Before you book award travel, watch out for these pitfalls

On a recent Frequent Miler on the Air episode, we shared a story from reader/listener Jameson, who transferred points to Etihad only to find out during the checkout process that he needed more miles than he expected based on the initial search result. In response to that anecdote, listener Kent wrote in saying this:

The recent podcast where a reader had to deal with Etihad suddenly needing an extra 18  miles got me thinking: It would be useful to have one page that lists the various “gotchas” that can happen with all the airlines.  I feel like collectively there’s probably a lot of info about weird things that can happen or go wrong with individual airlines. Someone in the YouTube comments mentioned a problem similar to the Etihad one with Qantas. It’s great that you guys talk about these kinds of problems, but the reality is that if I ever find myself in a position where I might book an Etihad flight, I bet I’ll have forgotten this nugget of wisdom.

That sounded like a fantastic idea, so I’ve put together this post full of key things to know and problems to watch out for before you transfer points to book an award flight or night.

Make loyalty accounts NOW

If you’re collecting transferrable currencies, do yourself a favor and create accounts with transfer partners now. Don’t wait until you need to book an award, rather go ahead and create accounts with any loyalty program with which you think you might want to make a booking someday.

The reason for this is that creating a brand new loyalty account and immediately transferring a large sum of points to book an award is a red flag that will sometimes cause a security freeze of your loyalty account. You don’t want to find the perfect Emirates first class award and rush to create an Emirates account and transfer over hundreds of thousands of points to Emirates only to have Emirates lock your account for security verification that ultimately takes months to complete (ask me how I know). Instead, create that account now so that if you need to transfer points there someday, your airline account won’t be brand new.

In most cases, you’ll want your airline account to be open for at least 7 days before you transfer miles into it or else you’re at increased risk for getting a security freeze on the account.

Avoid the temptation to make a “test transfer”

Most transfers from major transferable currencies to airline miles happen instantly (there are some exceptions, which are covered later in this guide). However, one mistake I often read about is that newcomers will start out by making a small “test transfer” of one or two thousand points followed by a large transfer (maybe a quantity of six figures or more) once they “know it works”.

This is typically a bad idea. Like the “new account” example above, multiple points transfers within a short period of time, particularly a small one followed by a much larger one, tend to be another “red flag” activity from a security standpoint. More than once before, when making two transfers in the same day, my second transfer has been held up for fraud concerns and has taken far longer than expected. If you know you need 110,000 miles, I recommend transferring all 110,000 in a single transaction rather than doing a “test” transaction of 1,000 miles followed in close succession by a transfer of 109,000 miles.

Is there a transfer bonus?

Be sure to check out current point transfer bonuses page to see if there is a current point transfer bonus that could reduce the number of points you need to transfer for a specific award. Also check the “expired” bonuses on the same page to get an idea as to how common a particular bonus may be.

Know your transfer times

In most cases, when you convert a transferable currency into airline miles or hotel points, the transfer will go through instantly. However, there are some programs that do not offer instant transfers — and then there are times when transfers get delayed.

Airlines with long transfer times

• ANA Mileage Club is a program to avoid if you can not stomach slow transfer times and a hard expiration policy (see the next section for more). Transfers to ANA are not instant — they can take anywhere from 12-48 hours. That can be brutal if you find availability and then have to wait it out, potentially losing the availability you wanted to book.
• EVA Infinity MileageLands: Depending on which currency you’re transferring to EVA, be aware that it can take 1-2 days.
• Iberia Plus Avios: Transfers from Amex Membership Rewards to Iberia can take 12-72 hours (longer on the weekends). An easy workaround is to transfer to British Airways Executive Club (which should be instant). Then, you can combine Avios and move them to Iberia immediately (See: How to transfer Avios between British Airways, Qatar, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Finnair).
• Marriott Bonvoy to any airline. Marriott points can be converted to many airlines, but in some cases the transfer can take up to a week. We don’t recommend transferring from Marriott if time is of the essence.

See expected transfer times in our post: How long does it take to transfer points to airline and hotel programs?

Know your expiration policy

These days, the major US loyalty programs have member-friendly expiration policies whereby your miles either don’t expire or can be kept alive with regular activity. However, some programs have policies where miles expire after a set period of time regardless of your activity. Others expire more quickly.

Airline programs with hard expiration policies

The following programs have expiration deadlines that kick in regardless of any new account activity. Some of these programs offer a way to extend miles at a cost, but typically only one time and at a high cost. Also note that while you can use miles to book travel that occurs after miles have expired, if you cancel a ticket booked with miles that would have since expired, you generally will not get those miles back.

• ANA Mileage Club: Miles expire at the end of the month 36 months from when you earn them regardless of your activity. Note that miles do not expire for top-tier Diamond Service status members, but if your status drops, miles will expire according to the policy.
• Emirates Skywards: Miles expire in the 3rd year after you’ve earned them at the end of your birthday month regardless of activity. You can extend them for 1 additional year at a cost of $20 per 1,000 miles, which isn’t cheap. You can alternatively transfer the miles to another member at a cost of $15 per 1,000 miles and those miles would presumably be valid for that member for 3 years, though you are limited to transferring up to 50K miles per year.
• EVA Infinity MileageLands: Miles expire 36 months from the date you earn them or transfer in from a partner.
• Singapore Krisflyer: Miles expire at the end of the month 36 months after they are earned regardless of activity. You can extend them one time for 6 additional months for a fee of $12 per 10,000 miles or forfeiture of 1,200 miles per 10,000 miles extended.  You can only extend miles one time.
• Turkish Miles & Smiles: Miles expire 3 years after they are earned. You can extend miles one time for an additional 3 years for a cost of $20 per 1,000 miles. Miles that have been extended once can not be extended again.
• Wyndham Rewards. Points are forfeited if you do not have activity (earning or redeeming) at least once every 18 months and points expire 4 years from the date they are earned. See this post for more detail. Some points can be kept alive by transferring 1:1 to Caesars Rewards and then back to Wyndham Rewards (which should reset the 4-year clock), but this is subject to an annual limit and the process is often slow and sometimes requires follow-up.

Airline programs where miles expire quickly

• Avianca LifeMiles: Miles expire 12 months after they are earned and can only be kept alive by earning more miles. Note that redeeming miles does not extend validity of LifeMiles. You must “earn” more miles to extend validity. This can be accomplished by making another transfer to LifeMiles within 12 months. LifeMiles+ subscribers enjoy a 24-month expiration policy (and as long as you are subscribed, the monthly mileage deposit from the subscription should automatically extend the validity of all of your miles).

Know the cancellation policy

Many airline programs now have very user-friendly cancellation policies. For instance, the major US programs offer free changes and cancellations on most award tickets. However, there are some programs with very customer-unfriendly cancellation policies.

Airlines with awful cancellation policies

Avoid booking awards through these programs:

• Iberia Plus Avios: Most partner awards booked with Iberia Avios are completely nonrefundable. For instance, if you book an American Airlines flight using Iberia Avios and you cancel your reservation, you will not get any Avios back. There isn’t a fee to pay for reinstatement, the miles are just gone. Note that awards on Iberia and select partners like British Airways are refundable for a fee, but avoid most partner awards through Iberia unless you are positive that you will travel.
• Etihad Guest: Etihad has a punitive cancellation policy for all award bookings whereby you’ll lose a significant chunk of miles for cancelling your flight. If you cancel more than 21 days in advance, you’ll lose 25% of the miles used. If you cancel between 7 and 21 days in advance, you’ll lose 50% of the miles used. If you cancel within 7 days but at least 24 hours in advance, you’ll lose 75% of the miles used. Within 24 hours of departure, you’ll lose 100% of the miles used.
• Know that some airlines that have otherwise decent cancellation policies do not allow cancellation within 24 hours of travel. For instance, British Airways Privilege Club has a pretty good program overall and has relatively low change and cancellation fees (for example, on a domestic American Airlines flight, you’ll just forfeit the taxes, which are usually $5.60 each way). However, partner awards are nonrefundable within 24 hours of travel. That makes British Airways Avios a poor choice for booking backup flights or speculative flights that you may forget to cancel until close-in.
• Be especially careful to note hotel cancellation policies and know that you may be on the hook for the cash rate if you cancel late. Most of the time, flexible rates (including award stays) can be cancelled up until a couple of days before arrival. However, we’ve seen some Marriott properties adopt cancellation policies of as many as 90 days in advance. Worse yet, policy at many hotels is that if you cancel after the deadline, they will return your points and charge the cash rate even if you initially booked using points. That could be incredibly expensive at some high-end properties.

Gotcha: Airline and hotel programs with “surprises” during checkout

Award booking is typically pretty straightforward: run the search, see the price, transfer the miles, pay the taxes & fees with your credit card. However, there are some known situations where you might be in for a surprise on the checkout page:

• Avianca LifeMiles: Avianca charges an award booking fee of $25 in addition to the taxes shown in search results (this fee only shows up on the final payment page, so if you see taxes & fees of $12 in search results, know that will become at least $37 at checkout). Frustratingly, Avianca sometimes fails to display all applicable taxes in search results. This tends to happen most often on awards that mix different airlines. If you’re unaware, you may be in for a big surprise on the checkout page since some countries levy a departure tax that is occasionally not shown until the checkout page through LifeMiles (and you need 40% of the miles required to book the award in your account in order to progress  to the final checkout page and see the full charges). The workaround is to look up the same award via United.com. The taxes & fees should be about the same — add the $25 LifeMiles award booking fee to determine the approximate total expected cost of the taxes & fees.
• Etihad Guest: We’ve had a number of reports from readers recently about Etihad Guest showing an inaccurate number of miles required to book an award ticket until you reach the final checkout page. That is to say that in some cases, the required mileage initially shown in search results is an even number of miles, whereas at the final checkout screen, the number of miles may actually be higher (we recently featured a report on our podcast from a reader who saw the price as 12,000 miles in the initial results only to transfer and get to final checkout where it showed a price of 12,068 miles). Since most transferable currencies require transferring miles in increments of one thousand, this leaves orphaned miles in the account.
• Qantas Frequent Flyer: We’ve had similar reports to the Etihad Guest report above.
• Hyatt: Frustratingly, Hyatt displays a “from” price when displaying award rates that does not necessarily reflect the cost per night for the entire stay. To see the actual cost per night, you either need to proceed to the final checkout page (which requires having enough points in your account to cover the booking) or you have to search on desktop (not in the app) and click the “Points Calendar” link just below the hotel’s address and phone number to see what the cost would be each night if an award room were available (though note that the points calendar does not reflect availability but rather price if the room is available). Do this before you transfer points to be sure that you have enough points to cover the full cost of the stay. Note that the difference can be significant, particularly when you have a stay that mixes a single off-peak night (thus displaying a low “from” price) with multiple “peak”-priced nights. The difference between “off-peak” and “peak” standard room rewards can be as many as 10,000 points per night and the difference for premium suites can be as many as 20,000 points per night.

Have you cross-referenced availability with another partner? (Avoid phantom space)

Sometimes, award search results include “phantom” award space. That is to say that it may appear that an award flight is bookable, but it might not actually be available. In the overall scheme of award booking, this is not terribly common, but it is something of which you need to be aware. It stinks to transfer points with excitement for an award booking only to get an error message on the booking page saying that the flight was not actually available.

The best method of protection here will be to call the airline program and speak to an agent to confirm availability before you transfer points. Typically, if the phone agent doesn’t see the availability that you did online, that’s because what you saw online was phantom availability.

That said, calling is time consuming. A less reliable way to protect yourself from this frustration is to cross-reference availability through at least one other partner. This isn’t a perfect method for a number of reasons, but a first step in determining whether award space is the real deal would be to search with another partner.

For instance, if I see an award available on United’s website for travel on Ethiopian Airlines and I want to try to determine whether that space is phantom, I might try searching for the same seat via other Star Alliance programs like Air Canada or ANA. If I see the same availability through a couple of different partners, there is a decent chance that the availability is real.

However, that doesn’t always work because some airlines have access to more award space than others. For instance, Air Canada Aeroplan has access to far more business class award space on Singapore Airlines than most Star Alliance airlines do. If you see a Singapore Airlines business class award available via Air Canada Aeroplan, it is likely to be the real deal even though you won’t find that business class award space available through other Star Alliance programs like United or ANA.

That combination makes filtering out phantom space a particularly frustrating challenge: those who have been redeeming miles for years will find it easier to recognize and those who are brand new to miles may find it more challenging.

Here are some known phantom availability issues that you need to watch out for:

• Ethiopian Airlines. I haven’t noticed this as much recently, but for a long time there was a lot of phantom space on Ethiopian showing up via the United Airlines search tool.
• Japan Airlines via American Airlines. If you see a quantity like 6 or 8 seats available in a premium cabin (business or first class) on a Japan Airlines flight that is bookable via American Airlines AAdvantage, there is a good chance it is phantom space. With American, once you progress to logging in to book the flight, it will usually error out and tell you that the seat(s) are “no longer available”. If you see 1 or 2 seats, there is a much better chance that the space is real.
• Finnair via American Airlines. I haven’t noticed this much in a while, but for a long time there was a lot of phantom Finnair space showing up on the American Airlines website.
• SWISS via United and Air Canada. Unfortunately, there has been quite a lot of phantom SWISS award space showing up on both United and Air Canada’s websites over the past several months. Both Tim and I were bitten by this during the beginning of our Flying by the Seat of our Points challenge when we were looking for flights to Europe. I believe that this space errors out on United during the checkout process even if you don’t yet have enough miles in your account to book it, so you might want to try there before transferring to Air Canada to book.

Bottom line

Booking award travel isn’t always terribly difficult, but there can be some “gotchas”. This post is an attempt to catalog common “gotchas”

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