Award Availability: Why Having the Points Doesn't Mean You Can Book the Flight
The flight is for sale. You have enough points. So why can’t you book it with miles? Here’s how award availability actually works and what to try when the flight you want isn’t there.
You found the flight.
There are seats available.
You have more than enough points or miles in your account.
So you click Book With Miles and...
Nothing.
The flight disappears. No award seats are available. Or perhaps the flight appears, but the mileage price is so high that using points makes very little sense.
Welcome to award availability, one of the more confusing parts of points and miles.
The first thing to understand is also the most important:
A seat being available for cash does not necessarily mean there’s an award available to book with points or miles.
Having enough miles and having something useful to spend them on are two different things.
New to Points and Miles?
If terms like award travel, transfer partners, airline alliances and travel portals are still new to you, start with Points & Miles 101: The Travel Rewards Lingo You Need to Know.
That guide covers the vocabulary.
Here, we’re tackling one particular problem:
Finding a flight you can actually book with those points.
What Is Award Availability?
Award availability simply means that a flight or hotel is available to book using points or miles through a particular loyalty program.
That last part matters:
Through a particular loyalty program.
An airline may be perfectly willing to sell you a seat for cash while offering limited, expensive or no useful award options for that same flight.
And even when an airline makes an award available through its own loyalty program, that doesn’t necessarily mean every partner program will have access to it.
That’s why an award search can produce a very different result from a regular airfare search.
Cash Available Does Not Mean Award Available
Imagine you’re planning a winter escape from Denver to Cancun.
You search normally and find several flights available for cash.
Then you switch to miles.
No award seats available.
It feels contradictory, but you’re really looking at two different ways an airline can sell the same inventory.
The airline may have plenty of seats it is willing to sell for money without making those seats available at an attractive mileage price.
And increasingly, the answer isn’t always a simple available/not available choice.
Sometimes the flight is technically bookable with miles, but the mileage price is enormous.
That brings us to another wrinkle.
Award Pricing Can Be Dynamic
You may have heard travelers talk about finding a flight for a particular number of miles.
That’s still possible, but you shouldn’t assume that a specific route will always cost a specific number of miles.
Many loyalty programs use some form of dynamic award pricing.
One Tuesday might require a reasonable number of miles.
Friday might require considerably more.
A holiday weekend might require an amount that makes you stare at the screen and wonder whether somebody accidentally added a zero.
So when I talk about award availability, I’m not only asking:
Can I book this flight with miles?
I’m also asking:
Can I book it for an amount of miles that makes sense?
Those aren’t always the same question.
Partner Award Availability Adds Another Layer
This is where award travel gets considerably more interesting.
Suppose an airline operates the flight you want.
You search that airline’s own loyalty program and find an award.
Great.
But perhaps your transferable credit-card points don’t transfer to that airline.
So you check one of its airline partners.
The partner may see the same award.
Or it may not.
Another program may see it but charge a different number of points or miles.
And the taxes and fees can be different too.
You can end up looking at the same airplane, same flight, same date and same seat, with three loyalty programs giving you three different answers.
Fewer Points Doesn’t Automatically Mean a Better Award
Look closely at the comparison above.
One program might want:
32,500 miles + $5.60
Another might want:
22,500 points + $54.99
And another may not have access to the award at all.
Which one is best?
That’s exactly the question you should be asking.
Ten thousand fewer points sounds great, but you’re paying more cash.
Maybe that’s an easy trade for you.
Maybe you’d rather keep the cash and spend the extra miles.
Perhaps one booking has better cancellation rules.
Maybe you’re saving one type of points for another trip.
There isn’t a universal answer.
This is why I don’t stop searching the moment I find an award.
I compare the real options.
That’s also the idea behind Portal vs. Transfer Partner: Which Should You Use?, where I walk through comparing cash prices, portal bookings and transfer partners before deciding how to pay.
Don’t Assume the First Search Is the Answer
This is probably the biggest practical lesson in award travel.
If your first search comes back empty, that doesn’t necessarily mean your trip can’t be booked with points.
It means:
That particular search didn’t find an award.
Start changing variables.
Try another date.
Try another flight.
Check another loyalty program.
Look at nearby airports.
And for an international trip, sometimes it helps to stop searching for your entire itinerary at once.
Search the Long-Haul Segment First
Let’s say you live in Cleveland and want to travel to Amsterdam.
Naturally, your first search might be:
CLE → AMS
Nothing useful appears.
Before giving up, I’d start looking at the hardest and usually most valuable piece of the trip:
the transatlantic flight.
Perhaps there’s excellent award availability from JFK to Amsterdam.
Now you have something to work with.
Instead of asking:
“How do I get from Cleveland to Amsterdam with points?”
you’re asking two smaller questions:
“Can I get a good long-haul award to Amsterdam?”
and then:
“How do I get from Cleveland to that flight?”
That might mean flying:
CLE → JFK
followed by:
JFK → AMS
The first flight is commonly called a positioning flight.
Positioning Flights Can Open More Options
A positioning flight is simply a separate flight used to get you to the airport where your primary trip begins.
If the award you really want leaves from JFK, perhaps you position from Cleveland to New York first.
That can dramatically expand the number of awards available to you.
But there’s an important tradeoff.
If the positioning flight and your long-haul flight are on separate tickets, the second airline generally doesn’t have the same responsibility for protecting your onward trip if the first flight is delayed.
That’s why I would be very cautious about building a tight connection between separate tickets.
For an important international award, arriving at the gateway airport the night before can sometimes be worth the extra hotel night.
The cheapest itinerary isn’t particularly cheap if a delayed positioning flight causes you to miss the expensive part.
Look Beyond Your Destination Airport Too
You can use the same strategy on the other side of the ocean.
Suppose you can’t find a reasonable award directly to Amsterdam.
What about Paris?
Frankfurt?
Dublin?
Another European gateway might have substantially better award availability, followed by a short flight or train to your actual destination.
Again, this isn’t automatically better.
Adding another connection costs time and introduces another opportunity for something to go wrong.
But when the direct award simply isn’t there, expanding the search can reveal possibilities that an airport-to-airport search hides.
Flexibility Is Your Best Award-Search Tool
Points and miles discussions sometimes make award travel sound like there’s a secret website where experienced travelers type a code and first-class seats magically appear.
There isn’t.
A lot of successful award searching comes down to flexibility.
If possible, change one thing at a time.
Change the date. Look one day earlier or later.
Change the flight. The morning flight may have availability when the evening flight doesn’t.
Change the airport. A nearby gateway may have substantially better options.
Change the routing. A connection can sometimes unlock an award that isn’t available nonstop.
Change the loyalty program. A partner may see an award that another program doesn’t.
And on a complicated international trip:
Search the long-haul segment first.
Once you’ve found the difficult piece, you can work outward from there.
Search for One Seat
Here’s another useful trick, especially when two people are traveling.
If a search for two award seats returns nothing, try searching for one seat.
There may be only one award available at that mileage level.
That’s useful information.
It doesn’t solve the problem if two of you need to travel together, but now you know the flight isn’t completely unavailable.
Depending on the trip, you might continue checking to see whether another seat opens, look at nearby dates or decide that another flight is the better choice.
The important part is understanding what the search result is actually telling you.
Don’t Transfer Your Points While You’re Still Hunting
This deserves repeating.
Transferable credit-card points are valuable partly because you haven’t committed them to a particular airline or hotel program yet.
Once transferred, points generally can’t simply be moved back into your credit-card rewards account.
So don’t find a promising flight, transfer the points and then start figuring out whether you can actually book it.
My order is:
Find the award.
Confirm the availability.
Make sure the program you’re using can actually book it.
Check the points required and the taxes and fees.
Be ready to complete the booking.
Then transfer.
That process is covered in more detail in Portal vs. Transfer Partner: Which Should You Use?
Award Availability Can Change
One last complication:
Award availability isn’t necessarily permanent.
Something available today may disappear tomorrow.
Something unavailable today may appear later.
Airlines can release additional award inventory, pricing can change, travelers can cancel awards and seats can return to inventory.
That doesn’t mean you should spend every waking hour refreshing airline websites.
It does mean an unsuccessful search today isn’t necessarily the final answer.
For a trip where points could make a meaningful difference, I’ll often check again rather than assuming the first result settles it.
A Real Trip Is More Important Than a Perfect Redemption
It’s easy to get sucked into the game.
Could I save another 7,500 points?
Could I get another half-cent of theoretical value?
What if I leave two days earlier, position to an airport six hours away, make two connections and spend the night somewhere I never intended to visit?
At some point, you’ve stopped improving the trip.
You’ve started serving the points.
That’s backwards.
Award availability is worth understanding because it gives you more options.
Sometimes flexibility uncovers a terrific redemption.
Sometimes paying a few more miles gets you the schedule you actually want.
Sometimes the cash fare is good enough that I’d rather keep my points.
The objective isn’t to construct the cleverest award itinerary on the internet.
It’s to use points and miles to make the trip you actually want to take more attainable.
The Most Important Thing to Remember
Having enough points is only half of an award booking.
You still need something worthwhile to book.
When the award you want isn’t there, don’t immediately assume you’re out of options.
Try another date.
Check another program.
Look at another gateway.
Search the long-haul segment separately.
Consider positioning.
And compare the total cost before transferring anything.
Sometimes the answer really is no award available.
But sometimes the better answer is simply hiding behind a different search.