Planning travel for 2021 and beyond can feel like playing darts blindfolded right now. While there’s hope that promising vaccines will bring travel roaring back, who really knows what next year will look like? Will you actually be able to take that trip?
We can’t blame you. Yet ironically, there’s probably never been a better time to book travel or start planning your future trips. That’s true if you’re paying cash for flights thanks to some dirt-cheap prices and some unprecedented flexibility to change plans if your trip can’t happen. But the advantages of booking trips with points and miles are even better.
Here’s why you need to shake off the dust and break out of your points paralysis.
And that’s great. But if you book a flight this week for a trip in 2021 and eventually decide to cancel, you’ll get a voucher to use within the next year. That’s certainly better than nothing. But here’s where using airline miles can shine.
Many major airlines are currently allowing free cancellation on award tickets, waiving the typical $50 to $150 redeposit fee. That means you can book a trip now and cancel it later to get your miles back free, as well as any taxes and fees you paid. For instance:
American Airlines recently ditched its award cancellation fees altogether. Previously, everyone except top-tier status holders had to pay the $150 redeposit fee to cancel an award ticket and get their AAdvantage miles back.
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Any award ticket booked with Delta SkyMiles by Dec. 31 can be easily canceled online for free to get your miles back. It’s one of the best ways to book travel right now. Unless if you’ve got top Delta Medallion status, that typically costs $150.
Ditto with Alaska Airlines, which is waiving its usual $125 redeposit fee to cancel an award ticket to get your miles back.
Southwest never charges a fee to cancel any flight, whether you book with Rapid Rewards points or
That’s just a small sample – the list of airlines waiving or eliminating fees to cancel an award ticket goes on and on. Canceling award tickets is typically quite easy: You can usually just make a call (or slide into your airline’s DMs) with your flight confirmation number and ask to cancel. Delta allows you to easily cancel award tickets booked with SkyMiles online.
This is no small matter. Free cancellation on award tickets means you can use your miles to speculatively book a trip for 2021 and hope for the best. If it doesn’t pan out, cancel and get your miles right back. This way, there’s no need to worry about putting an airline voucher to use if your plans change.
Unprecedented Award Availability
All the miles and flexible cancellation policies in the world don’t mean a thing if there are no flights to book. But perhaps the biggest silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel is the massive amounts of award space
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to book with miles – especially if you want to fly first or business class.
Over the last few months, we’ve found insane amounts of award availability and sent it to our Thrifty Traveler Premiummembers. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Almost daily availability for four or more passengers to fly Delta One suites to Tokyo for 60,000 Virgin Atlantic miles each way through summer 2021
Some of these routes and business class seats are hard to book with miles, period – at least in normal times. But these are not normal times. People aren’t redeeming miles, and the high-spending business class travelers are staying home for the foreseeable future. That means it’s truly easier than ever to lock down a fancy seat using miles.
Not interested in splurging for first or business class? That’s OK, because deals using miles to fly economy are plentiful, too.
We even unearthed a great new sweet spot to fly almost anywhere in Europe for just 30,000 Virgin Atlantic miles roundtrip. Thrifty Traveler Premium member Emma B. used that deal to book a surprise family trip to Italy next year.
Trouble on the Horizon?
There’s one more reason to seize the opportunities of booking with miles right now: Because they won’t last forever.
American travelers are hoarding their points and miles for a day when travel is easier. When that day finally comes, you can bet there will be massive changes in the landscape of points and miles – andmany of them will be bad for your miles.
“They’re not choosing to redeem them for online retail, which they could,” Chief Financial Officer Jeff Campbell said, Bloomberg reports. “They’re just stocking up the points to travel.”
Seth Miller at PaxEx.aero noticed the same thing among the major U.S. airlines. Travel may be way down, but travelers are still racking up American AAdvantage miles, Delta SkyMiles, and United MileagePlus miles at a healthy clip. But travelers just aren’t redeeming those miles.
At the same time, banks and airlines are flooding the market with points and miles through a shocking number of huge credit card offers.
That’s great for consumers looking to stockpile points for future travel. But in the big picture, it spells trouble down the road: More and more (and more and more) miles sitting unused is bad for the airlines. In the points and miles world, it’s the equivalent of inflation. And that means
Travelers who hoarded miles will rush to book travel once it’s safe and predictable, causing the current glut of award availability to evaporate as airlines pull back.
To offset that huge stash of miles in the market, airlines will eventually increase the cost of awards – called a devaluation. In some small ways, that’s already begun.
When will that happen? Only time will tell. But it means the current opportunities to use your points and miles have an expiration date.
Bottom Line
Before COVID-19, the mantra of every traveler using points and miles is “earn and burn.” Get the miles, redeem them, wash, rinse, repeat.
With travel so shaky right now, it’s gotten much harder to comfortably burn those miles. But fortune favors the bold. The ability to book so much award travel risk-free right now is your ticket to plan 2021 travel on points and miles.
