Award Fare Charts

This article will cover award fare redemption charts for the major airlines/alliances. Many airlines offer stagnant redemption values which require users to act quickly to snag redemption space. Other airlines utilize “dynamic pricing”.

Dynamic Pricing

Some Airlines use “dynamic pricing” for their award travel. This essentially means the cost for a flight will have a base minimum fare but will increase in price based on the cash price increase/decrease as its correlated to demand.

The major Airlines that use dynamic pricing are below. For these, you will have to search directly on their websites and toggle between days to find the best rates. There are websites like points.me that scrape the web and do this for you!

• Delta SkyMiles

• JetBlue TrueBlue

• Southwest Rapid Rewards

• United MileagePlus

• KLM/Air France FlyingBlue

Stagnant Award Charts

Many other airlines use “award charts” which are largely stagnant, regardless of demand or availability. These charts will show the routes an airline flys (or region to region) and have fixed redemption rates. Those fixed rates can be based on factors such as time of travel (high-season vs low-season), which regions you are traveling to and from, and sometimes total distance. The price of your flight will likely be based on a combination of a few things, but award charts take the guess-work out of it.

Often with award charts, you can snag a great deal as compared to the cash price. For example, a flight from the US to Europe on American Airlines will cost 25,000 miles (so long as there is award space available) regardless of the cash price.

Check out how we utilized these tips to book a business-class flight to Tokyo for only 50,000 points!

Below are award charts for the most frequented airlines:

• Air Canada Aeroplan

• Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan

• American Airlines AAdvantage

• ANA Mileage Club

• British Airways Executive Club

• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles

How much are my points/miles worth?

• Cents Per Mile (CPP)

  • Every time you spend your hard-earned miles/points, refer back to how much value you are getting back in terms of cents per mile (CPP). Anytime you can get above 1.0 cents per mile, you are in the green zone. To best utilize, target $1.5-$2.0 cents +

  • Check out our in-depth article on the Value of Amex + Chase points here!

• Airline mile values

  • If you are curious on what the experts say each “mile” on an airline is worth, check out the chart below by NerdWallet! You can access the full article + updates here.