Earning and redeeming points can be full of trip hazards … and Gunnar’s tripped on almost all of them. So this week, the guys outline the biggest award travel mistakes they’ve seen (and made) so that you can avoid making the same mistakes on your own travel journey. Plus, the guys break down some positive points news from Qatar Airways, walk through their analysis of where you can score “poor man’s business class,” an help a listener out planning a trip to Europe next year.
Earning and redeeming points can be full of trip hazards … and Gunnar’s tripped on almost all of them. So this week, the guys outline the biggest award travel mistakes they’ve seen (and made) so that you can avoid making the same mistakes on your own travel journey. Plus, the guys break down some positive points news from Qatar Airways, walk through their analysis of where you can score “poor man’s business class,” an help a listener out planning a trip to Europe next year.
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00:00 - R.I.P. the TSA line water bottle chug
02:45 - Holly welcomes us back from the Dolomites!
03:40 - The best flights to find “poor man’s business class”
10:30 - Qatar backs off its restrictive booking rules
15:50 - Thanks to our sponsor, Saily!
16:45 - The 10 most common award travel mistakes
45:00 - The 1-year-out award travel checklist
47:30 - On the Spot: How many of these mistakes has Gunnar made?
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olson, and with me, as always, is the foremost punk rocker travel journalist in the Greater Twin Cities area. It's Kyle Potter. Kyle, welcome in. That is a title not to be trifled with. It is not, and you are the king, my, my sir. You are. Of, of that specific designation. Of course, yeah. Yeah. The Greater Twin Cities area, maybe just the western Twin Cities. With a, with a background in punk rock. Exactly. Yeah, sure. I'll take it. All right, today on the show, we're going through some of the most common award travel mistakes, but first we're gonna go through Kyle's analysis of the best routes for finding what we call poor man's business class, and a little bit of news. But first, Kyle, there was a report last week that the TSA is considering a new policy that would allow TSA PreCheck customers to bring a full water bottle through security. Uh, it'll only be at a few airports to start, but the TSA says that its technology can actually make this happen going forward. So Kyle, I wanna find something out. Are you gonna miss the panicked end-of-the-TSA-line water bottle chug? I will not miss that. Uh, I will, however, miss the, the times, the, the increasing number of times, I will say, over the last few years where I've gotten all the way through security, opened up my backpack and been like, "Oh, there's a half a bottle of water in here. I guess they just didn't care this time." I think that's the most frustrating part about all of this, is it's just, like, totally up to the discretion of TSA officers and what day they choose to care about these things. So this'll be good, I think. It better be a step towards lifting the 3.4-ounce liquid limit altogether or at least changing that and making it a little bit more generous. Yeah, that's the rule that we really need to fix and, you know, last summer we were told by the Trump administration's TSA that they were looking at getting rid of that restriction altogether and, you know, we're still, we're about 13 months away from that, and we still haven't seen anything. So hopefully we do. I am gonna miss the line chug. I needed that hydration break in my travel journey every day. It was just a good, like, forced, "Here, here's 16 ounces of water you need to take down all at once, Gunnar." It was a good reminder to me. Yeah, it's good to get some water in your system before you get into the airport behind security, and it's just six-plus lines f- through the rest- of the travel day, right? Yeah, it's usually the only water of my whole vacation- ... so until I get through security a- coming home as well. So I needed that line chug. I'm gonna miss it a lot and, uh, just nothing like going through security just harried, covered with a little bit of the water 'cause I missed some. There's nothing like it. You know you can, in fact, like, you are allowed to drink water elsewhere on your trip. Uh- You're allowed to order water on the plane. I'm not sure about that. We'll put our fact-checkers on that one. All right, today on the show, we're breaking down the most common award travel mistakes we see and some that we've done so you don't make the same mistakes too. All that and more. Buongiorno, good morning. From the Dolomites in Northern Italy, I'm Holly. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler Podcast. All right, welcome back. Buongiorno, Holly. Thank you for sending in your video from the Dolomites. I'll say this, uh, a ski trip to the Dolomites is in my crosshairs, Kyle. I- I- Holly is making me feel a little booksy. I really need to get to that mountain range and go see what those mountains are all about. If you had to pick between the Dolomites and the Caucasus, what would you pick? Oh, don't make me pick. Depends, am I bringing my wife or not? If I'm bringing my wife, we're going to the Dolomites. That's a... I am not the one who decides whether you bring your wife or not. The Caucasus Mountains of Georgia are a trip that I badly need to do. I don't know if Megan is interested in going on that one with me, but she definitely wants to go to the Dolomites. All right, let's get into something hot and something cold. A look at the good and the bad news out there for travelers this week, and we're actually gonna flip it and start this week with something cold, but it's really only something cold for the airlines. Uh, for us travelers, it's actually quite hot. Kyle, you got freaky with some data this week, as you're known to do. Uh, tell the people what you've done. Freaky with some data. Yeah. You left out the freak in the sheets part of it and just said freaky with some data. That has some different connotations. I guess so, but y- you know, you're- you're good with data in a way that nobody else is, so tell us what you did. N- there are so many people who are so, but I- I can't even do- Nobody's here ... basic math. So let's pump the brakes on the compliments a little bit. No, you know, there is so much data in the airline world, and for whatever reason, I just asked myself the question: What if we could look holistically at airlines route by route, and determine the long haul international routes that are the most likely to go out with empty seats? Which means if you're flying economy, you have the best chance of snagging your own row, or at least, you know, an empty middle seat. If you're really lucky, you get poor man's business class, or as our coworker Nick called it, Y flat, which is just genius. And it turns out, of course you can. There's, again, so much data. So what we did is we analyzed a year's worth of, um, load factor data. Load factor is just the percentage of seats that are full on a given route for, um, leading up into, uh, May of 2026, which is the most recent data that's available for this kind of information. So that's a huge grain of salt here. This is looking back into spring. Uh, everything w- can have, will have changed by the time you get into the summer and fall. But we crunched the numbers and determined, you know, the top 50 airline, long haul airline international routes for empty seats. And I'm- I, there are some things where it's like, of course this one is gonna be on the list. That makes a lot of sense. There are other things where I was really surprised at some of the, the routes that cropped up on this list. Yeah, I think this list was really cool. It was, it was just interesting to see, and, and yeah, like you said, there were plenty of surprises. Number one on the list was this new Cabo Verde Airlines route from Praia to Providence nonstop, uh, which was a shocker when we saw it launched. Um, it is- this was also the first month of this route. It was before things like the World Cup, and, um, I'm sure Cabo Verde is, uh, on everybody's minds a little bit more because of their kinda Cinderella World Cup run this year. But a 41.1% load factor in its first month. That route just got renewed this week for next, uh, for next year, so that is actually coming back, but that was an interesting one to top it. Um, any other routes that caught your eye that, from that top 10? I think the newness of that one is the common theme, and the biggest takeaway from this is there were, like, seven different routes that had just started in May of 2026. Again, the most recent month for which data was available. So again, grain of salt. This is a very, very small sample size, but it's also so, so telling that if you do want to book economy and you want to have the safest bet you can to have extra space to stretch out on that long-haul flight, booking one of these new routes in the first month or two is probably the best choice that you can make. So there were a handful of others. Um, U- United started, uh, Washington, DC to Reykjavik. That one is, is basically at this point notorious for being empty. It was less than 50% full in the first month in May of 2026. All of Alaska's new nonstop routes to Europe from Seattle to London, Rome, and also Reykjavik. Pretty empty. A handful of others, uh, including United's, I mean, now what, fourth or fifth nonstop route to Australia from San Francisco to Adelaide. It only runs seasonally, but that one had tons of empty seats for the few months over last winter that it was running. Just a lot of, uh, honestly pretty fun options where maybe you can't bet on all of those being just as empty, you know, this fall and into next year, but it's gonna be worth a look, I think. Yeah, uh, Delta's Boston to Nice and JFK to Sardinia were both in the top 50 as well, as were United's new long hauls to Glasgow and Split from Newark. Um, yeah, the new routes kinda underperforming, but giving you a really good shot at getting a, a row to yourself is really cool. I was really interested that some of the Iceland routes, um, were performing so low. And, and I'm interested because, uh, Iceland is kinda the perfect way to get a lie-flat seat because it's a short enough flight, so if you don't get one you're gonna be fine anyway, but it's really nice to, for that overnight flight to Iceland to have a, a row to yourself. But yeah, you mentioned that Dulles flight on United, um, Alaska's flight from Seattle, both in the top 12, and then Detroit's flight on Icelandair was also in the top 50, so that was pretty interesting to me. And then the most surprising one, I, I still can't believe this, LAX to Heathrow on United at 67% load factor seems incredibly low. That is, that is such a perfect route because it's something that I just can, can't even fathom that United would ever cancel. They need to fly that. They, they need to have that, um, you know, flag in the ground in LA to get people all the way to London. That is a long flight, but if you can, you know, do it in economy and know at least you're gonna have an empty seat next to you, hopefully, that is, um, an amazing option. I will say- I think it's tempting to look at this list and say, "Oh, well, there's so many empty seats. Obviously, this route is gonna get canceled." The number of, of routes here that we know are going to get canceled despite a year or even years of, you know, pretty empty, empty performance is pretty small because there are a lot of reasons that airlines can make this work despite not filling up the planes. You know, they can carry a ton of cargo. That's definitely what happens for a lot of these Iceland routes, is planes can be full of cargo because Iceland needs it, and they can, you know, make that route work basically on cargo alone, and whatever passengers get on that plane is just a bonus for the airline. That's obviously also what's happening with, um, Emirates' weird fifth freedom route from Miami to Bogota, which is, like, six- less than 60% full on average, and in some cases closer to 40%, um, depending on which month you try to fly down to Colombia. That plane is clearly full of cargo, um, which is just a win if you wanna try and take a fun trip down to Colombia and maybe branch out elsewhere in South America. That is a great way to start that trip. Yeah. A really cool analysis, Kyle. I mean that. That was, that was awesome. Uh, check it out. I'm gonna put the link in the show notes for everybody. You know, Kyle's putting in a lot of work. He's, he's locking himself in the data den. It's just a dark closet we have here in the office, and actually opened the door to try and get you some water, and you hissed at me. Uh, I wish you wouldn't next time, but you did really good work in there. I have no words. Can we please move on? We can move on to something hot. Okay, Qatar Airways Avios is a solid award program. It's the go-to way for booking Qatar Qsuites. Uh, Qatar also arguably or maybe inarguably has the best business class in the world, but this summer, the airline put in place some new restrictions that made it virtually impossible for most of us to search and book for more than two passengers. We've covered these on the show before, but if you fast-forward to present day, the worst of these restrictions has been lifted as of earlier this week. Kyle, what happened here? So over the summer, I think in July, Qatar put in place a, a restriction that to my mind is basically unheard of, and it was really three different things. Uh, the first was that in order to search and book for more than one passenger, y- that person needed to, you needed to have some kind of a pool. So they have a, what's called My List or a friends and family group that you could create. In order to add people to that list and be able to book for them, that person needed to have their own Qatar Airways account, and that needed to be open for at least 30 days. Okay, that just means you need to go out and set up these accounts sooner rather than later. That's just good practice anyway. But the real killer here was that Qatar Airways, in order to be eligible to search for and book these awards, that person on your list needed to have, um, have earned Qatar Avios through flying Qatar or another, you know, Qatar Airways partner throughout the Oneworld alliance, let's say, or have earned miles from a Qatar Airways co-branded credit card. I don't know anybody who has a Qatar Airways co-branded credit card. There's probably some of you out there listening, but I assure you, you are few and far between. This was the single most restrictive measure I can think of, at least within the past few years, that an airline has put in place, and it basically made it impossible to book what is the single best way to book, especially Qatar Qsuites, but a handful of other things, too. So this just kind of immediately put everybody on the back foot for even thinking about using this program, which, you know, for something like Qsuites is just, was a killer. Yeah, I'd crossed it off. Uh, I just knew that this was just gonna be probably a little too cumbersome to try and figure out. There's plenty of other things I'd wanna fly in the world, and now it's kinda back on the radar. So what's still in place, right, is that your traveling companion has to have their own account, and it has to be active for 30 days. Just what's taken away now is that requirement to have account activity in some form or another. So why would Qatar put this restriction in place in the first place, and why did it come off now? You know, I think we've seen this come up, uh, really across a big chunk of the airline industry as a way to combat fraud, uh, because th- when there are fraudulent bookings, and there are hundreds of thousands of them out there, this happens all the time, it's a major problem in the points and miles space, it's by using one person's account to book an award ticket for another person. There are entire companies who their entire business model is to buy miles surreptitiously from other people and then use them to book award tickets for other people that they then get paid for booking This was a way to combat that. And this, this is what airlines have done, is set up these kinds of family pools so that in order to book tickets for other people, you have to either prove a relationship to them or have this kind of connection on, on the airline's backend that shows, yes, these two people know each other. Qatar Airways took that and cranked it up to 11, and clearly took it way too far. So by removing that final piece of this, there are still some hurdles here, but it's actually manageable to do it. Yeah. Okay, why was this all important then? Because Qatar Airways, Avios first and most importantly, they're, it's a very valuable program. It can be s- quite niche, um, but there are many situations in which it is one of, if not the best ways to book a flight, and that is especially true for flying, um, Qatar Qsuites for two reasons. One is that Qatar has gotten so incredibly stingy with releasing that business class award space to anybody trying to redeem, especially American Advantage miles or Alaska at most points. But basically, any other program that isn't within that pool of Avios earning and redeeming airlines like British Airways, Iberia, Qatar, Finnair. Uh, most importantly, though, Qatar allows you to book 361 days in advance, which is basically a full month more than many of those other programs, and a week longer than you can book using British Airways Avios, which is and s- it was and still is an option. But that week, to be able to book basically 12 full months in advance instead of 11 months and three weeks, is everything. Because Qatar Qsuites are so popular, you basically have to plan as far ahead as humanly possible and book these seats exactly when that schedule opens. So with Qatar off the map, it really made it pretty difficult to book these seats to begin with. So, you know, with this restriction out of the way now, it's, it's back in the conversation again. Yeah. Which, well- Exactly. Some really good news to book the best business class in the world. Definitely worthy of something hot. Okay, let's get into our most common award travel mistakes, but first, we're gonna take a quick break. All right, it's time for The Extra Mile where we dig a little deeper on an important travel topic, and it's inspired, as always, by our awesome Extra Mile newsletter. It hits your inboxes every weekday morning, giving you the latest travel news, some fun deep dives, and so much more. Sign up today at thriftytraveler.com/extramile. Okay, this week on The Extra Mile, we're gonna go over some common award travel mistakes to avoid. As regular listeners to this show know, I'm a bit of a messy traveler. Kyle, I have occasionally gotten sloppy about my travel bookings, and those mistakes have ultimately cost me. But I wear those mistakes proudly and, and now very publicly 'cause I have a podcast. So I can help all of you listeners out there avoid those same potholes that I've rammed my Jeep into over and over again. So, um, I am as what my mom calls a generous idiot. I'm, I'm an idiot, but I'm helping others not be as much of an idiot as I am in award travel. I, I think we officially found your third title Host of the Thrifty Traveler podcast, uh, award travel analyst, and generous idiot A generous idiot. Um, I did not make all of the mistakes that we're gonna touch on today, but I've definitely made some of them. So Kyle, you start. Uh, what's a common award travel mistake travelers should avoid? You know, I think this, uh, definitely applies to award travel, but travel as a whole, just waiting too long to book, trying to make sure everything is absolutely perfect, that you have all your questions answered, that you know that this is the flight that you wanna take. We have a mantra here the hotter the deal, the shorter it lasts. Sometimes the difference between being able to book a seat, especially when using miles, and seeing that that flight is no longer available, is quite literally minutes Uh, it, all it takes is one other person to look at that flight, uh, and book it before you do, or for the airline to suddenly see that, "Oh, you know, this new, uh, route that we dropped a bunch of awards space on, we didn't really mean to do that, so we're gonna claw all that back because we've now seen hundreds of, uh, bookings come in on this route where we inadvertently allowed people to book with their miles." That is all it takes. Remember, you have the 24-hour rule. That is your window to be impulsive, to book now, ask questions later, like, "Is this the trip that I actually wanna take? Is this going to work with my schedule?" The longer you wait, the more likely that it's just not even gonna be possible, period, and that's not what you want. Yeah. The booking should be the first part of your travel planning. It's the flight's first rule that we've talked about on, on our starter kit episodes and many other times on this show. But, uh, just making sure that, that, you know, you're prioritizing getting that thing booked, and then taking the next 24 hours and figuring out if it's possible for you. 'Cause, because if it's not, and, and you know, usually the 24-hour rule is also a little bit more than that. You have the whole next day in a lot of cases- In many cases ... with a lot of airlines. Yeah. So I, I just, I stress this to people all the time. If I'm giving you a recommendation of something you need to book if you come to me as a friend and say, "Hey, you know, what should I do? I need to fly here," and I give you something, and I check in three weeks later and you still haven't booked it, then, uh, your problem is not my problem anymore. Book fast. That's the key. You give people three weeks? I'm, I give people three hours tops. I mean, maybe I'm too, uh, too generous, the generous idiot, as I've been known to call. Um, anything else on this, on, on the speed of booking? Otherwise, I think there's a, a next, a logical solution here, and I think that's being too loyal. Um, and this happens in a lot of ways. One, you can be too loyal to an airline or a hotel chain. Which is not loyal to you almost ever. No. They have never been loyal- They do not reward your loyalty. Yeah. Delta does not care about you, so why do you care so much about them, uh, is the point that I make to a lot of people. Um, and this is o- obviously by, by looking around and seeing what other airline options are out there, what other hotel chain options are out there, and what transferable points you can send to an airline or hotel that can help you book those places, you're really making sure that you're getting the best deal, and you can just level up your travel so much. Uh, the airlines know that you wanna be loyal to them, especially if you're a, a hub captive, and they're gonna charge you way, way too much. But I think the bigger part of the award travel equation of loyalty is being loyal to this airline credit card that you have. Swiping the same old airline loyalty credit card over and over again is one of the biggest mistakes we see in award travel Here in Minneapolis and, uh, in other, you know, corners of the United States, the number of times I see people whip out a Delta co-branded credit card at a restaurant or a gro- or a grocery store is, like, physically painful because odds are that person has a better card in their wallet, and they are just preconditioned to earn those Delta Sky Miles because why not earn Delta Sky Miles on every transaction? And the answer is, is that there is a better program in which to earn miles, and a program that's gonna give you more miles for that exact same transaction than the, in many cases, one Sky Mile per dollar on your groceries. That's just not gonna get you very far. If you can get as much as four, that's what you want. Um, one of the, one of the internal rules to have is to never earn just one point or mile per dollar. You can always do better, even if you just have two credit cards in your wallet instead of one. There's always something better that you can do. I think our starter kit series episode about how to earn points and miles, uh, epis- volume number two in our series, is, is a great starting point to kinda wrap your head around why, yes, you should be earning miles, but you should think about how you earn miles a little bit differently to make sure you're not just kinda beholden to one airline or hotel chain. Yeah, definitely. Stop swiping that Delta Sky Miles Amex card over and over again. You've been warned. Okay, Kyle, this next one I think is just right up your alley, and I think this is a huge mistake that people make. It's just not exploring all of your booking options. What do we mean by this? It means you need to do a little bit of homework, especially as you're starting to plan out a trip, to figure out, you know, okay, you've earned all of these points on an Amex membership rewards card or a Chase Ultimate Rewards card. How can you book a flight that you wanna take for the least amount of miles as possible? Or if you're just trying to book a cash flight, which airport should you depart out of? Which position and flight should you book to which US airport in order to get that flight for the lowest price possible? And figuring out how these pieces fit together is the fun of the game. It's why we talk about this like it's a puzzle, because it really is. But it takes time, and it takes some homework. And so if you are planning that trip, doing some homework on the f- on the front end of trying to see, okay, well, I wanna fly from Seattle to Hong Kong, and I know I can fly Cathay Pacific, and I can book that flight through Cathay Pacific or maybe American Advantage or Alaska Atmos, and doing some searches to figure out exactly which way is gonna be the best to book that flight. This is for those times when you're trying to plan a trip. If you're, if you're, see a deal and you're in that situation that we started with where you can't afford to wait- You, you gotta move. I mean, this is, to me, really the value of our premium services. Every deal we send out has a list of, in some cases, six or more different airline programs that you can use where it will point you to, okay, these are the points that I currently have, and I can transfer them to this airline or this airline or this airline, and with that airline that I could transfer them to, it's gonna cost 80,000 miles and $5.60 instead of 95,000 miles and $200, you know? This is the name of the game. You need to put in a little bit of work in order to do this. It's better to do that on the front end. Yep, and the further out ahead of time, the better, so that you can act fast when that deal comes around, like you just mentioned. Um- Can I move on to this next one? I think this is a really big, important one, and it's something that I haven't always followed myself, that I need to be a little more, uh, diligent on, a little more disciplined about. Please share with us, oh, generous idiot. Um, I, I'm calling this just not being taxes and fees aware. Uh, it's, it's two parts really. It's one, not realizing, uh, there are high taxes and fees on a booking, maybe unfortunately realizing that after you've already transferred. It's easy to get kinda tantalized by a, you know, 38,000-point Virgin Atlantic business class flight from London back to Tampa, and you're thinking, "Wow, what an incredible rate." And then you look at the taxes and fees and you're north of what, 600, $700, maybe even more if, if you're coming from London- Yeah ... close to 1,000. S- it's, like, 700 from the US to London, and I think it's north of 1,000 if you're coming back. Right. And, and then on the flip side, you know, if you're flying a, a US airline especially or booking with a US airline program, you're paying just $5.60 in taxes and fees for even a f- business or first class flight overseas. So, uh, you know, just being aware of what the taxes and fees are before you start messing around with your points is something really good. And usually you can go, like, London is always gonna be a little heavier with taxes and fees, and then some programs are worse than others. You know, Virgin, British Air, or, uh, sorry, British Airways especially, uh, is known to have some high taxes and fees, so is a program like Emirates for instance, uh, is known to have high taxes and fees. So just knowing kinda where and what to avoid in, in there. And then also, this one is a, a mistake I have definitely made many times, is that putting your taxes and fees when you're making the booking on the wrong credit card. Uh, I've done this where I have a, I had an Haw- a Hawaiian card for a while. I had some Hawaiian flights. I put my taxes and fees on my Amex Platinum card, which is what I, where I put all my airfare almost always, and I go to check in at the airport, "Where's my free bag?" And they say, "Sir, your credit card is not attached to this booking." I thought just by holding the card I had the free bag. That's not always the case. So that's, this is what I'm calling be taxes and fees aware. It's kind of the least fun part of award travel, to be honest, and the part I loathe the most, but it's really important. There's a lotta nuance here, um, you know, especially with using which credit card to pay the taxes and fees on an award ticket to get baggage. You know, with Delta and American credit cards for instance, you don't need to use those credit cards. You j- just because you have those credit cards and y- your Sky Miles number or your AAdvantage number is attached to them, they know it's you. They know you have that card. You get those free bags, at least on the eligible routes. On others, not the case. I mean, to the, to the bigger point- This is a huge piece of, you know, what we talked about before about exploring all your booking options and doing the mental math that there are going to be trade-offs. You know, is it worth redeeming more AAdvantage miles or more United miles because you're gonna pay $5.60 in taxes and fees on that award rather than 300, $400 or more? In many cases, yeah, it is gonna be. It's gonna cost you more points, but those points are going to cover more of the cash cost of your redemption, which is what we're trying to do here. It's not just about booking for the fewest amount of miles possible. It's about having a cool trip and paying as little out of pocket as you can. Yeah, definitely. Be taxes and fees aware. It's something that I need to get better at as well. All right, Kyle, um, this next one I would say, tell me what are some of the pitfalls when you're looking at booking award space that people should watch out for? What are the common mistakes you see there? I mean, the biggest one is just not confirming that the flight that you are going to try to book is in fact bookable. Phantom award space, as they call it, is a ever-present problem in this world, and that means that again, you just gotta keep doing the homework. You gotta check. You gotta in some cases, unfortunately, call the airline and confirm even before you transfer your points, "Hey, I'm looking at, I'm trying to book this award ticket on this flight. Here are all the details. Can I in fact book this?" And in many cases, at least in some, airlines will allow you to put an award on hold while you try to then transfer your points so that award space doesn't disappear. But if, you know, that airline agent, either by phone or by chat, says, "Sorry, we don't see that," and you try a different date and they also don't see that, then you know that that might not in fact be bookable. Uh, again, you just gotta do your homework on this stuff so you don't wind up with points stranded somewhere. Yeah. Also, there's no rule that says that you have to have your points transferred before you make that call, right? You can call the agent and be like, "Hey, are you seeing this award space?" And they say, "Yeah, absolutely, I see two seats right here." And then you say, "Can you please hold? I'm gonna transfer some points into my account." And they will do that for you. They'll, they'll hang on with you while you transfer points. That, that is the number one way to make sure you don't get, you know, you don't fall victim to phantom award space, is actually calling in. Um, I would say, what, 95% of points transfers now clear instantly, so it is very possible to stay, you know, basically on hold quickly with them to transfer your points and then book it by phone. If that's not the case, asking if you can put that award on hold. We have some resources on our site about which airline programs allow that. The other thing that you can do is check through multiple airline programs, because in most cases, if that award space is phantom, it's not actually real. It is a byproduct of the one single airline that you're searching through. So then what you do is you think, "Okay, I'm trying to book this flight through American Advantage because that's where I've got the miles and that's where I've determined is the best mix of the rate and the taxes and fees." But you wanna make sure that it's not phantom award space, like through Japan Airlines, actually flying Japan Airlines. Then you go out to British Airways or to Qatar Airways or to Qantas or to Alaska or any other One World Airline and you search for that exact same flight. And if you see the flight, doesn't matter what the rate is, just the fact that it's there should give you some if not all the comfort that you need that this flight is in fact real. Yeah, absolutely. Be careful about phantom award space. Always confirm your award space is there. Can we talk about transferring points and some of the, uh, uh, mistakes to avoid there, some of the pitfalls in, in transfers? I think the one that we've talked about plenty is doing speculative transfers, which is you're transferring points into an account without a booking in mind yet. Maybe you're taking advantage of a transfer bonus from, say, American Express to Virgin. Sometimes they offer 30%, maybe even 40% transfer bonuses. You're saying, "That's a pretty good deal. I'd like to multiply my Virgin points," but you're transferring without a booking in mind yet. Uh, it seems like a good deal, but then a different, better use of your Amex points comes along, and all of a sudden your flexible points are now inflexible in the Virgin program and you're just kinda waiting for the next Virgin deal. What do you say to people who wanna speculatively transfer? That you need to be really, really careful, and the good rule of thumb is just not to do it, period, because you want to have as m- as much flexibility as humanly possible, and no matter how good the transfer bonus is. The, your points are going to be much more valuable when you have them in one central basket, and then you can decide, "Oh, here's this one deal. I wanna put some here, and here's this other one." And if you transfer a boatload of points into an airline program, again, no matter how good that bonus is, they are then stuck. You cannot do anything else with them. You cannot send them back to your Amex account or your Chase account. I think where this starts to become, um, this starts to have a wrinkle to it is as you get more comfortable with a- different airline programs and the ones that you know you can consistently use Or when there is a truly special transfer bonus, like from Capital One to Japan Airlines, which, you know, currently they have a bonus through the month of September that gets it pretty close to one-to-one. I am both, A, very comfortable with Japan Airlines miles, and B, that is a special bonus that helps me, helps those miles go even further. That's a situation where I would consider that. But that is the exception, not the rule. And then the other part is, you know, as you earn, you know, perhaps millions of points, let's say, then the opportunity cost of transferring them to, you know, maybe ANA Mileage Club, where, you know, those transfers from an American Express take aren't instant, they may take 48 hours or more. Having, you know, a stash of miles that are at the ready for the next time that deal comes through or that you find a deal that you can book for the best possible rate using ANA, that's not the worst idea in the world. But again, these are exceptions. The rule of thumb, I think, is pretty sound. Just make sure you have a very specific redemption in mind before you transfer anything. Yeah. I think that's an easy rule to follow. Another, uh, transferring word of warning, the double transfer, or what sometimes people call a test transfer, where it, maybe it's your first time transferring points or you just linked your accounts. You're thinking, "This seems a little too good to be true." You send over 1,000 miles just to make sure they hit your account. They do, and then when you go to send the, you know, 79,000 more that you need to book the flight, it doesn't go through. And that's because the programs and the banks usually flag a double transfer as some sort of fraud activity that they need to look into, and that's how you get your points hung up, and then you don't get anything booked that you want to in the first place. So avoid the test transfer or the double transfer if you can. I understand it's tempting because the idea of losing 80,000 points is pretty scary, but the only thing worse than that is that you wind up not being able to book that flight, period, because your 79,000 other points get caught in limbo, and by the time you can get that to go through, it might be 24 hours later, and that flight is now gone. Yeah, double-check your math, especially when dealing with transfer bonuses and what have you. I've done it where I've gotten the math wrong by 1,000 before and had to do a double, and luckily it went through the time I needed to, but, uh, I was very prepared for it n- to, it to not go through and have me miss out on this whole trip that I wanted to book. So make sure you're not double transferring as well. Uh, tell me about what you should and shouldn't do with travel portals as a way to book award travel using your points and miles. I think you shouldn't look at it as a black and white. I think a lot of people in the world of points and miles see booking through travel portals, be it through Chase or Capital One or American Express, as just a non-starter because you can get so much more value from your points by transferring them instead. And I think that that is good advice to get people to start thinking about transferring points and start to get comfortable with it and explore all of these options that we're talking about. So I, nobody should lean, uh, on a travel portal as the be all end all. But I also don't want people to have this reflex of, "I'm just never even gonna look," because, you know, increasingly we do see good deals that might in, in many cases outweigh the value you can get by transferring those points. The perfect example of this is, uh, Chase's points boost that they've rolled out to both Sapphire Preferred and especially Sapphire Reserve cardholders, where on select redemptions, be they like premium cabin flights or hotel bookings, you get a boosted rate, where you're not just getting a flat cent per point on these redemptions, but in some cases up to two or even more. On some of those boosted redemptions, you are gonna get a much better deal by just booking through the Chase Travel Portal instead of, um, instead of transferring your points to Hyatt or United or wherever else. And you're actually gonna earn miles when you actually take that flight or finish that hotel stay, which is not the case when you book an award ticket by transferring points to one of these airlines or hotel programs. So I just don't want people to rule this out to the point where they don't even bother looking, because I think increasingly that's a mistake. Yeah, I would say especially for Economy Awards, um, if you're flying Economy Awards overseas, like you're gonna find some really cheap fares sometimes, and you should always make sure that those fares aren't leading to a lower cash price in the travel porter, portal than they are by transferring points. I mean, we see this with, like, Aer Lingus and Icelandair all the time because they offer such cheap cash rates in the travel portal. Sometimes it's also incredibly cheap to book, then you're also not paying taxes and fees, whereas if you look at, uh, you know, you're paying the taxes and fees with your points, that is. Um, then you look at the, you know, what it would be to transfer to Aer Lingus Avios or transfer to Alaska to book an Icelandair flight, and the taxes and fees are north of $250, and you're thinking, "This is a $400 flight. Why am I also spending 30,000 points- Right ... to do this?" So just doing the math, making sure that you're aware of what's going on in the travel portals. Honestly, this is a mistake I make sometimes, too. Sometimes I forget to check. Usually I know my redemptions pretty well and know what kind of cents per mile, cents per point I'm going to get. But, um, I should be more diligent as well about looking at travel portal bookings before I book. And speaking of cents per mile, um, can you tell me a little bit about what this is? What am I talking about here, and what are some mistakes that people make with cents per mile? So cents per mile is a very basic formula that you use to determine exactly what kind of value you're getting from each redemption, and that's important because it gives you a barometer that, you know, getting two cents per mile is better than one, and that can steer you towards the right time to redeem your points and the time to, you know, save those points and book with cash instead. You just take the total value of the flight or the hotel that you're booking, you subtract any taxes and fees that you might have to pay on that award ticket, and then you divide that by the total amount of points or miles that you're redeeming in order to come up with this It is good in theory. I think in practice it becomes this impulse to only get max CPM or max cents per point on every redemption, and I just think that's the wrong way to think about travel. The- is it helpful, especially as you get started? Sure, it is to start to see which redemption is really good and which one isn't so good, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do the one that isn't so good. Maybe it's not the right thing. Maybe you should save those points for a different trip, but if that's the trip that you wanna take, that's the trip that's special, that's the trip that you otherwise wouldn't take or can't afford, I don't care if it's .025 cents per point. If you're taking a special trip, that is the reason why we earn and talk about these things and redeem them, is to take special trips that you otherwise wouldn't do. So I just don't want this set, this mindset of max value, max value, max value to become a box that stops you from doing what you're supposed to do with this stuff, which is actually travel. That was pretty amazing. Nice job. Couldn't have said that better myself. Is it, were you thinking about that- Do you wanna try? ... while you were in the data den? That's why I hissed at you. Putting that monologue together? Yeah. That was beautiful. No, cents, s- I, I think an over-reliance on, on, uh, cents per mile, cents per point, um, leads to what I think is our, our final, uh, award travel mistake that we see over and over again, and that's- And I would say the biggest one. Yeah. This is definitely the biggest one, and that's hoarding your points. It's not spending your points. Um, sometimes we see what we call points paralysis, and usually this has a lot to do with CPM, where someone is saying, "I'm not getting the absolute maximum value out of my points here. I'm not using my Amex points to fly A&A, The Room, bookable with Virgin," which is not actually so bookable. Uh, and therefore, "I'm not gonna use my Amex points at all." And that is really just not the point of all of this, right? Like you mentioned, uh, award travel's all about booking travel you otherwise wouldn't be able to afford, and the whole point of this is that we need to use these rewards that we're getting for our everyday spend and for signing up for credit cards. And, uh, I've s- I can count on one finger the number of times in my career covering travel that I've seen a points program get way, way better and have rewards get cheaper. Uh, these programs are devaluing over and over again. It's time to use your points. Having three million Amex points isn't cool. I, that's m- one of my favorite lines you've ever come up with, having three million Amex points or a million or 500,000 or 200,000 Amex points isn't a flex. The biggest flex is having, like, 156 because you just booked an amazing trip, and now you're starting to think about, "Okay, well, how do I earn more Amex points?" Or, "What's the next credit card that I should open in order to replenish that stash?" I think that's the right mindset. Too much of the conversations about how to redeem points are driven by people who, whether you know it or not, have tens of millions of points and have this ability where they don't have to think about the scarcity of these things. They're always gonna have more points than you could possibly fathom. And by people who talk about the flashiest of the flashy redemptions, that gets you six cents per mile, whether or not those are realistic, because in many cases they are not. I would much, much rather have somebody have a mindset of, "I'm gonna redeem these points just as soon as I can for an amazing trip, and then I'm gonna learn afterwards, was this the right way to redeem this? Should I have, you know, checked out this other booking option before I took this? Should I have saved that for a future trip?" Because then that's gonna help you earn the points and redeem them smarter on the next time. Yeah. It's not either/or. Uh, you can do better at this over time, but the one surefire way to do it poorly is to just sit on your points and let them accumulate, because those are, to your point, only going to become far less valuable over time. Yeah, I think, uh, if you're listening to this show, you don't need me to say travel using your points is the best way to use your points. Uh, but I think it's just an important reminder, like, unless you're saving up for one really big redemption, maybe for four or five people you wanna fly business class, then, you know, obviously you're gonna need to save up, uh, a couple hundred thousand points or miles in a lot of cases. But just sitting on points and miles and continuing to swipe your credit card on big expensive cash tickets, I mean, that's just not the way to do this. Earn and burn because these programs change so much anyway. Who knows what's gonna happen to your Amex points next year? Who knows what's gonna happen to your Qantas miles next year? I mean, don't just keep stacking points and miles. You gotta find a way to earn and burn them. I have a family friend who refuses to see his Delta Sky Miles balance below a million. Which is just physically pains me because that is not the right way to think about miles. This is not an investment account. This is more of a checking account. Yeah, ex- You can, you, if you can save other things, please go ahead. Don't hoard your miles for some future redemption, because that redemption is going to get you far less value and also prevent you from taking cool trips right now. I think at last check I had 46 Sky Miles in my account, so. I think I have 1,012. Which is a, is a high over the last probably three to six months. Uh, that's a lot of good advice for people on some award travel mistakes to avoid. Any closing thoughts? Any parting shots you have, uh, about award travel? I think the biggest takeaway for me as I've gone through this myself over the last decade is fear of making mistakes is not really helpful. I am better at these things than I was a year ago, let alone 10 years ago because I made some mistakes. Again, I would much rather have people book cool trips and learn from those redemptions afterward than sit here and try to learn every single last detail and, and explore every single avenue for booking a trip with points and not do it because that's what tends to end up happening. So while there are some big tent pole things here to try to avoid, just get out there and start traveling and do this stuff. Yep. Okay, let's help a listener. Um, we have a question from listener Stacy who wants to know how to do things right instead of making mistakes. So Stacy asks, "What should someone be doing a year in advance to set themselves up for success when they're planning an international trip using points and miles? What would your checklist look like?" So for context, Stacy is specifically looking at a trip to London for multiple people, but to you, Kyle, what, at this point, a year out, what does having your ducks in a row for award travel look like? You know, it, it, if you're truly a year or more out, this is the research phase. Um, and what I would do is I would start researching awards-based trends and redemption options to get you from, you know, where you need to get from, whether that's your home airport or your closest big, you know, positioning hub to go somewhere like London from. You know, I would look at JFK and Dulles and Boston, maybe Chicago, depending on where you live, and start l- searching for awards space, logging what the best, you know, options are for you to redeem, figuring out which airlines are the safest bet to travel during the time of year you want to travel to be able to find seats for three or four people or however many. And then from there you work backwards. "Okay, this, this is my best one, 1A, 1B option for booking these flights. What points should I earn in o- earn in order to do that?" And then you quickly transition to the earning phase. And as best as you can, earn the points that open up several different avenues. So if there's a clear 1A and then there's a 1B and maybe a t- an option two or three, if you can earn Chase points or Amex points, which can make possible all three of those options, that's what you wanna do. Yeah, that's why, I mean, if you're a Thrifty Traveler Premium subscriber, go back into some of your old deals and take a look at what miles are gonna get you where. You know, type in maybe what your destination is or something close to your destination, and start to figure out kinda the number of points you're gonna need, what points you're gonna need, and kinda when in the calendar some of these deals tend to pop up. Use Premium Deals as a resource there. Um, take a look at your old inbox and figure that stuff out. But Stacy, if you're already thinking about it and writing in to your favorite or, you know, maybe top 10 favorite podcast to ask about it, you're in good shape. You're, you're definitely already in the research phase. If you'd like us to answer your questions on the podcast or if you have any feedback for us, hit us up at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We might feature your question on next week's show. And to close the show, as always, we go On the Spot. It's Kyle's turn to put me on the spot. What do you have? So we went through, I think, 10, by my count, um, mistakes to avoid. In the name of generous idiocy, how many of these mistakes have you made? Okay, let's see here. Um, being too slow to book, definitely, one. Only swiping my airline credit card, definitely did that for many years, two. Uh, not exploring all your booking options. Uh, I think I'm gonna give myself that one. I think I'm okay there. Yeah. I, I'm pretty good about that. Not being taxes and fees aware, three. An emphatic three. Emphatic three. Uh, Phantom space, I have not been burned by this before, um, so I'm not giving myself that one. I'll ask again next week. Speculative transfers I've done, but only during, like, really awesome transfer bonuses, and I transferred to Virgin, which I know I'm always gonna be able to use 'cause I fly Delta a lot, so I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna burn myself there, so I'm still on three. Double transfer, did that, four. Uh, ignoring the travel portal too much, that's five. Uh, flights first rule, yeah, I'll say I got bur- I got burned on that once. It was a group trip where we, we kinda did everything backwards and I was just following the leader. Six. Um, and then let's see. Overvaluing cents per mile or hor- ho- hoarding points, I have never done that. I'm always low on points. So, uh, I think six out of the what? What did I say? 10? 10. 10 mistakes I've made. So be better than me. Be better than me if you can. But you're smarter than you were when you started here. Arguably. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. If you say so. I, I didn't say you're not an idiot, but you're smarter. Thank you, Kyle, and thank you all so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice, and like and subscribe to the show on YouTube. Send this episode to someone you know, you know who needs to spend their points and miles. If you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We would love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team. This episode was produced by your favorite host and our favorite generous idiot, Gunnar Olson. It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next week. See ya.