TFC Answers. Booking an award ticket: everything you need to know to fly without paying
TFCanswers is the column in which we try to answer our readers' questions, and today's is one of [...]
TFCanswers is the column in which. we try to answer our readers' questions and today's is one we receive most often: "How do I book an award ticket, how do I use points..." and of course all the related declensions.
In this article:
It is not an easy topic, which is why I also decided to devote an episode of "Poodle docet" aka the video column in which I explain how to travel better while spending as little as possible.
Before we begin, three small preliminaries
#1 Can I book an award ticket with Membership Rewards points ?
The answer is no, simply because MR points are a currency and therefore can be used to discount an expense from the current account, whatever it may be. To book an award ticket, on the other hand, you need points from loyalty programs. I explained it all in an episode of TFCanswers, so I won't elaborate. What you can do is to transfer the points from MR to your chosen loyalty program and there use the points to book the ticket.
#2 Pay part with points and part cash, NOT an award ticket
Many companies, in fact almost all, allow you to use the cash and miles mode to pay for the ticket, but again this is not an award ticket, but a payment partly with points and partly with cash. If for all companies this is a coupon at 100% paid, for ITA Airways, if you use this mode, even partial, no Volare points will be accumulated, even for the portion paid cash.
#3 ITA Airways' Volare program does not allow you to book an award ticket
Did you get your flight cancelled, miss your connection, land late?
You could get up to 600€ compensation per person
Do you have a lot of Volare points in your account? Sorry, but they are currently worth very little: 1000 points = 5€. This means you can only book cash and miles, and not a real award ticket and This possibility is not currently expected to arrive. Whereas with Alitalia you could make reservations, for example, A round-trip ticket to the United States with 80k Millemiglia points. The same 80k fly points are worth 400€.
The steps you need to take to book an award ticket
- Be enrolled in the various loyalty programs. Spent even just to search you need to be enrolled in the loyalty program, but to book is mandatory. So sign up first.
- Looking for the place. The following can be used to locate place and price of various routes systems such as Seatspy that allow you to search many companies at once. Or go into the individual sites of the various carriers and search. Each company has its own way: some put it directly as a search option, some in a dedicated section, some have it done without being logged in, and some require you to have an account in the loyalty program to do the search.
- Being flexible. If you have fixed dates, it is difficult to find the perfect ticket. Flexibility not only in dates, but also in departure airports, which for reasons of competition often give good satisfaction.
- Calculate the cost of fees and surcharges well. When booking a ticket it is necessary to use points and counters to pay the fees, often the fees have a 50% incidence compared to the cost of the ticket.
- Compare the price with points and the cash price. Before clicking book you should always compare the amount of points required with that of the cash ticket. Not only on the same flight, but also on competing flights. If to fly business from Milan to JFK I find an award ticket at 100k points/ticket + taxes with Emirates and ITA sells me the ticket at 1500€ a/r I may decide to fly with ITA and not with EK since the cash price is much cheaper. The thing to do is to subtract the cost of taxes from the ticket paid cash and evaluate how much value you will get with points. Below a certain threshold it does not pay to go down. It should not be forgotten that the prize ticket is flexible, while often the cheapest cash tickets are not.
In conclusion
In the video I explained everything in much more detail, in this article I have summarized the various main points. If you have any doubts write to me.
