Airline Tickets: To Spend Or Not To Spend Your Hard Earned Miles

When you want to buy airline tickets and take a trip deciding to pay in cash or use miles can be a tough decision.

Below we discuss when it comes time to book your plane ticket whether to spend or not to spend your miles?

Be sure to check out these other credit card bonuses!

Award Availability

You should only consider using your miles if there is award availability. In order to to see if there is award availability enter your departure, destination cities, and dates. The more flexible you are, the higher your chance you have on finding saver award availability.

Do take note, a lot of frequent flyer programs are switching to dynamic award pricing, so saver awards may soon be a thing of the past.

Miles Balance

Once you know how many miles it will cost you, check your rewards balance. If you do not have enough miles to pay, you will want to pay for this flight in cash and save your rewards for a future redemption.

Flight Cash Price

Check the cash price for the award flight you’re looking at. In order to check you can either ask your carrier, or you can use Google Flights.

Google Flights does not display Southwest flights.

Mile Value

Once you know the price of the flight in both cash and miles, you need to figure out how much your miles are worth if you redeem them.

To calculate the value of your miles, take the cash price for a flight and divide it by the award price.

To calculate the exact value for your miles, you will need to take into account any taxes and fees charged for awards.

To Spend Or Not To Spend Miles

To determine whether or not it’s a good idea to use your miles, refer to our valuations of popular rewards program currencies. Be sure to look for award flights that offer higher cents per mile than what we value them at.

Other Considerations

• Elite Status:
  • In order to earn elite status this generally requires flying a certain number of paid miles within a year. If status is important to you, then you’ll want to go with a cash ticket rather than an award ticket.
• Big Awards:
  • Going on an international flight in business or first class, the only budget-friendly way to do it is by using your miles. In this case, you will want to pay the cash price for shorter, domestic trips and save your miles to splurge on a longer flight in a premium cabin.
• Credit Card Points:
  • You can also pay for your airfare using fixed-value points from a credit card rewards program.
  • For example, you can book your award flight with Ultimate Rewards points via the Ultimate Rewards travel center.
  • There are two advantages here, compared to using your miles:
    • Still earn redeemable and elite-qualifying miles.
    • Award availability isn’t restricted.

Best Airline Credit Cards

Co-branded credit cards can provide incredible value for customers of a particular airline.

Below is a list of the best card for each major airline in the U.S.

• Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card
  • This card has an offer for 40,000 bonus miles and 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles (MQMs) after you spend $3,000 in purchases on your new Card in your first 3 months
  • The 40,000 bonus miles are valued at $480
  • Card earns 3X Miles on Delta purchases and 1X Mile on all other eligible purchases
• Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card
  • Earn up to 80,000 points when you sign up for this card. You get 50,000 points after you spend $2,000 on purchases in the first 3 months and an additional 30,000 points after you spend $10,000 on purchases after the first 9 months of account opening
  • The 80,000 bonus miles are valued at $1,200
  • You will also earn 7,500 bonus points after your Cardmember anniversary, fast-track to elite status, and a $75 annual Southwest travel credit
• United℠ Explorer Card
  • This card has an offer for 40,000 bonus miles after you spend $2,000 on purchases in the first 3 months
  • The 40,000 miles are valued $560
  • Earns 2X miles at restaurants and eligible delivery services, hotel stays and United purchases. United purchases include:
    • Tickets
    • Economy Plus
    • Inflight food, beverages, Wi-Fi
    • Other United charges
  • Earn 1 mile per $1 spent on all other purchases
• Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard®
  • Earn 50,000 with American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles offer
  • Make $5,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of account opening to earn this bonus
  • $500 in value from these bonus miles
  • Earns 2 AAdvantage miles for every $1 spent on eligible American Airlines purchases and 1 mile for every $1 spent on other purchases

Author’s Verdict

There is no right answer when it comes to determining whether or not to use your cash or miles when you fly, but there are plenty of things to take into consideration when deciding.

Finally, remember to bookmark this page because you will always find an updated list of Airline Ticket promotions here.

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