Points Path is a free browser extension that lets you search for award flights using Google Flights. When you search for paid travel, it also shows you the price of an award. And if helps you compare whether it’s a good use of points or not. I covered it earlier this year.
One thing about tools like this is that they accumulate a lot of data from their searches. And they’ve organized things so that they can mine that data for insights. Point.me used theirs to rank the best and worst frequent flyer programs all over the world.
Points Path worked with The Points Guy on an interesting project: looking at how much different airline miles are worth towards the purchase of flights on that airline, and how that varies during peak holiday travel.
- Your best bet using miles is almost always going to be for premium cabin international travel, often on partner airlines, when those flights are likely to have unsold seats.
- But most people do the opposite – just use miles to fly coach to see family when flights are going to be absolutely packed – people want to travel when everyone else wants to travel, like at the holidays.
- That’s also when people using points are most likely displacing other passengers spending cash, rather than filling empty seats.
It’s not surprising that, used this way, airlines often want more miles for flights – and not just more miles, but more miles even relative to the cash cost of a ticket. That’s what Points Path and Summer Hull and Nick Ewen of The Points Guy found. Things are even a little bit worse at Thanksgiving than Christmas – remember preferred travel dates are better-defined and compressed at Thanksgiving.
| Airline | Avg Value | Holiday Value | Holiday Penalty | |||
| Overall | 1.39 cents/point | 1.32 cents/point | -5.04% | |||
| Alaska | 1.68 | 1.55 | -7.74% | |||
| American | 1.55 | 1.39 | -10.32% | |||
| Delta | 1.12 | 1.1 | -1.79% | |||
| JetBlue | 1.36 | 1.38 | 1.47% | |||
| United | 1.39 | 1.32 | -5.04% |
In general, and unsurprisingly, points became worth a bit more overall for premium cabin travel. Even though managed business travel is lower than it used to be, it dries up for the holidays. There’s less premium cabin demand, and less international demand. I once explained to a U.S. border official that I was returning from India over Thanksgiving because it was cheaper to fly there (in miles, first class) than to visit my wife’s parents.
The trick to getting the most value out of miles (with everyone other than Delta) is to fly when and where other people don’t want to. Delta miles usually aren’t much even then.
- head to big cities for the holidays when people are with their families instead of being tourists or doing business travel.
- Visit far-flung resorts when everyone is hunkered down for a white Christmas.
- And travel on the days that other people aren’t Go early or late. Fly on Thanksgiving Day, or fly home the day after rather than the Sunday after.
Or to hit it out of the park, save your points for those premium cabin international trips – or else you shouldn’t be using a card that earns miles most likely, you’re frequently better off just earning cash back and buying the ticket.
Thanks for sharing, Gary. Kind of sobering to realize how little these points are worth in most situations. Aside from rare business saver fares you’re basically wasting your time chasing trinket rewards. In terms of opportunity cost with people’s time, it’s probably a net loss for many.
I would honestly say here in this that traveller customers should fight back smarter against airlines ticket contracts. No one should allow any airline companies to pull any shady stuff over travellers at all
@ Gary — US Airways instituted this penalty decades ago…
Not a “penalty” or anything similar just supply and demand. Airline cash prices are ALWAYS higher around holidays since more people want to travel then so of course it takes more miles for a ticket. Duh
Outside of people who are really ‘in’ to the points and miles I hear from friends all the time who make low-value redemptions with their hard-earned miles. I guess if they want to get the lower value it’s up to them but normally, I’m looked at with a bewildered face when I tell them they may have been better off to buy the ticket and use the miles for something else. Recent example was when I pointed out that for the same miles a colleague used to fly Southeast US to Northeast US in a peak demand time that they could have waited till the cold of winter and picked up an award to Hawaii for the same miles. Definitely agree with @Gary that the international premium is the way to go for redemptions with probably 95% of my redemptions being international premium cabin and the other 5% being last minute 5K short-haul sweet spots that made sense from an award cost revenue ticket cost comparison.
Given that programs have switched to dynamic award pricing, how is this even news? Only thing that surprises me is that the average holiday penalty is so low, because when I search it typically is a lot higher than 10%
@ AC — Cash pricing VERSUS award value shows there IS a penalty. The currency conversion rate is different than for non-holiday peroids. That is not supply and demand, but greed and ripoff.
Why would one expect airlines to give away seats at peak demand?
How bad is Delta? Even though it says an Alaska mile is worth ~50% more than a Delta mile I suspect a knowledgable operator could extract 100% more value.
The airlines have successfully incorporated game theory and consumer purchase psychology.
Based on what I see on other sites, a fair number of awards are being purchased for less than 1 cpp. Or people are using value-destroying conversions such as Bonvoy-to-airlines to generate the points.
All in the name of being able to “travel for free”.
Would be interesting to see if their research shows marque IG destinations are even worse values.
@Gene – they price the seats at what the market will bear either in points or miles. Yes there is a small difference during holiday travel period but if people use their miles at that rate for travel the airlines are SMART not greedy. BTW you do realize all frequent flyer programs are marketing programs and no airline every is obligated to give you a seat for what you feel is “fair”.
Just booked a trip to DCA next week that priced out at 9K/$36on AS. Cash price was about $758 basic. Wouldnt hesitate to use miles for coach in this situation.
I think this analysis misses one critical aspect: timing. The flexibility of points allows people to fire away at chance trips 330+ days in advance when fares are likely to be lowest – or at least lower.
This analysis is saying it’s expensive and a bad deal to book holiday travel like 6 weeks in advance, which, duh.
But if you use your points as placeholders for pencil’d in trips 330+ days out, you’ll get better value and better flexibility. Cash can’t deliver that because you’d have to book a more expensive refundable ticket at 330 or risk the ticket turning into a pumpkin – er, voucher.
I guess if you’re bad at executive functioning and can’t plan ahead, go for cash but for those of us with our shit together, points at 330 are a great option.