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Helping you and your family save money on your vacations to Disney and beyond

Deciding Between Miles, Points, or Cash for Short Haul Flights

Short trip, lots of options, not all equal
Short trip, lots of options, not all equal (gcmap.com)

If you’ve just started the miles and points game, the temptation might be to use your newly earned miles for everything. Or, you might be in the situation where you have a ton of miles but don’t know what to do with them. I play the miles and points game for two reasons. First, I want to experience things that I’d never be able to afford in cash (namely, international premium cabin flights). But the second reason I play this game is to make travel more affordable. If you’re in this game for the second reason at all, it’s important to know how to make judicious decisions about when and where to use your miles.

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The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part VII: Searching for Award Space Segment by Segment

Singapore's Indoor Rainforest - you'll have to search segment by segment to get there in September on miles
Singapore’s Indoor Rainforest – you’ll have to search segment by segment to get there in September on miles

People have different opinions when it comes to booking award tickets with frequent flyer miles. I, for one, love booking award tickets and enjoy the challenge that comes with doing so. Booking award tickets are like puzzles to me and I love solving them. Other people hate booking award tickets, consider them too much of a hassle, or even go so far as to believing their frequent flyer miles are completely worthless. I’ve decided to put a guide together for those of you who fall in between – people who want to book award tickets themselves but feel like they need some pointers. This guide will assume some basic knowledge, namely, that you know how to log in to your frequent flyer account and check your mileage balance. Other than that, the guide is here to help you through the process – hope you find it useful! Feel free to refer to the index at the bottom of the page for other entries.

In Part VII, we will take a look at the importance of looking for itineraries segment by segment. This is the key to a lot of international award bookings. You would think that when searching for award, you’d just type in your origin and destination and all the options would show up. If only. It’s pretty natural to do just that, not find any options, and think you’re out of luck. That’s where searching for award space segment by segment comes in.

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The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part VI: Using ANA to Search for Star Alliance Space

We flew to Singapore on Singapore Airlines, whose space you can't search on united.com
We flew to Singapore on Singapore Airlines, whose space you can’t search on united.com

People have different opinions when it comes to booking award tickets with frequent flyer miles. I, for one, love booking award tickets and enjoy the challenge that comes with doing so. Booking award tickets are like puzzles to me and I love solving them. Other people hate booking award tickets, consider them too much of a hassle, or even go so far as to believing their frequent flyer miles are completely worthless. I’ve decided to put a guide together for those of you who fall in between – people who want to book award tickets themselves but feel like they need some pointers. This guide will assume some basic knowledge, namely, that you know how to log in to your frequent flyer account and check your mileage balance. Other than that, the guide is here to help you through the process – hope you find it useful! Feel free to refer to the index at the bottom of the page for other entries.

In Part VI, we’ll take a look at the best indicator of Star Alliance award space – the ANA Mileage Club award search tool. It’s a little bit cumbersome to use; that’s why in general I use united.com to search for Star Alliance award space. But United’s website doesn’t show all partners and sometimes displays phantom award space, so when I need to be 100% sure an award seat exists, or whenever I am double checking space, I turn to ANA.

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The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part V: Using united.com to search for Star Alliance Award Space

Star Alliance is the largest airline alliance so it's important to know how to search for award space
Star Alliance is the largest airline alliance so it’s important to know how to search for award space

People have different opinions when it comes to booking award tickets with frequent flyer miles. I, for one, love booking award tickets and enjoy the challenge that comes with doing so. Booking award tickets are like puzzles to me and I love solving them. Other people hate booking award tickets, consider them too much of a hassle, or even go so far as to believing their frequent flyer miles are completely worthless. I’ve decided to put a guide together for those of you who fall in between – people who want to book award tickets themselves but feel like they need some pointers. This guide will assume some basic knowledge, namely, that you know how to log in to your frequent flyer account and check your mileage balance. Other than that, the guide is here to help you through the process – hope you find it useful! Feel free to refer to the index at the bottom of the page for other entries.

In Part V, we’ll take a look at the best ways to search for Star Alliance space. Star Alliance is composed of over 20 airlines, so it’s important to be able to search all these airlines for award space as efficiently as possible – there are so many options! Star Alliance carriers also have some of the most useful online award searching tools. This post will help you learn how to use united.com which is fairly easy to use but not completely comprehensive,. In the next post we will look at using the ANA search tool which is quite comprehensive but tougher to use.

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The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part IV: Using Wikipedia to Determine Airline Partners

Wikipedia is your friend
Wikipedia is your friend

People have different opinions when it comes to booking award tickets with frequent flyer miles. I, for one, love booking award tickets and enjoy the challenge that comes with doing so. Booking award tickets are like puzzles to me and I love solving them. Other people hate booking award tickets, consider them too much of a hassle, or even go so far as to believing their frequent flyer miles are completely worthless. I’ve decided to put a guide together for those of you who fall in between – people who want to book award tickets themselves but feel like they need some pointers. This guide will assume some basic knowledge, namely, that you know how to log in to your frequent flyer account and check your mileage balance. Other than that, the guide is here to help you through the process – hope you find it useful! Feel free to refer to the index at the bottom of the page for other entries.

In Part IV, we will start getting into the more practical aspects of award booking. Using Wikipedia effectively is a way to save time and energy when booking award tickets. Obviously there is a wealth of information out there on wikipedia, but in this post I’ll talk about what I look for in terms of airline partners and how it helps me to book award tickets!

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