FAQs

We use a proprietary mix of systems, expertise, technology and contacts together with our intimate knowledge of almost every airline, travel credit card and frequent flyer mileage program, to identify open frequent flyer award seats that an online search or regular airline agent will never find. In addition, we are road warriors who have collectively been to virtually every corner of the world and have actually sampled all major airlines' first or business class. As a result, we are eminently qualified to locate hard to find First and Business Class award seats for you – and to determine the best available and least expensive options for you to enjoy the supreme comfort and style of upper class air travel.

We are NOT travel agents. This means that we do not work for or on behalf of the airlines or frequent flyer programs, and we are not paid a commission by the airlines or frequent flyer programs. Instead we work solely for you and are paid by you for assisting you in locating and arranging the booking of award seats.

We are NOT mileage brokers. This means we do not buy miles from others, and then sell them to you, which violates the rules of virtually all frequent flyer programs. This could subject your award tickets to cancellation and seizure by the airline and/or frequent flyer program. Beware of mileage brokers that may tell you differently or who tell you that there is no law against buying and selling miles. While there maybe is no such “law,” every frequent flyer program has its own rules – and buying and selling miles virtually always violates these rules. When we help you purchase miles, however, you will be buying them from either your own credit card, or from the frequent flyer program directly – which is expressly authorized and encouraged by their rules.

We are NOT ticket consolidators. This means that we do not purchase seats in large volumes at lower-than-published fares and then re-sell them to the public.

We use a proprietary mix of systems, expertise, technology and contacts together with our intimate knowledge of almost every airline, travel credit card and frequent flyer program, to identify open frequent flyer award seats that an online search or regular airline agent will never find. In addition, we are road warriors who have collectively been to virtually every corner of the world and have actually sampled all major airlines' first or business class. As a result, we are eminently qualified to locate hard to find First and Business Class award seats for you – and to determine the best available and least expensive options for you to enjoy the supreme comfort and style of upper class air travel.

Absolutely. In fact, we encourage you to do so – where you will most likely quickly realize just how difficult and frustrating a process it is. Without our expertise, you may very likely be told there are no seats available to fulfill your request (by far the most common response), or be offered a much less desirable or comfortable routing (which you may not realize). Worse, you may overpay in miles by up to FOUR TIMES the minimum amount of miles required, as well as overpay in out of pocket airline fees and taxes by up to FIVE TIMES the minimum amount required – a total waste of your precious, hard-earned, frequent flyer miles and dollars.

For example, a client recently came to us looking to book four award seats for her and her family in business class from New York to Kenya. The client first called a booking agent at Continental Airlines’ frequent flyer program to assist her with this. The agent then presented the client with the best options she could locate – four business class seats for a total of 800,000 miles! The client decided to contact us before booking these tickets – and it’s a good thing she did. We were able to find her four business class seats on a much better airline, with much better and more comfortable seats, service, food and drink – and on a more direct route – for a total of just 400,000 miles - a HUGE savings over the best option found by the airline agent!

In another example, let’s say you want to fly roundtrip from New York to London on Virgin Airlines’ Upper Class. If you contacted Virgin directly, they would require 90,000 miles plus approximately $500 in taxes and surcharges. If you instead contacted BookMyAward, we could book this exact same seat for you in Virgin upper class– but for only 63,000 miles and $0 in taxes or surcharges – a savings of 27,000 miles and approximately $500!*

These examples go on and on.

*Examples valid at the time of this posting.

Most travel agents simply will not book award tickets. Sometimes they lack the know-how, other times they are simply not interested in using frequent flyer miles. Regardless, even those who claim to be able to book award tickets almost always lack the in-depth knowledge and expertise required to find you the tough-to-locate award seats or to make sure you are getting the best return when using frequent flyer miles, both in terms of cost and experience.

In many cases, the further in advance of departure (usually up to 11 months) that you look to book your award tickets, the wider your range of possibilities will be. That said, availability is extremely dynamic and does change rapidly. We suggest contacting us as soon as your travel plans are concrete. If for some reason we can’t find something to your liking, we’ll guide you as to when is best to contact us again.

Our goal is to make initial contact for all non-urgent requests generally within 24 – 72 hours.

Our goal is to help you maximize the value of your hard earned frequent flyer miles. This almost always means that you should save your miles for use on longer flights and for Business Class or First Class seats only. So, for example, you could use 25,000 miles to fly from say Denver to New York in economy class - for a ticket that would otherwise cost you as little as $375 to purchase. This would value each of your miles at just a penny and half. ($375 / 25,000) We, however, would suggest that you would be much better off purchasing your Denver-New York ticket with money and save your miles for when you want to fly roundtrip from say New York to London in a fully flat bed in Business Class for just 63,000 miles – a ticket that would cost you nearly $10,000 if you bought it from the airline. Saving your miles for this trip would value each of your miles at over fifteen cents ($10,000 / 63,000) - a whopping 10 times better value than the above Denver-New York example! There are many other examples just like this.

It depends which frequent flyer program you use. Most allow 1-2 destinations. A few allow several. Some allow more stops if you are willing to use more miles.

If you’d like to book an economy class ticket (for the kids, perhaps) using frequent flyer miles in conjunction with some international or long-haul domestic First or Business Class seats, it would be our pleasure to help. In addition, in special circumstances we can take a look at economy options, such as where there just are no First or Business Class award seats available. Overall, however, it is our policy not to book these awards, as we believe doing so is not only very expensive, but a terrible waste of your hard earned miles.

Yes, however, we strongly suggest that you contact us before you buy your ticket.

It all depends where you want to go and in what class. An international Business Class award seat generally requires 100,000 miles. A domestic, long haul First Class award seat (example, a Los Angeles to New York round-trip) generally requires 50,000 – 70,000 miles.

Yes. We can help you purchase miles from either your own credit card or from the frequent flyer program directly, as they both expressly authorize and encourage these purchases.

For example, often times you may be able to purchase all the miles you need for a Business Class award ticket for LESS THAN the cost of buying an economy class ticket from the airlines!

Even better, you can often purchase all the miles you need for a First Class award ticket for almost 1/10th the cost of buying a First Class ticket from the airlines! For example, we have helped many clients purchase $2,500 worth of miles and used them to book a First Class award seat selling for $20,000! Of course, the terms and pricing vary by program, so contact us for details.

We can help you purchase miles from either your own credit card or from the frequent flyer program directly, as they both expressly authorize and encourage these purchases.

For example, often times you may be able to purchase all the miles you need for a Business Class award ticket for LESS THAN the cost of buying an economy class ticket from the airlines!

Even better, you can often purchase all the miles you need for a First Class award ticket for almost 1/10th the cost of buying a First Class ticket from the airlines! For example, we have helped many clients purchase $2,500 worth of miles and used them to book a First Class award seat selling for $20,000! Of course, the terms and pricing vary by program, so contact us for details.

Absolutely! American Express Membership Rewards Points are some of the most flexible. Great value is often to be had in using them for airline travel if you have the right guidance and advice. In fact, we recommend that you accumulate as many American Express Membership Rewards Points as possible.

Absolutely! American Express Starwood Points are some of the most flexible. Great value is often to be had in using them for airline travel if you have the right guidance and advice. In fact, if you use this card, we recommend that you also use an American Express card that earns Membership Rewards Points, and that you do about half of all of your spending on each card.

Absolutely! Great value is often to be had in using them for airline travel if you have the right guidance and advice.

Sure. We work regularly with different credit card programs. Note, however, that the rules and flexibility of each program varies. We generally recommend that you use travel- related credit cards, such as American Express, Diners Club, Starwood American Express, and any other travel-branded credit cards like United, Continental, American Airlines, British Airways Visas and Mastercards.

The short answer is maybe, depending on what you’re looking to do and the rules of the programs. Contact us with specific cases for guidance.

The short answer is rarely, depending on what you’re looking to do and the rules of the programs. Contact us with specific cases for guidance.

Please see our No Risk Pricing policy for a full description of our pricing.

Absolutely nothing! In other words, there is absolutely no risk to you to send us your proposed itinerary to see what options we can come up with for you.

We do not charge you for our service until you have approved an itinerary, and your tickets have actually been booked. In other words, there is absolutely no risk to you to send us your proposed itinerary to see what options we can come up with for you.

Every airline assesses some amount for taxes, fees and/or fuel surcharges on top of the miles it charges for award tickets. These can range from as low as $2.50 for a domestic award, to a few hundred dollars, or can sometimes add up to a thousand dollars or more per award ticket. Some airlines charge close-in fees (for tickets booked within 21 days of departure, usually $25-$75), and some charge award redemption fees ($20-$75). Again, though, one of the really valuable things we do for you is determine the best strategy to minimize these additional fees, taxes and surcharges, which can otherwise add up to thousands of dollars out of your pocket.

Definitely. For example, often times you may be able to buy all the miles you need for a Business Class award ticket for LESS THAN the cost of buying an economy class ticket from the airlines! Even better, you can often purchase all the miles you need for a First Class award ticket for almost 1/10th the cost of buying a First Class ticket from the airlines! For example, we have helped many clients purchase $2,500 worth of miles and used them to book a First Class award seat selling for $20,000! Of course, the terms and pricing vary by program, so contact us for details.

Besides the fact that you get a much more comfortable, spacious and private seat to stretch out in – there are many: No baggage fees. Priority check in. Priority security line passage. Priority boarding. Complimentary upper class lounge access, including complimentary food and drink. Complimentary (and often very good) in flight meal service. Finally, if you need to cancel an award ticket, your miles are, often fully refundable back to your frequent flyer account, with the payment of a modest reinstatement fee (typically $150-$250 per ticket). Compare this with the frustration of being stuck with a non-refundable ticket purchased from the airlines.

The answer is that it depends on the specific terms and conditions of your frequent flyer program. Generally, the frequent flyer program will usually assess a fee of anywhere between $0 and $250 dollars per ticket to make any changes. Please note that many airlines and/or frequent flyer programs do not allow any changes whatsoever to your award itinerary after your intial departure, and some do not allow changes within a minimum period of time before your initial departure.

If you would like us to make the changes for you, we charge 50% of our per ticket service fee for this service. The reason for this charge is that we essentially need to start the process all over of locating new award seat options for you and then re-booking them - a very time consuming process. Please see our No Risk Pricing policy for our pricing.

The answer is that it depends on the specific terms and conditions of your frequent flyer program. Generally, the frequent flyer program will charge you a cancellation fee of between $25-$250 per ticket, but they will refund you most all of the taxes, fees and surcharges that they charged at the time of booking. They will either refund your miles back to your frequent flyer account, or give you a specific time to re-use the award ticket in the future (subject to award seat availability). BookMyAward’s service fee, however, is non-refundable. You can either cancel the award tickets yourself, or we can assist you with the cancellation process for a small per ticket cancellation fee. Please see our No Risk Pricing policy for our pricing.

Just as with any regular airline ticket this is generally the responsibility of the airline to find your bags and deliver them to you. Check your airline’s policy regarding lost luggage.

This will depend on the rules of the frequent flyer program and/or the airline you are flying, but in most cases this will require the re-booking of some or all of the flights on your itinerary – subject to the availability of award seats. This is a very serious situation so please take all precautions to avoid this. In scenarios where you have legitimate extenuating circumstances that caused you to miss this flight, you will often be re-accommodated by the airline and/or your frequent flyer program on their next departure with available award seats. Of course, this is not guaranteed, and you remain subject to the terms and conditions of the frequent flyer program and/or the airline you are flying. If you miss an initial flight on either your outbound or your return, we recommend that you immediately report to the customer service counter of the airline that operated the flight that you missed and politely ask them to assist you in re-booking the award seats that you missed. If they are unwilling or unable to do so, please contact us immediately - preferably by phone. We will attempt to assist you in an emergency re-booking your award seats.

This will depend on the rules of the frequent flyer program and/or the airline you are flying. In scenarios where you have legitimate extenuating circumstances that prevent you from getting to the connection flight on time – such as due to the delay of the prior flight - you will often be re-accommodated by the airline and/or your frequent flyer program on the next departure with available award seats. If you miss a connection flight you should immediately report to the customer service counter of the airline that operated the delayed flight. That airline is generally responsible to re-book you on the next available flight(s) - in the same or similar class(es) of service – in order to get you to your final destination. Of course, this is not guaranteed, and you remain subject to the terms and conditions of the frequent flyer program and/or the airline you are flying. If they are unwilling or unable to do so, please contact us immediately - preferably by phone. We will attempt to assist you in an emergency re-booking your award seats.

Travel insurance is always a good idea. Baggage gets lost, flights get delayed, trips get cancelled, medical emergencies happen. That said, to buy insurance simply to protect against losses arising from the cancellation of award tickets doesn’t always make sense. While some insures do protect against such mileage losses and fees, many don’t. Even for those that do, you usually will recover nothing but the miles and the change fees (which are often only $0 - $250 per ticket), and between the cost of the insurance and the time involved in filing a claim, it’s not necessarily worthwhile. That said, it is our recommendation to always to have travel insurance – and if you’re buying it, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have one that covers any costs related to your award tickets.