Positioning Flights: Navigating the Skies

In the world of points and miles, there are a ton of tips and tricks that are employed in order to get the best bang for your buck. Some of these are niche tactics that can take a very long time to learn but some are easier than you may think. One of the simplest strategies to find the best award redemption is by taking what is known as a positioning flight.

Let’s break this down a bit. When most people begin to look for flights for their trip, they typically are looking at their home airport as the departure location. In doing so you can be costing yourself hundreds of additional dollars in airfare. The sad reality is that most airports, even if they have some scale to them, do not have great reward redemption value offers. I live in New Orleans with an international airport, yet I cannot find any international flights to Europe or other long haul destinations. Living in New Orleans does have one perk to it, it’s an hour flight to Atlanta and only a two and a half hour flight to New York. Both of these direct flights may add a little complexity to the itinerary, but can save you hundreds to thousands of dollars in value.

The two aforementioned airports are two of the largest in the world with tons of international flights departing every day. Every major airline has multiple flights to and from the heavy hitters like ATL, JFK, and ORD (to name a few). But why would I book a trip from a city that isn’t my own? The price difference with either points or dollars! Using myself as an example, we will look for some availability to Frankfurt (I’m actually flying there next month) from New Orleans International or MSY. Since I’ve done this multiple times, I already know it’s very difficult to find a decent reward flight itinerary, but let’s look anyway. 

For this quick demonstration we’ll use Air France whose Flying Blue membership partners with all the main credit companies. Plugging in some February dates you can see that Air France does not even show award availability from MSY! This can be the case all too often as these international airlines often only open award flights from their major hubs!

It's not uncommon to find little to no award availability from non-major airports!

Now once I set the departing airport as ATL, the options start to be a lot more plentiful. Below we see an option for as little as 15,000 miles! Some people reading this would have normally redeemed those miles for around $150 in cash back. Spending that low amount of miles is just about as good as it gets to get across the Atlantic. Now yes I would have to get to Atlanta, but as I said, that’s an easy and affordable option with plenty of other options. The key takeaway here is that there are some areas where you cannot even use your points and miles unless you have the knowledge of positioning flights! Why lose out on the ability to have your points pay for your travel?

15,000 miles without even utilizing a transfer bonus is amazing!

The cash price of the same flight!

The cash redemptions can function in a similar way with limited availability from one airport but plenty more at another. By using miles to find a flight from a major airport, not only will you save on the amount of miles you need, but your itinerary will be opened with loads more availability. Partner the miles savings and only the small amount of cash required for the positioning flight and I’m ready to take a few extra excursions while in Europe. It is worth noting that you’ll need some extra time as the position flight will be on a different trip confirmation and any issues with the other flight will not be considered for cancellations or delays. While this can be unfortunate, it’s pretty common to find positioning flights either the night before or hours before your primary flight is scheduled to take off.

With all of the potential savings but maybe some extra planning, would you ever consider taking a positioning flight?