197. How to Find Saver Award Availability and Book Flights for Fewer Points

Points Talk®: Your Travel Dreams, Made Possible by Points

In this episode of Points Talk®, the hosts Alex, Jess, and Pam reveal how savvy travelers can book high-value flights for significantly fewe

Key takeaways

• Saver award space allows travelers to book the same flight as others but at drastically reduced point costs.
• Availability is limited and often tied to airline alliances, making partner bookings (like British Airways for American Airlines) key to finding deals.

Main topics

• What are Saver Award flights?
• How to find saver award availability across airline alliances

Notable quotes

"It's like the airline is having a sale. You're getting the exact same seat as other people, but for a very different, often lower price."

Conclusion

Finding saver award availability is not just luck—it's strategy. By knowing

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Have you ever wondered how some people book the exact same flight as everyone else but pay way fewer points? Today we're pulling back the curtain on saver award availability, showing you where to find it, and sharing some of our favorite sweet spots that can make your points go so much further. Speaker 3 (0:17) Welcome to Points Talk. We Speaker 2 (0:19) are three moms who've discovered how to leverage credit card welcome offers to get hundreds of thousands of dollars of travel expenses for nearly free. We've used credit card points and miles to take vacations to places like Hawaii, Paris, Greece, Maldives, Japan, and so much more. And the best part, we each still have 800 plus credit scores. Imagine being able to take the vacation of your dreams for nearly free. It's totally possible and we're here to show you how. Speaker 1 (0:48) Hey, I'm Alex. And I'm Pam, Alex's mom. And I'm Jess. Let's talk points. If you've ever wondered how people book flights for what seems like an unbelievable number of points, chances are they found Saver Award availability. In today's episode, we're breaking down exactly what Saver Awards are, how to find them, and we're sharing some of our favorite sweet spots so you can start booking that dream trip of yours for fewer points. All right, so what is Saver Award space? It's like a store is having a sale. It's like the airline is having a sale. Okay. So you're getting the exact same seat as other people, but for a very different, often lower price. These are typically the lowest price award seats issued by airlines. They're also limited in inventory. So usually like if you know you want to book a flight and you search and you see saver award availability, you want to lock it in because chances are it is not going to be available for very long. the sweet spot that partner airlines can usually access. Okay. So you know how we talk about booking American Airlines through British Airways. We talk about booking Alaska Airlines through British Airways because it's a lot easier to get British Airlines miles than it is to get American or Alaska miles. If you were to search British Airways for a flight from LA to Maui, and there was an American Airlines flight that appeared, that's a saver award. from American Airlines that they have now made available to partner airlines like British Airways. So that's just one example. There are so many examples when it comes to partners and alliances. That's why it's important to know, you know, which airlines are in alliances with which other airlines. And Speaker 2 (2:29) here is why it matters. Which plug for our transfer partner cheat sheet. Speaker 1 (2:33) Yes. Which we should, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. We have a transfer partner cheat sheet that is free that lists. all the airlines, their alliances, what banks transfer to them. So it's your one-stop shop when you're thinking, can Speaker 2 (2:47) I transfer my points from this bank to this airline? Speaker 1 (2:50) Now you know. All right, here's why it matters. It makes business class seats a lot more attainable for people. If you can find a Sabre business class fare, it's usually a really great deal. And so if you're new to business class or if you're like, I don't have enough points, to pay 100,000 miles for every business class flight I fly, Saver Awards are going to be your best friend. Like I said, it gives you access to partner bookings and it can often save you tens of thousands of miles. So another example is United especially has really incentivized people to hold their credit cards. And a lot of that is because if you hold a United card, you get access to more. saver award space than non-cardholders. So as an example, you know, a Polaris business class flight from Houston to London, I've seen those for 295,000 United miles. Okay. I would never pay 295,000 United miles. Ted has a United quest card, log into his account, do a search exact same flight, 80,000 miles. So at 295,000 miles, that flight is a non-starter for me. At 80,000 miles, that just became a lot more doable. Some people may see that and think, okay, I'm still not paying 80,000 miles, but I'm assuming you'd rather pay 80,000 than 295,000. So yeah, I'll pay 80,000 for Speaker 2 (4:19) United Polaris. Speaker 1 (4:20) Heck yeah, 80,000 miles for an ice cream sundae in the sky. It's Speaker 2 (4:24) a Speaker 1 (4:24) deal. Speaker 2 (4:26) If you want more Points Talk, you'll love Points Talk Premium, bonus episodes, insider content, and more. Subscribe in the show notes or at pointstalk.supercast.com. Okay, what if you can't find Saver Awards? Because, you know, they're the hot commodity out there. They don't just pop up all the time. You know, when we find them, we jump on them. So if you can't find them, like I said, they're harder to find. Inventory is controlled by management. So the airlines, they are wanting you to pay the most amount for their flights. This is a business. They're trying to make money. So if they can sell the seats for cash, that's what they're going to do. If they can sell them for a higher amount of points, that's what they're going to do. So those factors are really going to affect the availability. It depends on, I don't know how the airlines figure it all out, but they've got some major algorithms that they work with to help them decide. Should we drop this price or should we make saver awards available for this route or this flight? And it all comes down to them. Now, some things that will impact that are the route popularity. It is going to be more difficult to find saver awards maybe on the most popular route that they fly. If they're consistently able to sell those at a cash rate, they might not open as much saver award availability. I think it also will happen like for myself, you know, if you're flying out of a smaller airport and there's not very many of those flights, you can have the opposite where they're like, this is a hot commodity because there's not very many options. There's not competition. And I think that's why we find so much more saver award availability out of airports like JFK. It's because there's so many flights going out of there. You have a lot of competition between the different airlines. And so. They're all trying to get it there. Everybody's business. Whereas me coming out of Salt Lake City, I've got one option if I want to get a direct flight to Paris and that's on Delta. And they know that they know like, OK, this person, if they want to get this, they're going to have to pay a pretty penny for it. So those will depend, you know, factor things in their time of year is going to be an important factor. That's why you see a lot more saver award availability off peak holidays, days of the week. how full the flight is. I've noticed myself that I feel like whenever I'm trying to travel home on a Sunday, whether I'm paying cash, whether it's points, it's usually more because everybody's like, I got to get home for work on Monday. And so I try when possible to not fly on Sundays to save either money or points. That's even for a simple domestic flight. I've run into that. So just keep in mind, if you're not finding saver award space. It does not mean that you're doing something wrong. It's very up to the airline gods up high in their towers deciding, all right, how much are we going to work this out for? So another thing that could be helpful for you when you are trying to snag saver award space is knowing when airlines release their saver seats. So for most airlines, the first seats, maybe, for example, Qatar releases two saver awards on Qatar Q Suite. when their schedule's released. So knowing when these seats become available and booking them right when the schedule comes out is really going to help your odds of snagging these Saver Award seats. So it varies by airline when they open up those seats, but it's around 330 to 360 days before departure. And then as the departure date gets closer, if they're not selling out, and they still have a bunch of seats available, that's when they will open up additional seats. Like if you listen to last week's episode, Jess talked about how she got that thrifty traveler alert for 60,000 miles for business class to Paris when before she, that was not an option. And so they realized, hey, we have a lot of seats available. We need to start filling this plane. And so you can have good luck. as you're getting closer into your flight. So keep a look on things or keep a look at those, those fares and those rates, and you could possibly rebook. I know you've done that a lot, mom, lately. Yeah, Speaker 3 (8:42) I've done. You know, I want to tell you one time that it didn't work for me because I was positive that this was going to work. So I was flying from when I, on my last trip, going over to London for the Harry Styles concert. That sounds so weird for me to say, but it Speaker 2 (9:01) was. Things you never thought you would be Speaker 3 (9:03) doing. The things I never thought I'd be Speaker 2 (9:04) doing, yes. Speaker 3 (9:05) 70-year-old woman. So anyway, Speaker 2 (9:06) yeah. Speaker 3 (9:07) Anyway, I had a flight that I was positioning to, well, I was going from Denver with a stop in LAX and then on. My daughter Kelly was on this flight from Denver direct to London. I thought, I know I can get on that. I'm just going to wait till the last minute. I'll be able to get on it. And I kept looking and I saw all this. I mean, she was flying economy. I'm planning to fly business. I'm looking and I'm looking. There's tons of business class flights and I'm going, they're going to, you know, release these. I know they will, you know, and we get day, you know. closer and closer, even to the last day. And there still is a fair amount of business class seats and they never released them. And I'm going, what the heck? And then I suddenly realized that, you know, I guess they just didn't on this route. And so you can't always plan that they're going to release them at the last minute. Maybe this is the only direct flight they have from Denver. Maybe historically they do sell a lot at the last. And I think I did finally check that morning and they had sold a few more. So, you know, there was my thing that just totally bummed me out. Speaker 2 (10:16) Well, and also, too, that could be a situation where maybe they're releasing them for people to upgrade. Right. Paying cash to upgrade their economy seat or something like that, which is also an option too. But the points availability wasn't there. But maybe it's like, hey, upgrade to business class for $800 or something. But I was not willing to book that. No, Speaker 3 (10:39) no, no. Because then you run the risk. Yeah. You run a risk for sure. I was not willing to do that. So yeah. So sometimes all the things that we think, the way that we think the saver. award will manifest. Sometimes everything we know, it still doesn't. And that was my time. I Speaker 2 (10:58) think it's just one of those things. You don't just assume the price today is the final price and never check back. You know, I'm in the process right now of trying to get flights for next summer for my family to Croatia. And the flight prices right now, their economy and they're not, they're fine. They're fine. But I'm like, I have a full year. You know, maybe I'm running, maybe I'm rolling the dice here and I should just book these economy flights. But I'm like, we have a year I can, I'm hoping that premium economy or business class will drop in price. And if not, then hopefully economy will stay or go lower. Cause it's not, it's around 40 something, maybe even 50,000. And I think that's kind of a lot to pay for a KLM flight. It's through KLM. And I'm like. I'm going to wait and see if more saver award availability opens up because I'm giving myself a full year. This was in a couple months. I'd be like, sheesh, I better book this. You know, even six months, I don't have the chill to wait at that point. I'm like, I just want it done and over with. But that's the nice thing, too, about when you start planning early, you give yourself that flexibility to keep watching and see if that saver award availability pops up. You know, just a little side Speaker 3 (12:12) thing, just since you brought this up, I did book our trip, our flights to there. But Speaker 2 (12:18) I Speaker 3 (12:19) used a Thrifty Traveler alert that talked about Iberia to Madrid. So, I mean, it's a little longer flight, but it's just your dad and I'm not dragging, you know, four little boys around. So we actually had that one part. booked and there was a transfer bonus too. So I think we're paying like 40,000. from, I'm trying to think where we're flying out. Well, Speaker 2 (12:43) thanks Speaker 3 (12:43) for sharing the news. We Speaker 2 (12:44) maybe could have gone with