Travel Codex

Your Resource for Better Travel

Tips, Tricks, and Useful Tools for Award Travel

Earning points is straightforward, but how do you redeem them for free travel? This part worries a lot of people. It’s understandable since all that hard work invested in earning miles and points is not well spent if you can’t use them. Fortunately those of us who have been at this game for a while (and it is a game a times) have learned a few tricks to make it easier.

We have created many guides to help you redeem your miles and points on free travel. These include general overviews as well as more specific insights on each loyalty program. To help you further, we have created tools like the Award Maximizer to help you find the cheapest award ticket and the Points Transfer Calculator to show you how to move your points between programs.

Still too much effort? Submit a request, and our Award Booking Service will do the work for you!

Introduction to Travel Hacking

Transferring Points and Miles

Transferable loyalty currencies are like gold. It has value to everyone. Instead of being locked into the rules and prices of a single loyalty program, you can move your points to another program that might have cheaper prices, more generous rules, and even more award availability. Be sure to check out the Points Transfer Calculator for a quick overview.

How to Book Award Tickets with Each Airline Loyalty Program

Most of these guides have been created with the assumption that you have miles in the program operated by each respective airline. For example, a guide to booking travel with Alaska Airlines assumes you have miles with its Mileage Plan program. You can still use those miles to travel on a partner airline such as Cathay Pacific.

We recommend you read as many guides as possible for a deeper understanding of how these programs interconnect. For example, even if you are redeeming Alaska Airlines miles on Cathay Pacific, we might advise that you use the British Airways site to search for award space. We have included these links within each guide when relevant.

Rules for Booking Award Travel

How to Search for Award Space