Points Got Us a $43K Trip for Just $1,314 - Part 2

How do we get home when booking award flights? This I am finding is one of the hardest parts about booking using points. Most experts always tell you to search one-way, as makes it easier to find award availability. However, it's frustrating because you do this and find a flight to get to where you want to get, you get all excited, and then you start searching award availability from your destination to get home, and nothing.

As I said in Part 1, the experts say to book right when airlines release availability, the approx. 360 days in advance as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, but if you're going for a 2 week trip, and you can't book your return flight just yet, you don't want to just book your departing flight, without knowing if you could get home.

As a result, we needed to wait until about 330 days out, basically beginning of May, so this way we could see a months worth of availability, up to beginning of April, to show us flights for the way home.

Luckily coming home using points was the easier option when booking this trip. In fact, I built this trip around the flights I found for coming home as I found flights departing Barcelona Spain via Qatar Airways.

Again we used seats.aero to confirm award availability, with it showing us American Airlines has business class seats available on the way home in the beginning of April.

Now why is American Airlines a good thing to see when I don't have any AA points? Well because they are part of the Oneworld Alliance, in which British Airways is also part of, which means I can use Avios points, which I can convert to FROM my RBC Avion points!

Knowing what partner airlines are part of the Oneworld Alliance allows you to then possibly find flights, which is why I knew I could search other Oneworld Alliance airlines to see if I could book the American Airlines flight through them.

Which is how I ended up booking an American Airlines flight home from Spain using Qatar Airways website!

I also ended up searching and booking on Qatar Airways website for flights vs. British Airways as BA had very high fees. You can also try Iberia Airways and Aer Lingus as Avios is used by these loyalty programs as well.

In the end, Qatar was showing award availability for this flight, and the fees were the lowest, which is how I booked us 3 LYLE Travelers all business class seats on the American Airlines flight from Barcelona BCN to New York JFK, for just 186,000 Avios points + $586.57 EUR in fees.

Now, why didn't I book direct to Detroit DTW, which is the closest airport to where we live; Windsor, ON?

Well, as you can see, when I search flights from Barcelona on flightconnections.com, their are no direct flights to Detroit, only to Chicago, New York. Boston and some others.

I did search flights home to Chicago and Boston, but New York was only city that was showing award availability, or showed the lowest amount of points needed.

Note, I did look into flying into Toronto as well, however, Air Canada is only airline that flies this route (Barcelona to Toronto), and Air Canada flights use dynamic pricing, meaning, the points needed will fluctuate depending on supply and demand.

And usually the points required are extremely high, which they were in this case as well.

This is why when booking through Air Canada's Aeroplan, so that you can use Aeroplan points, it is only good when booking a flight on partner airline. Which was why and how we booked our departing flight to Spain from Detroit, and you can read all the details here; Points Got Us a $43K Trip for Just $1,314 - Part 1, as we are flying on Lufthansa, which is a partner airline; part of the Star Alliance, and points aren't priced dynamically, but based on distance as per Air Canada's Aeroplan flight award chart.

Which as you can see below, when flying on a partner airline to the Atlantic zone, specifically where Madrid is located, with the distance being between 4,001 and 6,000 miles, it will only cost 70,000 points, which is what we paid for each of our business class seats on our Lufthansa flight.

I actually ended up using points only, so that I didn't have to pay anything out of pocket, which as you can see above, the fees for this flight were $388.80 CAD, but I wouldn't always recommend doing this as you are effectively redeeming your points at 1 cent per point (cpp), which is not good, considering I redeemed Aeroplan points for this exact flight for over 6 cpp (total cost of the flight was $15,416.94 CAD, and Aeroplan points used were 248,880).

Since we flew out of Detroit, getting back to Detroit was quite simple, as their are tons of flights from New York's JFK to Detroit DTW, and we found a flight home, departing a couple of hours after we landed from Barcelona, on Delta Airlines.

Funny enough, I had gone ahead and converted 36,000 of my American Express US Membership Rewards points to Delta Flying Miles, which they convert at 1:1 ratio, to book this flight, which was going to cost 36,000 Delta Flying Miles. Not realizing that their was a 30% transfer bonus going on with Virgin Atlantic, and you can book Delta flights via Virgin Atlantic, as they are part of the same alliance; SkyTeam. Finding Delta flights on Virgin's website is quite easy, as since they are partners, they regularly show their partners award availability.

Plus, sometimes the points required on Virgin Airways are even less then what is showing on Delta's website, which in this case it was. So, I decided to take advantage of this, by transferring 18,000 American Express US Membership Rewards points, to Virgin, and with the 30% bonus, I now had 23,400 Virgin points, which was all I needed to book a Delta flight for the 3 of us for just 22,500 points from New York JFK to Detroit DTW.

What do you think about that!!??