If you live in the Boston area (and maybe even New York/Fort Lauderdale area) and regularly take domestic flights, chances are that you’ve probably flown JetBlue a few times, as they have become the largest carrier operating out of Logan International Airport.

As a 6’7″ guy, I try to take JetBlue as often as I can, given the industry-leading leg room, free TV and wi-fi, and large servings of sodas and snacks.

However, while they have started to do some international service to places like Ireland and Peru, they still primarily remain a domestic carrier serving the 48 states.

If you haven’t been to Hawaii, you’ve probably heard absolutely amazing things about it from friends who have been, and if you have been, you know that all of these amazing this are indeed true. Hawaii really is as incredible of a place as people make it out to be, and I can’t recommend going highly enough.

So what’s the connection to JetBlue? Well, JetBlue, despite not being part of a major airline alliance, partners with Hawaiian Airlines, meaning that you can choose to earn JetBlue miles on Hawaiian Airlines flights, Hawaiian Airlines miles on JetBlue flights, redeem Hawaiian Airlines miles for JetBlue flights, and redeem JetBlue miles for Hawaiian Airlines flights.

Now, redeeming JetBlue miles for JetBlue flights is relatively easy. Select your airports and dates, then select TrueBlue points:

and then you’ll get a screen like this:

where you can choose your award flights. Like Virgin America and unlike the Big Three airlines, the number of miles directly correlates with the cost of the flight. 10,000 miles is equal to roughly a $150 flight. Select your flight, then go ahead and book.

Unfortunately, using your JetBlue miles to book a Hawaiian Airlines flight is a little more complicated, not to mention not as good of a value. 10,000 JetBlue miles are roughly equal to $100 of Hawaiian Airlines flights, and you need to call the TrueBlue service center to do so. More information can be found here.

Still, if you have a large stash of JetBlue miles that you’re just dying to use, a vacation to Hawaii may be just what the doctor ordered.

Have a question about something? Feel free to e-mail me, or post in the comments below.

Cover photo: Ahalanui Hot Springs; Pahoa, HI

then the dates:

and then select Elevate points:

Just as the first flight costs almost twice as much as the second flight if one were booking in dollars, it costs almost twice as many Elevate points. After you select your flight, you can then continue to enter your information, and book an award flight. Easy enough, right?

Well, despite Virgin America making significant strides to expand their network, they still are primarily a domestic carrier (other than a few flights to Mexico), and there will probably be times when you want to fly internationally. Luckily, you can do this with your Virgin America Elevate points!
While they don’t publicize it very much, if you click “Redeem Points” from the Elevate homepage, like so:

and then scroll down, you’re then presented with a screen you may not have noticed before, showing you an opportunity to choose a route from two cities that a partner airline flies between:

In short, Virgin America partners with five other airlines, all of which are excellent: Virgin Australia, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines, Emirates Airlines, and Hawaiian Airlines. (While Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia, and Virgin America are all affiliated with Richard Branson’s Virgin brand, Virgin America, for legal reasons, still has to essentially be operated independently of the other Virgin airlines).
Of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always a good idea to use your Elevate points on these airlines. As you can see in the above screenshot, Virgin Atlantic adds on huge fees for economy award redemptions, essentially rendering them useless for award redemptions, unless you’re booking a first class ticket, where $1,150 is trivial for a ticket that would normally cost $8,000. Emirates also adds on similar fees.
Luckily, the fees are minimal on Hawaiian and Singapore, and only a little bit higher on Virgin Australia, and can offer some great values, such as 40,000 Elevate points and $40 for a roundtrip flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong on award-winning Singapore Airlines:

As you may notice, one-way trips cost a little more than half of the roundtrip price. Unfortunately, this page only serves as an award chart letting you know how many miles it costs and what the fees will be, it is not an award search engine where you can see which days have award flights available, or book award flights.
In order to check award availability, you’ll either have to search online through an award search engine that indexes that particular airline, or if you’d rather someone else do the work, you can call the Virgin America award booking center (which you’ll have to do anyway to book the award), and ask them about availability on different dates.
While this process is certainly more onerous than booking an award flight with United miles per se, it certainly is a great way to make your hard-earned Virgin America Elevate points go a lot further.

Have a question about something? Feel free to e-mail me, or post in the comments below.

Thankfully, in 2015, they overhauled it, and it is now pretty reliable, to the point where most users would recommend it. However, they did make one key change that has frustrated flyers immensely: They stopped publishing a chart of how many miles an award will cost you (i.e. unlike every other major airline in the world, you don’t know how many miles it will cost you to get from Point A to Point B).

That being said, let’s look at the process.

You can book directly from the home page, but make sure to select “MILES” instead of “MONEY”, as well as “FLEXIBLE DAYS” (if your days are indeed flexible).

The next step can be where some problems occur. This will show you the miles required for each day of the week:

Because they don’t publish a mileage chart, someone new to booking Delta awards may think that the best deal is on Wednesday, Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday of that week. This is why it’s important to look at the entire month to see if it’s really the best deal, which you can do on by clicking “5 weeks.”

As you can now see, the fewest number of miles required for this route is not 37,500, but rather 22,500, assuming you have flexibility on which day you leave.

Unlike American Airlines, which leaves out many key members of its alliance, Delta’s online award search engine covers most SkyTeam members. The only exceptions are Xiamen Airlines, Air Europa, Kenya Airways, Air Tahiti Nui, Tarom Airlines, and Czech Airlines. Give that only two of these six even offer flights to the US, it’s unlikely that you will be needing to use your Delta miles to book an award on them, though this was useful for me last summer when I booked an award flight on Kenya Airways from Mumbai to Kilimanjaro.

For awards involving these airlines, you’ll want to use the Flying Blue award search engine, the award program of KLM and Air France, and then call Delta to book the award. This is generally considered to be the best SkyTeam award search engine, though it’s not perfect. That being said, the Delta search engine is also far from perfect, and even if your flight doesn’t involve one of the six airlines above, it doesn’t hurt to also trying a search with Flying Blue to make sure Delta didn’t miss something. Of course, I can speak from personal experience and say that if an award is appearing on Flying Blue but not Delta, there’s no guarantee the Delta phone agents will be able to book something.

Did I miss something? Still have questions? Feel free to e-mail me, or post in the comments below.

As SFO (San Francisco) has been my primary airport for most of the past 7 years, I figured I would start with United, which is the only of the “Big Three” U.S. airlines (United, American, Delta) to have a hub there.

United generally has one of the better online award travel search engines. You have access to almost all of the Star Alliance airlines, and it’s very easy to use. Furthermore, Star Alliance is the largest of the three major airline alliances, which will allow you award flights to almost (not here) anywhere in the world.

To search, all you need to do is check “Search for award travel” on United.com:

There are two types of economy awards on United: Saver, and Standard. Saver awards cost half as many miles as Standard awards , and are generally how you want to use your miles. If there are no saver awards available for your date and you have some flexibility on dates, check other dates. Standard awards should really only be used if you have no flexibility on dates and you don’t want to pay for the flight, but it’s not a very good use of your miles.

United used to display Standard and Saver awards in separate columns, but now they combine them, always listing Saver award space first. For example, here is an award search from Boston to Kathmandu, with saver award space on a routing that combines Lufthansa and Thai Airways, and Standard award space on a routing that combines United and Air India:

In this situation (aside from the fact that Lufthansa and Thai Airways are far better than United and Air India), you want to choose Saver award. Of course, it’s always important to look at the taxes and fees associated with each award. These are generally either charged by the airports that the flight passes through, or sometimes by the airline under the misleading name of “fuel surcharges.” In some situations in which one award might charge you several hundred dollars in additional taxes and fees to book, it might not be a good idea even if it’s less miles. Of course, in this situation, saving $20 in taxes and fees with the second option isn’t worth the extra 42,500 miles.

The problem with United’s online award search:

As I mentioned earlier, United shows most, but not all Star Alliance flights. In particular, there are two airlines that get left out. The first, Shenzhen Airlines, is an airline that you or I will likely never fly unless we live in southern China. The second, Singapore Airlines, is generally considered one of the best airlines in the world, and connects major cities all over the world to Singapore. You do not want to miss a chance to fly Singapore Airlines for free.

While All Nippon Airways (ANA) is generally considered to have the best search engine for Star Alliance availability (in terms of yielding the most results), it’s also extremely difficult to use, and I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners. Instead, to make sure you’re not missing out on Singapore Airlines award space, I would recommend using the search engine for Aeroplan, the loyalty program of Air Canada. (Note that you will need to create a frequent flyer account with Aeroplan first before you can search).

Here’s an example of United’s award search engine showing no nonstop flights between Hanoi and Singapore:

While this itinerary isn’t terrible, it still is frustrating to not fly nonstop between two cities that are so close to each other. But here’s Air Canada’s search engine showing that there is indeed a nonstop flight on that date on Singapore Airlines:

You don’t have to worry about the 20,000 miles displayed next to the award; since you are booking it with your United miles, you’ll use the United rate for one-way travel in Southeast Asia (17,500 miles). You just have to call up the United MileagePlus service center and have them book the award for you.

“OK, but I don’t plan on flying anywhere near Singapore, so can’t I just search United?”

In theory, yes, but given that Singapore Airlines operates five fifth freedom routes (which is when an airline from one country transports passengers between two other countries), it’s often still important to check.

For example, if you were to use United’s award search engine to look for flights from Houston to Moscow, you would see that the fastest way to get there with your miles is by flying United from Houston to Frankfurt, then making a connecting flight to Moscow on Lufthansa:

However, by searching on Air Canada, you’ll see that you can fly nonstop from Houston to Moscow on Singapore Airlines:

Singapore Airlines offers the following fifth freedom flights: (flights that depart the US and go to a country that’s not Singapore)

New York (JFK) to Frankfurt (FRA)

San Francisco (SFO) to Hong Kong (HKG)

San Francisco (SFO) to Seoul (ICN)

Los Angeles (LAX) to Tokyo (NRT)

Houston (IAH) to Moscow (DME)

So if you think there’s a chance that one of those flights might be of use to you on your trip, it’s worth going beyond the United search engine to look for Singapore Airlines award space.

Pro tip: People often use “nonstop” and “direct” interchangeably when describing flights. They are NOT the same thing. A nonstop flight is just what it sounds like – it flies from one city to the other without stopping at any cities in between. A direct flight may stop at a city in between, but and then continue on using the same aircraft and flight number. For example, Singapore Airlines Flight 1 is considered a direct flight from San Francisco to Singapore, even though it stops at Hong Kong on the way. Either the San Francisco to Hong Kong leg or Hong Kong to Singapore leg would be considered nonstop, but not together. In other words, all nonstop flights are direct flights, but not all direct flights are nonstop flights.