Frequent Flyer Award Booking Links

For me, one of the most vexing aspects to award bookings is sometimes how to find a way to book the award.

What do I mean by that?

Learning the award program, best uses, tricks and ins-and-outs can be difficult, but once you do, finding a way to book online can sometimes even be more confusing.

The U.S. carriers have made it easy for us to just hop on over to their respective websites and search award bookings. You only need to sign-in once you’ve found what you’re looking for and are ready to make your redemption.

Other programs, however, have not made it as easy.

Let’s take a look at what requires you to log in and where to find the “redeem here” button for some of the more common mileage programs.

U.S. Legacy Carriers – American, Delta and United

Delta, American and United have made it really easy to search for award space. There is no sign-in required, except when you’ll be ready to make the redemption.

The only program where you would want to sign-in is with United – if you carry the United MileagePlus explorer credit card. If you do carry that card and sign-in, you’ll be able to unlock extra saver award space (upon availability) on certain routes.

With American, you cannot search round trip award tickets without signing in. You’ll be able to search and select the first leg, but the second one will require you to log in to your AAdvantage account.

Southwest, jetBlue, Alaska

Southwest and jetBlue mileage programs are based on the cost of the ticket. They too, make it easy to redeem their miles towards award tickets. When doing this on the mobile application for jetBlue, you may run into some buggy issues, but doing so online does not present any problems.

Redeeming Alaska MileagePlan miles for award tickets is always fun. Though you cannot search all partners on their search engine, you can find and redeem miles on many.

The only caveat?

If you forgot to click “search with miles” any destination that Alaska does not serve – such as an international one like Paris (CDG, ORY), you’ll receive an error:

These three airlines make it easy to search and redeem for award tickets.

ANA

ANA recently revamped their award searching tool and have made it easier to locate the ‘Award Booking’ button. Here’s the site instead of searching around and finding the correct landing page.

However, once you click ‘Award Booking’ you’ll be prompted to sign-in. Creating an ANA account is easy. You don’t even need miles in your account to search!

Once you’re in, searching is relatively straightforward. Remember, you can only book round trip award tickets using ANA miles.

FlyingBlue

FlyingBlue is the mileage program of Air France and KLM. So you’d think that redeeming awards would be on the FlyingBlue page, right?

WRONG

They’ve too made it easier, but you log in via the Air France website, here.

When you get to the Air France landing page, you can toggle between ‘Purchase A Ticket’ and ‘Use Your Miles’.

British Airways

Though I love British Airways Avios points, I really dislike their site (and their mobile app). Even after you sign-in on the main British Airways landing page, you’ll be prompted to sign in… Again. They seem to have extra layers of security *sigh*.

Once you’re in, you’ll need to navigate again to Book with Avios on reward flights – as opposed to using them on merchandise or hotels / car rentals.

After that, scroll down and select ‘Book a Reward Flight’

Eventually, you’ll get there. Simply go to www.britishairways.com and sign-in to begin the process.

Air Canada’s Aeroplan

Air Canada’s mileage program is called Aeroplan – in this way, it’s similar to Air France/ KLM and FlyingBlue. The difference is that Aeroplan has it’s own site and you can redeem and search via that site. Here’s the link.

Navigate to ‘Flights’ under ‘Use Your Miles’ – after that, you’ll be prompted to log in and begin your search.

Just one specific note about Aeroplan – you cannot search city pairs. So city codes such as ‘NYC’, ‘LON’ and ‘WAS’ are invalid – you’d need to search ‘JFK’, ‘LGA’, ‘EWR’, ‘LHR’, ‘LGW’, ‘LCY’, etc., all separately.

El Al

There’s nothing I like about El Al’s website. Every time you want to do a new award search, you get sent back to the homepage. Here’s the direct link to the Matmid (El Al’s frequent flyer program) landing page. Once you’re logged in, searching is pretty straightforward.

Etihad

I’ll make it easy for you and provide you with the Etihad Guest link – here – where after you search you’ll be prompted to log in. However, you do not need to log in and can continue as a guest.

After that, it’s easy to find and search your award space.

Qantas

While Qantas frequent flier miles are not worth much, their membership in the Oneworld alliance (same as American and British Airways) allows you to view Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines award space, in calendar form. British Airways pulls up this space, but you need to search day-by-day.

In order to search, you do need to sign in – the link is here – but instead of a password and username, they also require a pin number.

Input your flight information and be sure to check the box that says ‘Search Classic Flight Awards’ – this is the indicator that you are looking to search for award tickets.

At that point, when you hit ‘Search Flights’, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your Frequent Flyer Number, Last Name and 4-digit PIN number

Though logging can be annoying, in this case the nice calendar view makes it worthwhile.

Singapore

Unfortunately, you cannot book Singapore Star Alliance partner awards online, but you can search and book Singapore Airlines own award space online (and will receive a 15% off award bookings). Here’s the link and you will be prompted to sign in, but it’s relatively straightforward of a process.

Just select the radial button option of ‘Redeem Flights’ and you’ll be on your way!

Bottom line:

Sometimes knowing where to start your search is almost as important as knowing how to start your search.

Did I cover them all?

– The Miner