Some would say the least expensive way to buy cheap travel, whether it be cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, or cheap vacation packages is with frequent flier points. While many would agree, the trick to using frequent flier points to purchase free tickets is often finding airline seat availability.
Below are some tips on using award mileage:
1) Call the airlines frequent flier redemption center. Even though the airline may charge a fee for redeeming mileage through an agent, a resourceful reservations agent may find travel options you are unaware of, particularly through partner airlines.
2) Search for flights when you want to travel that are priced the cheapest, since those are more likely to have open award seats.
3) Ask which days of the week have the most award seat availability. This varies depending on your destination. Hawaii award seats are more often available on Tuesdays through Thursdays, whereas on flights to Florida, award seats are more easily found on Mondays through Wednesdays.
4) Since several award programs offer one way tickets, look into flying into one airport and return from another.
5) Six months in advance of your desired trip is the best time to find the largest award seat availability.
6) Check out the reputation of your airline for offering mileage seat awards. Some airlines offer better award availability than others. American Airlines is known as one of the better airlines for this. InsideFlyer.com can help travelers figure out which airline best meets the type of awards they want to earn.
7) Be persistent in calling an airline award desk multiple times since often award seats previously unavailable become accessible because airlines change their award inventory and/or other frequent fliers cancel award tickets.
8) Check into your airlines partners. If the trip you want to take is code shared, there may be award availability with the code share partner.
9) Consider taking advantage of a service that helps travelers find award seats such as AwardPlanner.com If there are no award seats available, AwardPlanner will keep checking award availability daily for you and if it finds seats, will notify you via email. Other sites to check out include Yapta.com and BookYourAward.com
10) Accumulate more points, since most airlines remove black out dates if you purchase tickets with double the normal required amount of frequent flier miles. Then if there is any open seat it is yours!