Using our miles and points to book award flights is the reason we all spend hours upon hours of reading blogs, learning the ins and outs of airline programs, and attaching sticky notes to all our credit cards to make sure we use the right one for each purchase! But booking a flight using an award is not without its challenges. If you’ve ever used miles/points for an award ticket either for you or someone else, I’m preaching to the choir because you already know this but………there are tips I can give you that just might make your experience go a little bit more smoothly.

1. Booking one-way flights is actually a tip I received last year from a fellow blogger, and now I do it all the time. This allows for two different benefits. If you need to make a change, you only have to do it on one ticket and not on the roundtrip ticket. I find this easier to do. For me, whether I’m using an award or paying for a ticket, I now book the outbound and inbound separately. Maybe an even greater benefit is that when booking an award ticket you can use two different airlines, different alliances, and different sources of miles/points. This gets you thinking creatively, as seeing a trip as two different segments often means you’ll see possibilities you might have missed otherwise. Continue reading →