Everyone tells you how to book awards with Lifemiles. What they don’t tell you are how they encountered issues their first time.
Ok, so you’ve used the tools (you know what I’m talking about) and you’ve found that great flight available with points. The process seems pretty easy, but on our first time using Lifemiles we found it to be not so straightforward. Here are some things to keep in mind when making that dream flight a reality!
How To Book Awards with Lifemiles
Open a Lifemiles Account to Book Awards
The first step to successful, and hassle free, booking awards is to open that account. Come to think of it, this advice applies to any transfer partner you’re considering. Airline or hotel, open that brand’s app and create your free account.
This might be our biggest tip regarding transferring points. When you find your points currency of choice (we like Chase and Amex), you’re going to want to open frequent flyer (or hotel rewards) accounts with that bank’s transfer partners and then link the bank with your frequent flyer account.
Even bigger tip, do that weeks ahead of when you might want to transfer the points. Why? Well, our experience (and some internet research) indicates opening a new account, linking the account, and then transferring the points all within 5 minutes could slow down the transfer as it may get flagged as fraud. Since award tickets can disappear, and programs don’t allow reverse transfers, and some program’s points have expiration dates … it can be a little nerve wracking to get the ‘points will be available in 3-5 business days’ message. Ask me how I know.
Which Tool to Use to Book Awards with Lifemiles
Now that you’re the proud owner of 2 dozen airline and hotel rewards programs, the second step in booking awards with Lifemiles is to find the flight you want. That seems easy enough, until you start to use the tools! Whether you’re using Points Yeah!, points.me, or seats.aero there are nuances to each that are good and bad. This isn’t about how to use the tools, maybe another time, but there are plenty of great guides out there for that topic.
We use Points Yeah! primarily and it has worked pretty well for us. So, pick your tool and commence to searching.
Trust but Verify Before Booking Awards
Before you transfer the points to book the lifemiles award, you need to verify the award exists!
Yeah, this is important and sometime missed so pay attention. Once you find the award in the award search tool, go to the carrier and verify the flight and award actually exists! Sometimes the award space is full, sometimes the price has changed, and in either case you’re going to want to know that BEFORE you start moving points about.
We found this step to be a bit wonky. The lifemiles interface is different than what we’re used to, say at United for example. Although we selected ‘business’ the search bar still indicated ‘economy.’ And the flights listed didn’t seem to differentiate between the two fare classes. Plus, there were 2 fare classes listed but one included some level of ‘pay to upgrade’ service we didn’t want to purchase.
I figured I could click around without inadvertently paying for something, so that is what I did. I discovered if I selected one of the fares presented, it opened up an there were additional options and info that helped me pick the right options. So, it wasn’t super complicated but it was a little odd and I hesitated because I didn’t want to buy something I wasn’t going to use.
Transfer Points to Book the Award
So you made it this far and you’re ready to go. You’ve got the award, verified it exists, and are ready to transfer. Go back to your bank and select lifemiles as the transfer partner and transfer the number of points (usually to the nearest 1000). Hopefully you get the pop-up and email saying the transfer was successful.
It usually says it will take up to 72 hours, but I’ve found waiting about 5 minutes, then logging out and back in to the transfer partner, and viola! the points are deposited.
Book that Award
You can now go find that flight again and book the award. Back in Lifemiles, find the flight again and select what you’re looking for.
Oh, and if you can’t find where to put your airline frequent flyer number (we couldn’t), you’ll have to call the airline to get the reservation into your account. So make sure you have your Lifemiles confirmation code. That was very useful when we couldn’t pick seats (it was a split cabin so we picked our business class seats but couldn’t pick the economy class).
Congrats! You’ve saved a bunch of money on your desired flight. And you’re now an expert at booking with Lifemiles