The credit cards currently in my wallet

In the world of points and miles earning it is important to do a status check of your credit card situation every so often. This means literally looking in your wallet and seeing what you’ve got in there. I find that over time, with all the cards I’m signing up for, the number of cards in my wallet tends to grow, so I personally need to do some maintenance every couple months just to keep me walking upright!

Whenever I have a credit card with minimum spend that I need to meet, I always make that my first in wallet. Beyond that though is the regular group of cards I keep in there, the list of which, and the reasons why I keep them, is below in the order they are used:

1. Citi Forward for Students – 5 Thank You points per $1 at restaurants/bars (6.65 cents)

As a 20-something in the big city, most of my discretionary spend is going out to eat or drink. This Citi Forward card earns 5x at those places! Thank You points can be used to purchase airfare and other types of travel on Citi’s travel site where they have a value of 1 cent apiece.

I also have the Citi ThankYou Premier, which automatically makes each of my Thank You points worth 1.33 cents (this is about to change to 1.25 cents in October) if I spend them on air travel, even if I earned the Thank You points with another card. So the 5x I earn at restaurants on Citi Forward is really 6.65 points.

This card is technically only available for students, but I know multiple people who have signed up and chosen “Graduate” in the student box and have received this without issue.

No annual fee, so you can keep this card forever!

2. Capital One Spark Cash – 2% cash back on all purchases

For my non-category spend, this card simply cannot be beat. 2% cash back on everything, and it’s a Visa so it’s accepted everywhere. It’s technically a business card but I signed up using my personal social security number as the tax ID and had no problems.

No annual fee the first year, but $59 after that. It’s such a great card I’ll probably just pay it. It’s that awesome.

3. Amex Blue Cash – 3% cash back at grocery stores

The only time I ever use this card is at grocery stores, but it’s valuable there. There is an annual fee version that earns 6% cash back at grocery stores, but I don’t like annual fees.

No annual fee on this one.

4. Amex Platinum

The only spending I do on this card is on car rentals because Amex Platinum has fantastic insurance coverage. The reason I keep this in my wallet though is for the lounge access, which I can get at American, Delta, and US Airways lounges on the day I travel (regardless of who I’m flying).

No annual fee the first year via the Ameriprise link, but $450 thereafter.

I stand by United Airlines

It seems every other blogger out there just hates on United Airlines nonstop. They complain about bad delays, poor service, and old planes, among other things. Yes, you can have a bad experience on any airline, but it seems like everyone is always having bad experiences on United. And until recently I agreed with how the other bloggers felt and really have avoided United unless it makes clear sense ot fly it. But I’ve changed my mind.

I’d like to take a moment to defend what I believe is now a great airline. Now, United is not exactly the Bad News Bears needing saving from the mighty Yankees. Actually, as the largest airline in the world, they’re pretty much the Yankees in that story. But still, everyone could use a little love sometimes.

My most recent United experience

Ironically, it was my Labor Day weekend from hell that has brought me to my newfound love of United.  

8/30 – RIC-ORD

Friday night I was scheduled to leave Richmond at 6pm to O’Hare where I would meet up with my girlfriend and travel on to New Orleans with her. We boarded at the regular time but were immediately deplaned thanks to a ground stop at O’Hare due to thunderstorms. Why we boarded the plane in the first place when a ground stop was in effect, I’m unsure, but this ended up being the least of my concerns.

I had built in 3.5 hours to layover in Chicago, so even with two hours of delays I was still going to be fine. Even so, I brought my ticket to the United agent to see if they would get me a seat on a flight tomorrow just in case. It was a shot in the dark; no airline in my experience has been willing to do that unless you’re cancelled or actually going to miss your connection. Amazingly, the agent was more than happy to protect me on flights the next morning. Not only that, she protected my girlfriend too, despite her ticket not being affected by my delay. I was shocked but very happy.

We boarded a second time around 9pm but were held at the gate. The crew was upbeat and passed out water and snacks while answering questions from concerned passengers about their connections. The ground stop continued and we had to get off again. The agents had remained at the gate and began to process every remaining passenger’s flight changes, all the while maintaining fantastic attitudes.

When the flight was finally cancelled at 11pm, they were all very apologetic but obviously there was nothing they could do. They had put people on other airlines or other flights as best they could, and remained after the cancellation to continue doing so.

8/31 – RIC-ORD (Take 2)

The next morning I came back to the airport and the ticket agent recognized me from the night before and volunteered to put me and my girlfriend together on our ORD-MSY flight, as well as get me a far-up seat for my RIC-ORD flight so I could get off quickly. This time around we actually got off the ground!

After landing I got off the plane to wait for my gate-check bag. While I was waiting, the flight attendant came running up the jet bridge to hand me my Kindle that I had left in the seatback pocket. I was incredibly impressed at her hustle but also at the fact that she remembered I was reading a Kindle and knew who to give it to.

8/31 – ORD-MSY

For some reason my girlfriend had been unable to check in for her flight online, so I tweeted @United and they took care of it within minutes and sent her her boarding pass. Amazing. Especially since only a year ago United wasn’t even using Twitter to interact with customers.

After a great few hours in the brand new United club in terminal F (best plane views of any lounge I’ve been to yet), we went to the gate to board our New Orleans flight, only to discover that the plane had a mechanical issue and had to be taken out of service. Luckily there was another plane available that we were moved to, so we only ended up leaving about 30 minutes late.

9/2 – IAH-ORD/DCA

On the return, my girlfriend was again unable to check in for her flight, a problem quickly solved again by the United Twitter team. My flight had a mechanical issue discovered after we boarded, so for the third time in a weekend I had to deplane and wait. I was worried about not making it onto another flight that night so I tweeted @United and they protected me on the last flight of the night. Saved me a phone conversation (United’s phone reps are not nearly as helpful as their airport staff) and gave me peace of mind while I waited. We ended up departing about two hours late.

The staff on board, as had been the case with every previous flight that weekend, were courteous and threw a little fun into the delay announcements. They were also understanding of upset passengers and passed out water while we waited for info.

My conclusions

Operationally, United still leaves a good amount to be desired. The planes that had mechanical delays had been on the ground before the issues were discovered, so it annoyed me that in one case I had to board for basically no reason, and in the other that were in not for a stroke of luck our flight would have been cancelled with very little time for recourse. Additionally, the weather in Chicago and the ground stop were known about before boarding on Friday evening, and therefore I don’t think we ever should have boarded the plane. And given the severity of the storms, the fact that they took so long to cancel it really made no sense to me.

But what United lacks in operational excellence, it has gone above and beyond to make up for with incredible customer service. I am not an elite flyer on United but at all times I felt I was treated like one. Very rarely has an airline, even one I do have status with, gone the extra mile as United did for me at pretty much every point during the trip.

I was also very impressed with United’s airport product. I am used to their dingy old chairs, no outlets anywhere, and just generally gross-looking gate areas. But they have completely upgraded even their smaller airports like New Orleans to be outfitted beautifully. And their clubs all look brand new.

So in the end I don’t think United is as terrible as everyone says it is. I recommend giving the airline another shot.

Trip Review: DC to Cape Cod (BWI to BOS)

This past weekend I took a trip with some buddies up to the Cape to a friend’s house in Orleans. Obviously with the Cape being the best vacation spot in the contiguous world, that part was awesome. This review will focus on the travel portion of the journey.

Westin BWI Parking - Outbound

On Thursday evening we drove up from DC to BWI. Parking at the airport is $10-$12 a day, and with the long weekend being 4 parking days, onsite parking could have quickly made BWI cost-prohibitive for flying. When traveling out of Dulles I had previously used AirportParkingReservations.com to find offsite parking a number of times with great success (FYI the Hilton Dulles has a great lot and shuttle system for getting to and from IAD), so I used the site again at BWI. Make sure to search “Airport Parking Reservations coupons” on Google before booking to find a code to get the $5 booking fee waived. You can use any airport code’s coupon, not just the one you’re flying out of.

We found parking at the Westin BWI for $6.50 a day, and this included an on-demand shuttle to and from the airport. Parking and payment at the front desk was very quick, and the shuttle was literally waiting for us when we walked outside. The driver was courteous and took us directly to the airport, which was about a 5 minute drive.

AirTran – BWI-BOS

We used our Southwest miles to book this flight for Friday, but at the last minute switched to Thursday for the same price. The no change fees on Southwest make their miles some of the most valuable to me. With the switch to Thursday, we were also switched from a Southwest to an AirTran flight, which I loved because the one thing I hate about Southwest is that they don’t assign seats and our flight on AirTran would have assigned seats. Seriously though, the cattle-rush onto Southwest planes to grab seats is one of the least enjoyable things in all of air travel. When you book an AirTran flight with your Southwest miles, you’re assigned a seat when you check in, and you change it once you get to the airport.

Even though our flight was at 8:55pm, when we arrived at the gate at 8:10 we were rushed onto the plane. I asked the agent whether the flight was leaving at 8:55 and if we could move seats and he told me they were going to get us out in the next 10 minutes and that it was a completely full flight. Assuming we were some of the last passengers to board since we were only 10 minutes from departure, I was surprised to see a nearly completely empty plane when we walked on. I was also surprised to discover that not only were we not departing at 8:20, we in fact were going to be departing after our 8:55 scheduled departure time to make sure the late-connecting passengers made it on this last flight of the day. Surely the gate agent must have known when he rushed us onto the plane that we were going to be waiting for those passengers. I was pretty pissed to have to sit on the plane for an entire hour before we pushed back.

The plane itself was another story. For those unaware, AirTran was purchased by Southwest a couple years ago. At the moment the AirTran planes are being phased out, either being converted to Southwest planes (737s) or being sold to Delta (717s). If you had to guess, which of these planes do you think they’d take better care of? If you guessed the planes they were keeping, you’d be right. Unfortunately for us, we weren’t on one of those. This 717 was about as decrepit as a Western-built jet gets. My left armrest was disgorged like someone was digging inside the plastic, and my seat was reclined and wouldn’t come upright. On final approach the flight attendant asked me to bring it up. When I showed her it was broken she didn’t believe me and made me press the button again to see if anything would happen. As if I’m trying to pull some huge prank on AirTran by getting an extra 4 minutes of reclining in…

Hertz – BOS

I don’t know what it is about Hertz, their shuttles just seem to take forever. We waited about 20 minutes for ours to arrive when we got out to the ground transportation area of Terminal E. What makes Hertz look even worse than it maybe should though is that every other car rental company’s shuttle passes by 2-3 times while you’re waiting. I wonder how many people have switched reservations mid-wait on a whim. The car we got was a 2014 Nissan Versa, which was clean and functioned well, so no complaints there.

Southwest – BOS-BWI

While I might hate Southwest’s boarding process (and the fact that you have to check in exactly 24 hours before your flight to get a good boarding number), I do love their product. Nearly every employee I interact with is always courteous and friendly, and I appreciate that they’ve got a sense of humor about how sucky the travel process can be sometimes. The flight went off without a hitch, and we even enjoyed some Sour Patch Kids along the way thanks to our tall friend Sam. Awkwardly though our short friend Sam was very mean to the flight attendant, which seemed unnecessary given how nice she was being. But this is neither here nor there.

Westin BWI Parking – Return

The Westin claims its shuttle is on-demand, so I phoned the front desk when I landed and asked them to send one. The attendant said it would be there in 10-15 minutes. 10-15 minutes later there was no shuttle, so I called again, and was told there had been some sort of accident but the shuttle was now on its way. Another 10 minutes passed and I called again. Apparently it was right around the corner from us now but there was a ton of traffic at BWI. This was hard to imagine because we had seen many other hotel shuttles pass multiple times. Finally after another 10 minutes it arrived.

Personally I was furious not at the wait but at being straight-up lied to by the hotel. It was a good parking rate but at 10 on a Sunday night I’m not interested in waiting an extra 30-40 minutes to get my car. I will not be using the Westin next time, nor do I recommend doing so.

For those traveling to BWI from DC, I recommend the MARC. It runs a train every hour or so from Union Station on the Penn line. It costs $6 each way and takes about 25 minutes, plus you have to take a 2-3 minute shuttle bus from the station to the airport. This is definitely the way to go on weekdays, but unfortunately it doesn’t run on weekends. You can still take the Amtrak Northeast Regional on the same route, but this costs $15+. 

How do American Express (Membership Rewards) points work?

In the interest of making sure that readers understand how their credit card points function, I am doing a series spotlighting different programs and how they allow you to purchase travel.

A number of Amex cards earn Membership Rewards points. My personal favorites are the Premier Rewards Gold, which has no annual fee the first year, and Platinum, which technically has a $495 fee but I used a link to get it for $0 the first year. On Amex Gold, every dollar spent earns one MR point, while every dollar spent on gas and groceries earns two UR points. Even better, when you purchase airfare directly from an airline, you earn three MR points for every dollar spent. These Membership Rewards points can be used in one of two ways:

1.    Spent as cash on airline tickets, hotel nights, other travel

2.    Transferred to an airline or hotel

Using Membership Rewards like cash

If you have a Gold card, you can spend your MR points at exactly one cent apiece on many types of travel. American Express’ Membership Rewards website provides a number of options for travel, including but not limited to flights, hotels, car rentals, trains, and cruises. If the flight you’re buying is $250, American Express would charge you 25,000 points.

If you have a Platinum card, the same is true, except that your MR points are worth 1.25 cents apiece instead of one cent. If you have a large MR point balance (200,000+), it would be worthwhile to sign up for the Platinum Amex to increase their value.

An added bonus of spending Membership Rewards like cash is that you will earn miles on your flight or points on your hotel as if you had booked it with your own money.

Transferring Membership Rewards points to an airline or hotel

Every time you fly you earn “miles” with your airline. Every time you stay in a hotel, you earn “points” with your hotel. These miles and points sit in your frequent flyer program or frequent guest program. For instance, Delta Airlines has SkyMiles. If you go to www.delta.com and log in, you can see the number of SkyMiles you have.

Membership Rewards points can be turned into SkyMiles, being added to your balance just like if you flew a flight on Delta. All you do is log into the American Express website, click your Membership Rewards, and choose to transfer to a partner. You enter your airline or hotel account number, and the MR points turn into that airline or hotel’s points currency.

Just like with Chase’s Ultimate Rewards points, being able to transfer Membership Rewards to airlines and hotels makes these points significantly more valuable than pretty much any other points-earning card. With something like Barclaycard Arrival or Capital One Venture, you can only use your points like cash. That lack of flexibility can really hurt you, especially on complicated itineraries.

These are the partners Membershiup Rewards transfer to:

• AeroMexico
• Aeroplan
• Alitalia Airlines
• All Nippon Airways
• Asia Miles
• British Airways
• Delta Air Lines
• EL AL Israel Airlines
• Flying Blue
• Frontier Airlines
• Hawaiian Airlines
• Iberia Plus
• JetBlue Airways
• Singapore Airlines
• Virgin America
• Virgin Atlantic Airways
• Best Western
• Choice Privileges
• Hilton
• Starwood

As you can see, this list is extensive. There are a lot of programs here that can offer some great value.

How I use Membership Rewards

Personally I use MR points for the most part on ANA, Aeroplan, Delta, and British Airways. These are four of the best programs for last-minute bookings because none of them charge late-booking fees. Delta doesn’t have very good award availability but if I’m traveling on non-peak days like Tuesday or Saturday they almost always have flights that work for me. ANA is a distance-based program so if I’m making a lot of short stops the program is a cheap way to fly United and US Airways. Aeroplan has a similar award chart to United and US Airways and the same access to their miles seats, but they don’t charge the last-minute fee like either of those airlines does. And finally British Airways charges just 9,000 miles roundtrip for flights under 650 miles, so I use those to fly American to Chicago at least once a month.

Key takeaways

Membership Rewards is a great program, period. While the cards that earn MR points are more expensive annually than the Chase cards that earn UR points, the value you can unlock from the Membership Rewards program could easily make these fees worthwhile. I’ve also yet to pay a full annual fee with Amex, as they’re almost always willing to waive at least some of it.

Link to American Express Premier Rewards Gold

Link to American Express Platinum (no annual fee first year)

How do Chase Sapphire Preferred (Ultimate Rewards) points work?

In the interest of making sure that readers understand how their credit card points function, I will start spotlighting different programs and how they allow you to purchase travel.

Chase Sapphire Preferred earns Ultimate Rewards points. Every dollar spent earns one UR point, and every dollar spent on travel and dining earns two UR points. These Ultimate Rewards points can be used in one of two ways:

1.    Spent as cash on airline tickets and hotel nights

2.    Transferred to an airline or hotel

Using Ultimate Rewards like cash

Like nearly all non-affiliated cards, Ultimate Rewards points can be spent like cash. If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink card, they can be spent at ~1.2 cents apiece. Any fare or hotel rate you can find on the Ultimate Rewards travel site can be purchase with your points. The site offers a similar fare and rate searching service to Kayak. A $250 ticket should cost about 21,000 UR points.

One perk to this option is if tickets are cheap, the cost of using points as cash would be low. Another perk specifically with Ultimate Rewards is that if you don’t have enough points, you can use the points you do have and pay for the rest of the ticket in cash.

The final perk of using points like cash is that you’re basically having Chase purchase a ticket or hotel night for you, meaning you’ll earn points on the flight or stay just as if you had bought it yourself. This isn’t true when you use airline miles or hotel points.

Transferring Ultimate Rewards points to an airline or hotel (or Amtrak)

Every time you fly you earn “miles” with your airline. Every time you stay in a hotel, you earn “points” with your hotel. These miles and points sit in your frequent flyer program or frequent guest program. For instance, United Airlines has MileagePlus. If you go to www.united.com and log in, you can see the number of MileagePlus miles you have.

Ultimate Rewards points can be turned into MileagePlus miles, being added to your balance just like if you flew a flight on United. All you do is log into the Chase website, click your Ultimate Rewards, and choose to transfer to a partner. You enter your airline or hotel account number, and the UR points turn into that airline or hotel’s points currency.

The option to transfer UR points to an airline or hotel is what truly sets it apart from nearly all other points-earning credit cards. With something like Barclaycard Arrival or Capital One Venture, you can only use your points like cash. That lack of flexibility can really hurt you, especially on complicated itineraries.

The transferring miles option is great for if you want to travel internationally, where fares are very high but mileage costs are not as bad. You can add in a stopover on United for free with miles, whereas if you paid for the ticket in cash or points-as-cash, you’d have to pay for two separate tickets. It’s also great if you have almost enough points for a flight or hotel and want to top off an account, or if it’s last minute and fares are very expensive. These are the partners Ultimate Rewards transfer to:

·         Southwest Airlines

·         United Airlines

·         British Airways

·         Korean Air

·         Amtrak

·         Hyatt

·         Marriott

·         Priority Club

·         Ritz Carlton

·         Virgin Atlantic

Personally I use UR points on Southwest and United all the time. I’ve even transferred to Hyatt because they have such an amazing points program.

Key takeaways

Ultimate Rewards points from Chase are one of the most flexible currencies out there and should be strongly considered. It is actually a straight-up better card to put spend on than United, Southwest, or If you currently have a Southwest, United, Marriott, Hyatt, and Amtrak’s credit cards because it earns at the same or better rate in almost every category of spend as those cards, but you’re not locked into one airline or even one kind of points program with Ultimate Rewards, and you can always transfer Ultimate Rewards points into one of these programs if you want.

Link to Chase Sapphire Preferred

What’s in an airport lounge?

Reader Shimones emailed the other day to ask why the airport lounges I’ve discussed via Twitter (@wennecorp) and this blog are so great exactly. Glad you asked Shimones (great name by the way)! Airport lounges are basically the opposite of everything you normally get at an airport.

Here is the list of things you typically get at an airport:

• Loud noise
• Expensive wifi
• Expensive drinks
• Expensive food
• Cramped space
• Gross bathrooms
• Long lines to talk to airline personnel about your flight

Here is the list of things you typically get in at an airport lounge:

• Little to no noise
• Free wifi
• Free soft drinks and certain free wines, beers and liquors
• Free snacks
• Large, comfy lounge chairs and personal workspaces
• Clean, beautiful bathrooms
• Multiple airline personnel available to help you with anything you need

Sounds literally like heaven, right? Right! The four legacy carriers each have their own set of lounges: US Airways Club, American Admirals Club, United Club, and Delta Sky Club. Alaska Airlines has the Board Room at their major hubs, but for the most part they just contract with Delta’s Sky Clubs.  International airlines usually have clubs at major U.S. hubs. Southwest, AirTran, and JetBlue don’t have any.

There are at least a couple clubs at every hub airport for these airlines. Washington-Reagan has Delta, two US Airways, and United. Dulles has United. O’Hare has American, United, Delta. Saint Louis even has a brand new Admirals Club! The megahubs have a ton. Dallas has four Admirals Clubs. Atlanta has nine Sky Clubs.

How to get in a lounge

There are a number of ways to get into an airline lounge. One is to buy a day pass. Those usually run in the $40-$50 range. Another is to buy a yearly membership. Those run in the $500 range. Even another is to get the top elite status on some airlines, which will earn you the right to enter any club when you’re flying. This can run you in the neighborhood of $10,000-$15,000 of flying to reach that status level.

Personally,  I don’t fly one airline all the time, so getting membership in one lounge doesn’t make sense for me. I fly all four of the major legacy carriers, and membership to each of those clubs would cost me $2,000 a year! Besides that, since I prefer flying for free, I figured I might as well get club access for free too.

A number of credit cards offer access to lounges. American Express has a couple cards that provide free access to Delta, American, and US Airways (no United). These cards come with amazing benefits like an annual $200 voucher that can be used on an airline of your choice (I personally bought American Airlines gift cards and used them towards a free flight), and reimbursed cost for Global Entry, which gets you TSA PreCheck. But the problem is these cards normally cost ~$475 a year.

Not if I have anything to say about it!

Currently there is a functioning link for an American Express Platinum card that has no annual fee for one year. It says you need an Amerprise account, but I don’t have one and I was able to get approved. It still gets me $200 in airline credits, and free TSA PreCheck, and club access, and Starwood and Hertz Gold status. But I don’t pay a dime for a whole year! So I’m basically getting paid to have airline lounge access. It might seem weird, but I actually prefer that to paying.

Using the card

Anytime you’re traveling, you can use any Delta, US Airways, or American lounge in the airport you’re traveling from or to, or any airport you’re laying over in. Just walk in and present your card at the desk. Personally I haven’t tried using it on an airline I’m not flying, but many many blogs have indicated it doesn’t matter. You can use any of the lounges that Amex Platinum offers access to. 

The best time to buy airfares and miles tickets

If you need help searching for fares or mileage seats, we’re always here to help. Just drop a line to info@wennecorp.com and we’ll take a look at flights for you for free.

Reader Maya recently asked when the best time was to book her airfare. Now, I’m no fare-hacking travel expert, so I’ll preface it by saying that the below is my educated opinion, but I have had a lot of experience booking airfare and miles tickets. Hopefully my experience can lend a hand to those looking for tickets.

Airfares

First, a bit about how airfares work. Every airline puts up every spot available for sale on every flight it flies. These spots, or “seats” as the airlines call them (misleading because they are not tied to a specific place to sit on the airplane) are not all the same price. They’re split into “fare classes”. The major airlines, except Southwest and Jetblue, have something like 20+ fare classes. One fare class might be a deeply discounted fare class. The airline might have five of these available on a specific flight. These are the cheapest fares, and they usually sell first. While they’re the cheapest fares, they also probably come with major restrictions, such as being non-refundable. The next fare class up would be more expensive but possibly would come with fewer restrictions.

An airline has a set number of tickets available for sale in each of its fare classes, from the cheapest restricted fares to the most expensive, most flexible fares. Once the airline sells out of the cheapest fare class, the next cheapest fare class becomes the cheapest. So the lowest price for a seat goes up. This keeps happening until the flight is sold out.

Now if airlines only set their fare prices once, this game would be easy. You would just buy your ticket the moment a flight became available for purchase. But airlines can change the number of seats they make available in a given fare class as often as they please. Sometimes they’ll make more cheap seats available if they’re not selling enough of them. Sometimes they’ll cut the number of them if they’re selling better than expected.

Waiting out lower airfares is a very hard game to play. Unfortunately, you have far less information than airlines do about how well seats are selling, and therefore when prices are likely to go up or down. Obviously the airlines make it this way on purpose; the less information you have, the more likely you are to pay more money than you should.

I recommend buying now. For domestic tickets, if you’re more than three months away, you might want to wait for a fare sale. Most of my bookings are done with less than three months’ notice, so I pretty much never attempt to “wait out” a good fare. I just find the best one I can. International fares are another ballgame. I recommend always buying now with those.

The waiting game is a far less lucrative one than the searching game. Kayak is not always your best friend. In fact, on international fares, it is pretty much guaranteed that a fare expert can find a better fare than Kayak or another fare booking site like Travelocity can. It is often much cheaper to purchase two separate tickets on two separate airlines to your international destination (and sometimes domestic too) than to buy one ticket with all your flights.

The reason for this is that airlines set fares for specific routes, not specific flights. If I’m flying from DCA to ATL, I will probably pay more than someone who is flying DCA-ATL-MIA. This is because the person flying one-stop is buying a fare that pretty much every airline can sell. All of the major airlines in the U.S. can sell a one-stop ticket between Washington and Miami. Not all airlines can sell a nonstop ticket from Washington to Atlanta. The less competition, the higher the fares. Even though we’re flying the exact same first flight, we’re not paying the same amount. Counterintuitively, I’m paying more to fly fewer flights.

Miles

Miles are another story. The way miles seats work for almost all of the major airlines (again except Southwest and JetBlue) is similar to the way fares are set, with one major exception. Instead of setting an available number of seats on a specific route, miles seats are made available by flight. For this reason, unlike with fares, it’s often easier (and cheaper) to use your miles to fly nonstop instead of one-stop because it is easier to find miles seats on one flight instead of two.

For instance, I’m going to Saint Louis in a couple months. The direct fares are $180 one-way vs. $164 for one-stop. But using my miles I can see pretty much every nonstop is available to me, and at the exact same price as the one-stops. This illustrates the point that it is easier to find a seat on one flight (the nonstop) available for miles than it is to find a seat on two flights (one-stop) available for miles.

The nice thing about miles is, if you don’t find the flights you want, you can wait. Most airlines don’t charge you any more miles to book 30 days out vs 330. If they’ve made a seat available at a specific miles tier, it will continue to remain available as long as nobody books it. And it will become available once again if someone cancels their ticket. Just watch out: United, US Airways, and American charge $75 to book less than 21 days in advance.

Mileage experts also have good ways of finding seats that you might not otherwise see. Certain mileage search engines reveal more routing options than others do, such as additional airline partners you might not necessarily see on your own airline’s website.