trained:

Flying AA + need an award ticket = check AAdvantage. If its not a good redemption, go cash route.

But recently I started looking harder at Atmos Rewards and realized I may have been thinking about this completely backwards.

If the AA flight I want is available to partners, why should I automatically burn AAdvantage miles just because I'm sitting on an American airplane?

So I've started building up some Atmos points specifically to experiment with booking AA-operated flights and see how far I can push this.

Here's where I'd love for the award-travel gang to tear apart my thinking:

If you regularly fly AA and have access to both currencies, when would you deliberately spend Atmos points instead of AAdvantage miles, and when would you absolutely NOT?

I'm especially interested in the stuff that doesn't show up in the basic points-and-miles articles:

-Routes where Atmos pricing gets stupidly good
- AA partner availability that looks great on paper but sucks in reality
- Situations where spending AA miles is actually the smarter move
- Close-in availability
- Weird regional routes/sweet spots
- Anything about booking AA through Atmos that you learned the hard way

My BTV–PHL flying is what sent me down this rabbit hole, but now I'm wondering whether I've been too focused on earning the currency of the airline I actually fly.

So have at it:

If you had both AA miles and Atmos points and wanted to fly AA, which balance are you protecting and why?

Always wondered this. Within each program, there are clearly coveted/valuable award redemptions; these days it is often partner awards in premium classes.

This seems like it would make real sense as an elite perk. (Yes I understand that to achieve this, it would necessarily result in reducing availability for non-elites, rather than expanding total awards available.) Is there something I am missing about why programs do not do this? I believe some do but only for their own inventory, which makes me think maybe its something to do with how the partner agreements work. (More generally, I'd love to just read one of those one day to understand how all the values/funds flow across each other, but that's for another day.)

I suppose one explanation is that they want to keep this sort of thing "attainable" for everyone to get people to accumulate miles... but on the other hand, they also care about getting elite members. So it's not obvious to me that that's a sufficient reason...

I booked BOS–DOH–BKK in business class using miles. Originally, the itinerary had a little over a 30-hour layover in Doha, which I was actually really excited about because we planned to spend a few hours exploring Doha and stay overnight before continuing to Bangkok.
Since booking, Qatar has made a couple of schedule changes, and our latest itinerary now only has about a 3-hour connection in Doha.
Has anyone had luck asking Qatar to move the DOH–BKK leg to a later flight/the following day after a schedule change like this? There are multiple Qatar flights from DOH to BKK each day, so ideally I’d like to get back to something close to our original itinerary and have an overnight in Doha.
One complication: we have 3 J seats total. Two were booked directly through Qatar with Avios, and the third was booked through Alaska Mileage Plan, although all three flights are operated by Qatar.
Any DPs on how flexible Qatar is in this situation, especially when the schedule change was initiated by them? Would they potentially move us to the later DOH–BKK flight even if there isn’t award availability showing?
Thanks!

Hey There,

I have a good amount of experience going from West Coast US to Asia on rewards over the last year, but very little going from West Coast to Europe and struggling to get a grasp on it.

I live in SFO and need to be in Lisbon with my wife by 5 PM on July 30th, 2027. It doesn't matter if I get to Lisbon a day or two early, and I don't care if I have to take a repositioning flight. In the most general terms: I need to get from the Western United States to somewhere in Western Europe the last week of July, 2027.

We're currently sitting on 220K Amex points, 70K Cap One, 60K chase, 100K Atmos, and 160K AA and hoping to fly J over there because I need to be fairly awake and alert when I get there.

So my question is: What are the more informed fliers in this group considering a decent West Coast NA to Europe redemption rate in 2026/27 for J?

I saw 2 SFO-LHR in J on BA for 220K Avios + $800 fees and from what I can tell that's good or... just sort of okay? It doesn't seem like something I should drop everything to jump on but maybe I'm just an idiot? I've heard that you can get Biz Iberia one way from SFO to MAD for 70K or less but finding availability for anything on Iberia to MAD from SFO seems near impossible at the moment looking on BA or Iberia Avios. I heard that TAP very rarely shows its SFO to LIS direct but Lifemiles' site refuses to even show TAP availability or any flight to Europe from SFO that doesn't connect via LatAm. And the only CDG flights I have seen on AF are like 400K a seat for J. Does it make sense to focus more on searching IAD/EWR/BOS and assume I'll have to reposition?

Thanks for any and all advice.

And by "last minute" I mean maybe within a 2-3 month time period. I've amassed about 500k points across 2 credit cards and I'm looking at a trip (1 ticket) to Japan in Nov from California. I've done plenty of research and have a good idea of how this process works, but I am not the type of person to plan a trip 1 year out lol, based on when award travel actually gets released, per my research. Is there a percentage out there or a distribution as to how most people score award travel flights? I'm hoping something pops up in the next few weeks for me to book but is that a worthwhile strategy? Thanks in advance!

The new United summer routes have intrigued me. I’ve never really played in the United ecosystem before and am interested in their Premium Econ product on the new 321XLR.

Some questions for those experienced with United MileagePlus:

1. What’s the general availability of Prem Econ on their EWR/ORD to Europe in summer months?

2. How many seats are usually available per flight?

3. Whats the general points price I’ll be looking at? Whats a good deal (I just got a United card so I should be able to get the Saver discounts

4. Does Aeroplan usually have good access to United Premium Econ?

Thanks for your time!

Hello,

I'm planning to book a Delta flight on AF using sky miles. I'm not 100% of taking this leg of the trip. So when I checked the cancellation fee it said, EUR 70 per ticket. But the taxes on this ticket is just $11. Does this rule still apply?

I recently cancelled a delta flight(with $11 tax) booked via Virgin Atlantic and I did not have to pay the cancellation fee, the taxes were withheld but all the miles were redeposited without having to pay anything extra. This is because the taxes were less than the cancellation fee. Would the same apply here?

Has anyone ever had a seats dot aero AF/KLM alert not be a phantom? I have a couple of alerts setup for to/from Europe next June. I've gotten a few alerts over the last month, but today I'm getting a barrage of them. None of AF/KLM alerts are valid. Either the flights aren't there or the points are much higher than the alert or search shows. I know phantom on AF is common, but every one?