Travel Miles 101

Travel Miles 101 began as an “intro” to the miles & points world – and we’ve kept the original course on the new Start Here page, where individuals new to the hobby can easily get started. Linked to the original course content, are new and relevant posts which readers can additionally benefit from: guides to airline frequent flyer programs, hotel frequent guest programs, credit card tips, and general travel information.

The Miles & Points world frequently changes and therefore we are constantly doing our best to update our content and make sure every post and article is relevant. If you encounter any out-of-date or irrelevant information, please let us know and we will take care of it. Our community is stronger than ever and very involved, so please consider joining our Facebook group to further continue the conversation about Travel Miles 101, miles, points, and travel.

Going forward, we will be posting new content standalone and not part of the original course – however complementary posts are still linked together, allowing you to explore your desired topic further and learn more. If there is an area you would like us to cover in a future post or feature as a series of articles, please let us know – we love hearing from our community and expanding our online content.

explore the world with miles & points

The Current State of Travel

Travel is finally back! The past two-and-a-half years have been quite the rollercoaster which we are all happy to have behind us. The time to travel is now – airlines are almost fully back to their original levels in terms of routes and operations, we are seeing hotels offer generous promotions to encourage us to get back out there, and of course there is no shortage of new and exciting credit cards offering thousands of miles & points upon successful application.

With virtually the whole world traveling again, finding award seats – especially in First and Business Class – has been challenging due to limited availability as airlines fully ramp up their operations and return to previous levels. By next year, most aspects of travel should be fully back to their original levels; once the current, high demand for travel is over, we will fully be back to being able to jet around the world and find award availability like before.

Numerous aspects of the airline industry and the miles & points hobby have changed over the past few years and we will aim to cover a variety of different topics and update all of you on the most important changes. Naturally, we will resume our articles covering the best ways to redeem miles & points, ways to maximize your credit card spending, along with numerous other related topics.

Let’s Get Social

As part of our refresh and new design, we are adding a variety of social media features to help you stay updated with our posts and share your favorite ones with family and friends – so they, too, can benefit from this amazing hobby.

Each new post will be automatically shared to our Twitter and Facebook – so be sure you are following us on Twitter and have joined our Facebook group. You can also subscribe to email notifications, alerting you when a new post is published – so you don’t miss any little important detail about miles & points. If you would like to continue the conversation about a specific article we publish, you can do so under the relevant Tweet or FB Post – interacting with fellow Travel Miles 101 readers.

let Travel Miles 101 show you the best ways to travel

We’re thrilled you are still with us and we couldn’t be happier that travel is back. Who’s ready to explore the world once again with miles & points?

The post Welcome to the refreshed Travel Miles 101 & The Current State of Travel appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

The Barrett Family

Hello and welcome to Travel Miles 101! We’re Alexi Zemsky and Brad Barrett and among our many shared interests, travel is at the very top of the list.

Brad’s love of travel and different cultures started with a summer study abroad program in Japan and has continued on through more than a dozen countries with many more on the way!

Alexi also has a great love for Japan (his wife’s native country) and his travels take him and his family all over the globe.

With our growing families we each realized that travel was about to get quite expensive, so we each started investigating ways to save money.

That’s when we happened upon the incredible world of travel rewards credit cards or ‘The Miles Game’ as Alexi affectionately calls it, and thus began an obsession with learning everything we could about this concept.

Seriously, what’s not to like about using credit card rewards points to travel the world?

The answer: It is really complicated at first.

So we each set to work studying the concept and figuring out everything we could about rewards credit cards, redeeming miles & points and the technical terminology that seems impenetrable at first (raise your hand if you’ve heard of a “free stopover” or “open-jaw” before!).

After each spending years learning the concept, we believe we’ve figured out the best ways to make this work for regular families like ours.

We have each earned well over 1,000,000 rewards points from these credit card signup bonuses; we’ve taken luxury trips to destinations including Bermuda, Japan, New York City and Disney World, so we know this works.

This site exists because we wanted to pool our knowledge to provide you a simple yet comprehensive step-by-step way to cut through the complexity, focus on travel programs that are both easy to earn and redeem and help plan a strategy that works for your family.

The post Welcome to Travel Miles 101 appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

That said, the redemption side of things can occasionally be frustrating and time consuming, especially on international trips or especially complex itineraries.   We’re all busy with our lives, family and jobs and sometimes we can use a little help with booking these awards, which is when we think it is very reasonable to hire an award booking service.

The thing is, they are normally prohibitively expensive which defeats the purpose of “free travel,” right?

As he’ll explain below, Alexi did a lot of research and personally used Dominik Żmuda from the BoundlessMiles Award Booking Service and we can’t recommend him highly enough.

So read Alexi’s case-study below and when you find yourself short on time when it comes time to redeem, let an expert like Dominik Żmuda take over and remove all the stress from the process

Alexi’s Case for Using an Award Booking Service

One of the best things about running this website with Brad is that we have extremely complementary skill sets.

Now I’m not gonna toot my own horn, but I will call out a few of Brad’s tremendous strengths. He’s detail oriented, has uncanny business sense, and is terrific at strategic planning.

And when we put together the Travel Miles 101 course curriculum, it became clear that we had very different areas of interest.

Which is all sort of a long way of saying that I have never really enjoyed spending my miles as much as I have enjoyed earning them.  Because of this personality quirk I often waited a little bit too long to book my trips, and didn’t get the maximum value out of my earned miles.

So the question was out there, what could I do (in light of my obvious laziness) to make better use of my miles?

And I essentially could see only two solutions:

A. I could force myself to study the ins and outs of award booking and to book my trips further in advance.

or

B.  I could outsource the award booking to an expert.

And this post is really all about Option B.

I ended up reaching out to numerous awards booking services and offered to market their business if they came up with excellent deals for the Travel Miles 101 community.

And boy did they step up.

We were offered a number of amazing deals but one stood head and shoulders above the rest. And that was from Dominik Żmuda of BoundlessMiles.

And in order to check out the experience I took a test drive of his services.  I charged him with the following assignment:

“Here is my information for the trip:

4 people traveling on points from Portland, OR to Sapporo, Japan on 7/12.  We will travel from Sapporo to KIX on 7/17.  Then KIX back to PDX around 7/29 to 8/2.  I will purchase my own seat separately with cash as I am attending an educational conference.

Business or first seats are great, but not crucial.

Here are our miles totals.

(all displayed in me/wife format.)

Ultimate Rewards:  226,891 / 180,210
Amex MR:  215,935 / 0
SPG:  91,000/  724
Citi ThankYou: 62,571 / 0
Alaska: 84,761/  42,505
American: 145,197 / 75,520
United: 53,656 / 36,838
BA:  0 / 26,050
Virgin Atlantic: 13,842 / 0

I’d love to use my American miles before the deval…

-Alexi ”

A few emails later and I am to happy report that the process was amazingly smooth and the results were astounding.

We ended up with four first-class tickets from Portland to Tokyo then to Sapporo and Osaka, Japan and back to Portland.

Outbound was on United and the return was on American Airlines.  The Sapporo to Osaka flight was booked using British Airways Avios.

Dominik Żmuda took care of all the booking and this amazing first class trip for four ended up costing us a total of 600,000 miles (a combination of American, United, British Airways, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and Starpoints) and $382.64 including Dominik’s fee, all taxes and surcharges!

Since I am increasingly finding that there are not enough hours in my day to get everything done, paying to book a trip like this for only $160 extra was a total no-brainer.

If you have a trip coming up and want a bit of help booking it for a more than reasonable price, I cannot recommend Dominik Żmuda’s service at BoundlessMiles highly enough.

BoundlessMiles can be reached here:

https://boundlessmiles.com

The post Save Time and Money with an Award Booking Service appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

Another benefit is that you can combine these points with one family member.

Chase Ultimate Rewards Redemption Options

There are 3 options to redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points

These are in increasing order of potential value.

1. Redeem for cash or statement credit at a value of 1 cent per point. This means 50,000 points can be traded in for $500 in actual cash. While this is a terrible redemption generally, it is still real cash in your pocket, which is not insignificant.
2. Book your travel within the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal at a value of 1.25 cents per point (or 1.5 cents per point if you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve). So 50,000 points equals $625 of travel booked through the UR portal. While this is not an especially good redemption rate, the flexibility is significant and depending on your travel needs this is a plausible option.
3. Transfer your Chase UR points to one of their 13 transfer partners. These points are actually sent, with just a few clicks of the mouse, from your Chase UR account to your account at one (or more) of the airline and hotel transfer partners.

You can transfer them in any multiple of 1,000 points and in most cases these transfers occur instantly.

The flexibility this affords is significant as you can retain these points in your Chase account until the moment you need to redeem them; you find the award availability, transfer your points, hit refresh in your rewards account and they will be there to use for your booking.

Partner Options:

Our favorite transfer partners are: British Airways, United, Southwest and Hyatt

Other options: Jetblue, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Flying Blue (Air France & KLM), IHG, Marriott, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines and Emirates.

This redemption option #3 is the most potentially lucrative, but with that upside comes the limitations of award availability at the airlines just like with traditional frequent flyer miles (which they become upon transfer).

How to Redeem and Transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards Points

The post Chase Ultimate Rewards Redemption Options appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

How to Search for Hotel Award Availability

We use these three websites for many of our hotel award bookings; once you get the hang of searching for hotel award availability it really is pretty straightforward!

1. How to Search for an Award Night with Marriott
2. How to Search for an Award Stay with Hyatt
3. How to Search for an Award Night with Hilton

One of our favorite tools to find award availability is Hotel Hustle. This allows you to set free alerts on specific dates for hotels you are interested in, so when availability opens, you get an email right to your inbox!

Action Step:

1. Go to each of these websites and run some tests for future award bookings in cities you hope to visit.

The post How to Search for Hotel Award Availability appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

How to Use Hotel Rewards

This post will introduce some of the main concepts and programs and the next lesson will show you how to search for award availability at each hotel.

Airline award seats are the true constraint in the travel rewards world because they are so limited at the Saver Level, and that’s why our entire focus thus far has been on planning a strategy for earning and maximizing airline miles.

Lodging is also far more flexible than air travel because in addition to the options of choosing between hotels on the traditional “Star” scale you have alternatives such as couch surfing, hostels, camping, staying with friends, etc.

Because of this, people value hotel nights differently based on what they otherwise would have spent in cash and it’s hard to pin down a true “value” (or opportunity cost) for these award nights. Except for the rare few who would pay cash for business or first class, a flight is a flight, and you would have to spend that money to fly anyway. There’s objective value there.

That all said, you can easily save a whole lot of money on your future travel by earning hotel rewards points and we want to give you an overview of a few of our favorite programs and reasons why hotel award nights are so easy to book.

Why are hotel rooms so easy to book with points?

The major hotel chains have a policy where if they have any “standard” rooms remaining to be booked for a cash stay, you CAN use your points to book that room.

This is a huge benefit, because if you consider a hypothetical 300-room hotel, a significant portion of those rooms are “standard” (essentially anything that doesn’t have a label like “deluxe”, “upgraded”, “suite”, etc.) and the hotel is rarely at full occupancy so nearly every night each year will have availability up until the very day of the stay.

To add further to the flexibility that affords you, the major hotel chains often have multiple hotels in each city, so if the hotel you want happens to be booked, there are usually other options.

Our favorite tool to find hotel rooms to book with points is Award Mapper:

http://www.awardmapper.com/

The plentiful hotel award availability benefits you with the timing of your point accumulation strategy for specific trips as well:

In most cases you will book your award flights 6-11 months prior to the trip and at that point you can start your hotel point strategy based on the hotel options in the specific cities you are visiting.

This just-in-time strategy is possible because you can book these hotel award nights often until the last moment and there are no “close in booking fees” like you’ll see on some airline award tickets if you book within 21 days or so.

Alternatively, most hotels booked with points allow you to cancel up to 24 hours before and will give you a full points refund. Thus you can book and then change your reservation if you need to.

Lots of flexibility!

Our Favorite Hotel Rewards Programs:

Our favorite by far:

• Hyatt: Park Hyatt, Andaz, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt, Hyatt Place, Hyatt House

The contenders:

• Radisson: Radisson, Radisson Blu, Country Inn and Suites, Park Inn, Park Plaza
• Marriott: All Marriott brands plus former Starwood brands: Aloft, Element, Four Points, Le Meridien, Sheraton, St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, Westin, W Hotels
• IHG: Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Candlewood Suites, InterContinental, Staybridge Suites and more.
• Hilton: Hilton, Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton Inn, DoubleTree, Embassy Suites, Conrad, Homewood Suites, Waldorf Astoria and more.

Hyatt has the best award chart by far: you can find their Category 1 and 2 hotels for 5,000 and 8,000 points per night respectively (even Cat 3 and 4 only cost 12k and 15k per night respectively!).  And these Cat 1 and 2 hotels are often Hyatt House and Hyatt Place hotels with free breakfast!  The downside is their hotel footprint is significantly smaller than the major chains like Hilton and Marriott, so you won’t find a Hyatt in every city you’re visiting.

The “contenders” all have significant numbers of hotels, so you’ll be able to use your points as you travel across the world.  But their award charts, especially at Marriott and Hilton, leave you spending 30,000+ points per night for an average hotel room.

That said, their currencies are easy to amass significant quantities of, so maybe it all evens out eventually.

But if you’re looking to put your regular spending on a card and have a Hyatt credit card or a Chase Ultimate Rewards-earning card, you can get a nice Category 1 Hyatt for only 5,000 points, which is really great value.

A final introductory point to make on hotel bookings:

You can use your fixed value credit cards to pay for your lodging, so this is yet another way to save money on this aspect of the trip.

These fixed value cards are of particular importance to those who can find great deals on cash bookings, or who might normally book inexpensive lodging options such as Airbnb or hostels. Just pay for the lodging with your fixed value card and you can then wipe out the expense with your ‘miles’ after the fact.

The post Introduction to Hotel Rewards appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

Sweet spots:  You hear the term mentioned often in the travel rewards world, but what exactly are they and what makes them so “sweet”?  A sweet spot is generally where you use a feature/quirk from one airline’s award chart to fly on their partner airline for fewer miles than normal.  Like many good things in life, sweet spots don’t last forever, so here are the current sweet spots that we love, in no particular order:

AA Country Based Sweet Spots

With your AA miles, you can book cheap award flights on Oneworld partners within their home countries.  For example, Finnair is a Oneworld partner from Finland and you can use your AA miles to book 10K one way awards within Finland.

United Distance Based Sweet Spots

There’s some sweet spots within the United MileagePlus program that you should be aware about and are extremely useful.  Many times when you travel to a country, you don’t just stay in one city.  Rather you may hop from one city to another.  With United you can book some pretty cheap one way flights within a country or region.  For instance, 5K one-way flights in Japan?

Sweet Spots Across Different Programs

Here’s a handful of sweet spots that could be of interest to you.  Some of the “lesser known” mileage programs offer some great deals.  One that could appeal to many is this sweet spot to Europe using Lufthansa’s Miles & More program.  Did you know that you could book round trip flights from select cities in Europe to select American cities for 55K?

British Airways Avios Sweet Spots

The British Airways Avios program and the Iberia Avios program are very similar.  They’re practically cousins.  The BA Avios program is also distance based so short haul flights are where this program really shines.  In the training guide we showed you how to search for award space and book your flights with Avios.  Here’s a list of best uses that you should definitely check out.

Alaska Airlines Miles To India

Getting to India on points and miles is pretty tough.  Cash prices are usually pretty expensive and award routes are hard to find.  There is a great way to get there using miles and it also involves flying First Class.  With Alaska’s partnership with Japan Airlines, you can get to India in luxury AND include a stopover in Tokyo for only 70K!

Other International Sweet Spots

These mostly involve premium cabins, but they provide a great bang for your points and miles.  They provide tremendous value for your hard earned miles and allow for the opportunity to experience some premium cabins that many of us wouldn’t be able to otherwise.  One great example of this is flying Royal Air Maroc in business class one way to Casablanca (CMN) for 44K Etihad miles!

Conclusion

There are numerous ways to get immense value out of your points and miles.  Whether it’s on a domestic economy flight or a first class flight to Asia, there are ways to not only save money, but save points as well.  The opportunities that points & miles can provide are endless and all it takes is time and patience to find the desired routes for your next vacation.  Which of these sweet spots appeals to you?

The post The Top Sweet Spots in Travel Rewards appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

This is especially true if you can fly these 2 airlines in the United States:

• American Airlines
• Alaska Airlines

What Alliance Does British Airways Belong In

You may have heard of airline alliances such as Star Alliance and Sky Team, but what are they?  An airline alliance is a group of airlines that team up to provide routes to consumers around the world, and the consumer can earn benefits from their preferred airline while flying on a partner airline.  For example, American Airlines doesn’t fly into Colombo, Sri Lanka, but Sri Lankan Airlines does.  Sri Lankan Airlines is part of the same airline alliance as American Airlines.  An American Airlines loyalist can earn some of the same benefits from American Airlines on Sri Lankan Airlines and vice versa.  The alliance name is Oneworld, which is the one that British Airways belongs to also.

So how do airline alliances affect our hobby?  Well in this example, you can redeem British Airways miles on an American Airlines flight since they are in the same alliance.  Not only that, but you can redeem British Airways miles with their partner airlines too, such as Alaska Airlines and Aer Lingus.  These two airlines are not (yet!) part of the Oneworld alliance, but since they partner with British Airways, then you can redeem miles with them.  This is where the British Airways program becomes extremely useful for everyone, especially if you don’t fly on British Airways.

The British Airways Award Chart

Below you’ll find a British Airways miles chart we created to help you determine the price for your award flight in miles.  Keep in mind that for these sweet spots, your flights must be direct flights since British Airways will price each flight segment individually on your award flight.  Another thing to know is that Zone 1 awards are not available to, from or within the US.  Don’t let that scare you though, there is a lot of value to be found from this program:

So how do you read the chart above?  The price for your flight segment is based on the geographical distance between where you are departing from and your destination.  So, let’s say you want to fly within the US.  That means that Zone 1 won’t apply since flights are in the US.  If the distance of your flight is between 1-1,151 miles, then you would pay 7,500 Avios for your one-way flight.

If you plan to fly a short route in Europe, then you can utilize Zone 1.  If you find a short flight, between 1-650 miles, then your off-peak price for that flight would only be 4,000 Avios.  That’s amazing!  Now you may be wondering how you find out the distance of your flights.  In the next section we’ll discuss a couple of tools to help you prepare for an Avios award booking.

Great Circle Mapper & Wandr.me

So now that you understand how the British Airways mileage chart works, let’s see how to determine the distance of the flight you’re wanting to search for.  There are two great tools that you can use to help you find the distance of your flight, which will allow you to figure out the price of a potential award flight.

The first tool is the Great Circle Mapper.  This provides you with the exact distance between two airports and shows the route on the map.  To further illustrate how the Great Circle Mapper works, let’s take a look at an example.  Let’s assume we want to find the distance between Dallas and Mexico City.  Here are the steps.

Once you’re on the Great Circle Mapper Page, enter in your route on the search box.  In this case it’s DFW-MEX.  Once you enter your route, click on “Map”

On the next screen, you’ll see your search results.  Notice how the map between the two airports is displayed.  At the bottom you’ll also notice the total miles for this segment.  In this case it’s 935 miles

So with that information, you can view the British Airways miles chart to see how much your flight would cost.  Again, since this flight originates in the US, it doesn’t qualify for Zone 1 pricing.  As mentioned previously though, since it is under 1,151 miles, it would price out at 7,500 Avios!

The next tool that I find super useful is the Wandr.me Avios Calculator.  It’ll provide you the Avios price for the routes that you search.  Another feature that I like is that it’ll allow you to see the direct routes and their Avios pricing from the airport of your choosing.  Let’s take a look at how to do this.

Once you’re on the Avios Calculator page, enter in the route information.  After that click “Search!”  In this example, we’ll show you the same DFW to MEX route.

On this screen, you’ll see all the available routes from Dallas to Mexico City and their prices in Avios.  As mentioned previously, for this to be a sweet spot you need to focus on the direct routes as British Airways prices each segment of your award flight.  Notice the first row of the search results.  This direct flight shows the price of 7500 Avios.

If you’re only interested in seeing the nonstop routes, click on the link that says “Search nonstop routes on a map”

After clicking on “Search nonstop routes on a map”, you’ll come to this screen which looks a little intimidating at first.  In the search field at the top, you can enter in an airport that you want to search.  In this example we will search for Dallas (DFW).  Then click “Go!”

Your search results will show all of the direct flights from the airport entered, in this example it was Dallas, and color code them according to their price in Avios.  As you can see, there are several flights that would price at 7,500, 10,000 and a couple priced at 12,500 Avios.

If you want to zoom in on a particular part of the map, you can zoom in by clicking on the “+” at the top right hand corner of the map.  Notice the numerous options at 7,500 Avios from Dallas!

If you want to look at a different part of the map, simply put your mouse on the map until the cursor turns into a small hand, then click and drag the map to the area you want to see.

As you can see, there are a lot of options that price out at 7,500 Avios out of Dallas.  This really gets your imagination going on what the possibilities are.  I encourage you to play around with the file and check on the airport that you want to fly out of to see what options you have out of there.  It’s very easy!

Looking For Award Space

Now that we know what certain routes should price at, let’s take a look at trying to find award space.  Finding award space isn’t difficult at all and this guide will help you to do so.  The British Airways website has a pretty good search function when looking for Oneworld alliance flights.  If you want to search other sites for award availability, you can check out American Airlines or Qantas as well.  This guide will show you how to search for Oneworld flights on British Airways.

The first step is to go to the British Airways website.

One you’re on the homepage, you must log in to your British Airways account.  Enter in your login credentials and click “Log in”.

Once you’ve logged in, hover over the Book tab then click on “Book a flight with Avios”

Next fill out your search information.  Enter in where you are flying out of, your destination, desired date and then click on “One way only”.  Since British Airways prices out each segment, we only want to look for one way flights.  Then click on “Get flights”

In this example we are searching for Dallas to Mexico City

Here are the search results.  Notice how there are several direct flights from DFW to MEX available.  One thing that is nice about the British Airways search tool is that it tells you how many award seats are available.  Each of these routes have at least 7 award seats available in economy, which is excellent for a large group!  Another thing to notice is that these are not flights on British Airways metal, rather they are on American Airlines.  That’s what is great about this sweet spot.  You can get some cheaper award flights using British Airways Avios on some of their partners.

When you find the route you want, click on the seats you’re wanting to book

Here is the total price for your chosen award flight.  You’ll notice that the price in Avios is exactly what we saw when searching through the Wandr.me site.  7500 Avios and about $35 in fees is a great deal!  To proceed with the booking, click “Continue” and follow the prompts to finalize.

Just to compare, these same flights using American Airlines miles would cost you twice as many miles at their saver level.  Definitely keep the British Airways program in mind when booking your next short flights.

As you can see, you can find some sweet deals using British Airways Avios on short, direct flights on some of their Oneworld partners.  Ideally, you don’t want to use British Airways Avios on British Airways flights because of the exorbitant surcharges that are imposed on British Airways award flights.

Super Sweet Spot To Europe

On this guide you’ve learned how valuable British Airways Avios can be and how they can be used for incredible value, but the fun doesn’t stop there.  While these short direct routes are considered “sweet spots”, there’s an even better one that could interest you if you want a cheap flight to Europe.  It involves flying to Ireland!

As we’ve discussed throughout this guide, British Airways Avios is a distance based award program, so if your flight falls within certain zones, your award flight should price according to the chart based on availability.  The same principle applies to this sweet spot as well.

The shortest route from the US to Europe on a British Airways partner airline is from Boston to Dublin.  You can use your Avios points to fly on Aer Lingus for cheap depending on award availability, but how much would it cost?  Take a look at the screen shots below.  Notice how the distance between Boston and Dublin is 2,993 miles which would fall in Zone 4 on the award chart.  To confirm the price we can see on the Wandr.me site that it would cost 12,500 Avios.  That’s a steal for a flight to Europe!

This is an amazing sweet spot!  If you’re able to find award space to and from Europe on this route, the round trip award flight would only cost 25K Avios in economy.  With this being only a 6 ½ hour flight, economy is just fine in my opinion, especially at these saver levels.

Finding Award Space

Now that I have you salivating over this sweet spot, how do you go about finding award space for it?  This one is a little awkward since we wouldn’t search the traditional Oneworld websites.  To search this award, you would need to search through United website.  You only need to do this to see if there is award space on your specified dates.  These are the steps to search for award space on Aer Lingus.

First go to the United website.

Once you’re on the home page, enter in your search criteria.  Click on “One-way” then check the box that says “Book with miles”.   Enter in your from and to cities.  In this case, from will be Boston and to will be Dublin.  Enter your desired departure date and number of travelers.  Then click on “Find flights”.

After that you’ll be prompted to sign in to your MileagePlus account.  Just close out of that pop up window.

Next you will see a few search results.  However we want to see the full 30 day calendar so that we have more options to consider.  To do so click on “View 30 day calendar”

Here you’ll notice that the calendar has expanded to provided a 30 day view of award availability.  For the purposes of this guide, we’ll choose April 28^th to see which flights are available.  When you search on your own, check for Saver Award availability, direct flights and the option with the lowest fees.  Keep in mind that the award prices on this search are in United miles, which is why the price is different.  That doesn’t matter though since you would be paying in British Airways Avios over the phone.  All that you need to worry about at this point is finding Saver level award space on the United website.

After selecting the desired date, check out your flight options below.  The first option available is operated by Aer Lingus and is a direct flight.  This is what you want to look for when searching for your award flight.  Again, don’t worry about the 30K miles shown below.  That is not the number of miles required if paying with Avios.

Now that you know which route that you want to book, make sure that you have enough British Airways Avios into your account.  If you need more points, you can transfer points from your Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards or Marriott Bonvoy accounts to your British Airways account.  Once you have the right number of points, call British Airways to book your award flight.  Then pack your bags!

Conclusion

The British Airways loyalty program is extremely useful, whether it’s for short domestic flights or short international flights on Oneworld partners.  You can save a considerable amount of your hard earned points by using this program.  With this guide you can see which routes are available from your desired airport, search for a route distance and search for award space.  You’re well on your way to your next “free” trip!

The post How to Use British Airways Avios for Amazing Sweet Spot Deals appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

How to search for Airline Award Seats

Here are some tutorials that walk you through searching for awards seats at United.com, AA.com, Delta.com, Southwest.com and BA.com.

We use these 5 websites for 95%+ of our own award booking searches, so as an introduction you will be well served by understanding the mechanics of searching these sites.

• Finding Award Space on United Airlines
• Finding Award Space on American Airlines
• Finding Award Space on Delta Air Lines
• Finding an Award Flight on Southwest
• Finding Award Space on British Airways

Action Step:

1. Go to each of these websites and run some examples for future award bookings you plan to make from your home airport. It helps to get a feel for the functionality and to see what availability you can generally find at the Saver Level.

The post How to Search for Airline Award Seats appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

You may not think that you qualify for a “business” credit card, but I would guess that you actually do.

Within the realm of credit card applications, owning a business doesn’t mean you necessarily have a registered business. It doesn’t mean you have employees. And it certainly doesn’t mean that you’ve made a significant income at your business.

There is a broad definition of what qualifies as a “business” for credit card purposes. If you do any coaching, consulting, babysitting, selling on ebay or etsy, etc., refereeing, tutoring, the list goes on…

How to Apply for a Business Credit Card

When you apply for your business credit card you should simply and honestly report your business income to date, and you also record your personal income. Both of these factors will be taken into account when the credit card company decides whether or not you’re creditworthy.

The business card will be secured with your personal credit score. So your business’ creditworthiness is essentially your own creditworthiness.

As an example I currently have two businesses. One was a Pizza catering business that has yet to turn a profit. And the other was my personal finance website.

When you apply for cards you should be honest about past revenue but optimistic about future revenues, and forceful about your need to have a business line of credit to keep business and personal expenses separate, and persuasive about the crucial need for the credit card to successfully launch your venture .

You should report the business as a sole-proprietorship and use your Social Security number as the tax ID number on the application.

The application will ask you for an EIN, but you can still enter your SSN.

So why bother applying for business credit cards for a business that is not yet profitable in the first place?

1. First, if you have a business, you can apply for business credit cards and earn more miles & points! This is particularly useful because all credit card companies were not created equal. Currently Chase blows the other credit card companies out of the water in terms of the quality, quantity, and variety of their products, both business and personal.
2. Some of the best cards out there are business cards. My favorite business card to use is the Chase Ink Business Preferred Credit Card, both for its generous sign up bonus, its incredible spending bonuses, and for the access it allows to the excellent Ultimate Rewards online shopping portal. Chase also has business versions of popular airline cards from Southwest and United, Amex has the Delta business as well as Gold and Platinum cards, Citibank has an AA business card and Capital One has a number of attractive business credit cards. Simply put, saying no to business cards leaves a lot of miles on the table.
3. Though your business card application will be reflected on your personal credit report with a hard credit inquiry, your credit utilization ratio will not be affected by subsequent business card spending. As previously discussed, the credit utilization ratio is one of the most important factors in determining your credit score. So business cards are a great resource for making big purchases that might otherwise negatively impact your score.
4. Business cards often have excellent protections such as car rental collision coverage, extended warranties, and travel insurance.
5. There are other business card specific perks such as lounge access, rental car discounts etc.

So the take home here is that this is America and you too can be (and probably already are) an entrepreneur in some way. You can proudly claim the mantle of a business owner and I’m sure that if you do so, you will find your new identity as a business owner highly rewarding.

The post Business Credit Cards appeared first on Travel Miles 101.