Lazy Guide: Situational Airline Programs

Apr 1

Written By Michael

Tl;dr: The big four U.S. airline programs offer the easiest pathways to affordable international travel on points. But sometimes, transferring to other programs can unlock better value—especially for business class or with transfer bonuses. The tradeoff is higher fees, more friction, and less flexibility.

Welcome to the Lazy Guide to what I’m calling “situational” airline loyalty programs. These aren’t as accessible as the “big four” programs we’ve covered previously: Alaska, Delta, American, and United. Unless you are a big spender, a points nerd, or have very specific travel habits, these programs might not be ones to build a strategy around. But they can be a valuable way to redeem your transferable points.

This is not a comprehensive guide or a list of ways to get “maximum” value from these programs. Instead of “sweet spots,” we’re highlighting lazy spots—ways to use points to travel abroad with minimum cost and effort. These are just to get you started—redemption options are always changing and can vary based on your home airport, so we recommend verifying what works for your specific situation before pursuing any points strategy.

Core vs. Situational Airline Programs

Legacy carriers Alaska, American, Delta, and United each offer loyalty programs that can be core pillars to build around if your goal is to travel internationally on points—even if you are not a huge spender. These programs offer tons of redemption options both domestically and internationally, low fees in most cases, relatively user-friendly websites, transfer partnerships with major banks, useful co-branded credit cards, flexible booking options with points, and route networks that you might use more than once or twice a year.

By contrast, most other airline programs entail major tradeoffs on many or most of those points. These programs can sometimes offer better deals—but they’re almost never easier. You will likely have to make sacrifices: navigating complicated or glitchy websites, using third-party award search tools, paying hundreds in fuel surcharges, risking pricey cancellation fees, locking your points into a program with a narrow selection of use cases, and so on. They can be situationally useful, but hard to plan around.

If you’ve seen a points influencer flying around in business class, they probably used one of these programs to do it. This is the part of the points world that many people new to points see: glitzy redemptions on social media, and headaches and complications when they try to navigate it themselves.

When These Are Actually Worth Using

Personally, I’ve been using AA, Alaska, and Delta to fly to Europe and Asia on points easily and affordably for years. I’ve never had the need to dip into these situational programs for an economy redemption, and never had enough points, or a willingness to pay cash fees, to seriously consider using them for a premium redemption.

But these programs can be helpful in a few specific situations:

If a transfer bonus meaningfully improves the math (e.g. Bilt Rent Day)
Booking international first and business class
When a tool like Roame or Thrifty Traveler surfaces a great deal
The odd specific, predictable sweet spot, like Virgin Atlantic flights to London

Outside of that, they tend to add complexity without much benefit—and a lot more things that can go wrong. You can always spend the time to learn and master these programs, but the value-add for economy redemptions is likely to be minimal given how easy and valuable those redemptions can be with core programs.

The Most Useful Situational Programs

There are tons of airlines that have transfer partnerships with US credit cards, and most have some use cases, especially for premium travel. But there are a few that I think are worth discussing for some potential “lazy spot” use cases for value-oriented, lazy travelers: Japan Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, JetBlue, Air Canada, Flying Blue, and the Avios airlines.

Japan Airlines Mileage Bank: Easy Value in Premium Cabins

Transfer partners*: Bilt, Rove, Capital One (.75 JAL miles per 1 Capital One mile)

*Transfer ratios 1:1 unless otherwise specified

JAL is probably my favorite situational airline program, mostly because it’s relatively simple. It has award chart pricing and published fuel surcharges, making pricing predictable. Although the website is slightly dated, it is easy to navigate, and the calendar view option makes it easy to quickly locate a good price on an award flight without having to resort to third-party tools. Although JAL charges a cancellation fee on award tickets, including for changes, it is modest at around $21. JAL doesn’t just offer redemptions on its own flights; you can also redeem for flights with partner airlines like Air France for flights to Europe and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, JAL has only one 1:1 transfer partner, Bilt, and once transferred or earned, points expire after 36 months and can’t be extended. JAL’s fuel surcharges are modest compared to most international airline competitors, but you can still expect to pay several hundred dollars per round-trip. For that reason, I don’t find JAL miles competitive for economy redemptions, but those fees can seem negligible in comparison to the cost of business- or first-class seats where the cash price can run in the thousands of dollars each way.

Lazy take: JAL offers one of the easiest and best ways to book international business class with moderate cash and points costs.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club: Easy Points to Accumulate, Tricky Redemptions

Transfer partners: Every major transferable currency partners with Virgin

If Virgin serves your local airport, there’s one easy, bankable redemption: cheap economy flights to London (usually 6,000-15,000 points, plus ~$120 in taxes and fees). Getting back is trickier. The UK’s Air Passenger Duty can push round-trip fees close to $500, which nearly defeats the purpose of using points. A common workaround is flying home from somewhere like Dublin instead.

Beyond that specific sweet spot, there is a lot to like about Virgin. Every major bank partners with Virgin, transfer bonuses are relatively frequent, and the points never expire, making it possible (a) to build up a balance when the points are “on sale,” (b) to move over needed points from any source (including less valuable currencies like Capital One or Wells Fargo) in a pinch, and (c) do so with relatively low risk given that they won’t expire. Once you accumulate enough, Virgin has a number of solid uses.

However, I find that most routes are difficult to find and book online, so you may need to master the program’s intricacies or use a search tool like Roame or Seats.aero. And you’ll want to have firm plans, since award tickets are subject to a hefty ($100) fee for changes or cancellations. Most redemptions tend to entail big cash costs, although these can still make sense when you’re searching a particular route and cash costs are elevated as well.

Lazy take: Great for one-way flights to London, especially with transfer bonuses—but high fees and tricky booking limit its overall usefulness.

JetBlue TrueBlue: Easy, but Limited Value and Use Cases

Transfer partners: Chase, Citi, Amex (0.8), Capital One (0.6)

What I love about JetBlue is how easy it is to check award pricing—there’s a popup calendar that quickly shows a month of points and cash costs. JetBlue offers solid but unexciting points pricing from the West Coast to Japan (often about 35k each way) and from the East Coast to Europe (25-40k each way). TrueBlue points don’t expire, and JetBlue also offers respectable domestic coverage and value as a fallback.

However, there’s a lot of variation in pricing—and availability of award flights at all—by departure airport. Although JetBlue’s points pricing to Japan is competitive with Alaska and American, it charges hundreds of dollars more in fees per round-trip, while award flights departing from Europe can often impose expensive fees.

Lazy take: Redemptions are easy to search for, and there are worse uses of Chase points than booking a low-cost one-way to Europe if you can find a cheap return option.

Air Canada Aeroplan: Great Premium Deals, Complicated Bookings

Transfer partners: Amex, Bilt, Capital One, Chase

Aeroplan is one of the best options for business class redemptions; it’s very realistic to find a one-way business class ticket to Europe or Asia for 60-80k points with minimal fees.

However, I find the Aeroplan website very difficult to use, and Aeroplan is prone to displaying “business class” tickets that cross an ocean in coach before taking a final leg in European business class, so using a search tool like Roame or Seats.aero that can find an award seat and filter out those mirages is essential. With most international economy-class tickets pricing at 35k+ miles each way, I don’t consider those a good value, although there could be some routes where that is a reasonable redemption. Aeroplan also has expensive changes and cancellations on saver awards and a tight 18-month expiration period, although transferring more points should extend their lifespan.

Lazy take: If you have a lot of points and want to fly business class, investing in an award search tool and looking at Aeroplan is one of the best options available.

Air France/KLM Flying Blue: A Do-It-All Program, with Some Drawbacks

Transfer partners: Every major transferable currency partners with Flying Blue

Like Virgin, Flying Blue partners with every bank and offers frequent transfer bonuses from these partners, making it possible to get more value from transfers than the award price alone would suggest. Flying Blue has a decent award calendar to search for redemptions, although life is much easier with an award search tool. Economy pricing can be respectable at times, while business-class pricing can be excellent if you find a deal. In particular, if you want to fly Delta One, it is often much cheaper to do so with Flying Blue points than Delta SkyMiles.

As with most other programs on this list, the relatively high fees on awards can limit the value of economy redemptions and make premium cabin redemptions tough to stomach. Flying Blue also charges a €70 change and cancellation fee, so flexibility is limited. Points also expire after 24 months, but are fairly easy to extend. Flying Blue also offers discounted “Promo Award” tickets each month, but after years of checking these religiously I finally gave up trying to find one of those deals in the wild.

Lazy take: A solid all-around option with occasional great deals—but fees and inconsistency limit how often it’s worth using.

Avios: A Headache with Potential

Transfer partners: Every major transferable currency partners with Avios

Like Flying Blue and Virgin, every major transferable currency can be converted into Avios. What makes Avios unique is that there are seven Avios airlines, and different ones have different transfer partnerships. That means transfer bonuses to at least one Avios airline are pretty frequent, and because you can transfer Avios freely between partner airlines, this makes it fairly easy to accumulate Avios by mixing and matching credit cards and transfer bonuses.

And there are some genuine use cases. Most famously, Iberia has some business-class flights between certain East Coast cities and Spain for under 50,000 points each way with reasonable cash costs in the low season. There are also some other decent business class deals across the Avios platforms, and most programs have modest change and cancellation fees.

But I’ve never actually found a viable Avios redemption from an airport I actually live near, and it can be difficult searching for Avios redemptions as most of their airline booking platforms are difficult to navigate (to put it politely) and often don’t show up in award search tools. And the fees charged on most Avios bookings can be tough to justify outside the most luxurious tickets.

Lazy take: I’ve long since given up on Avios, but if you live in a city like Boston or New York it might be worth collecting some Avios if you are willing to deal with their UX to take advantage of their sweet spots.

Lazy Take 🦥

If you just want to travel internationally with points while keeping out of pocket costs low, the four big legacy carrier programs—Alaska, American, Delta, and United—typically offer the best rates, simplest booking experiences, and greatest flexibility. Other programs can be useful situationally, but if you want to keep things simple, you won’t miss much by skipping them entirely.

But if you want premium redemptions, these other programs can shine, offering a wide array of redemptions that can often be cheaper than their big US counterparts—just be prepared to burn through more points, more cash, or both.