Positioning Flights For International Award Travel – A Beginner’s Guide

by joeheg

Once you start trying to use airline miles to book international award travel, you quickly discover that flexibility is the key to finding award flights. There’s more than one way to be flexible. Some people are flexible about their destination. Others can be flexible with the dates of their trips. 

Sometimes, neither of those works; they don’t work for us. So how else can you be flexible? You can be willing to start and/or end your trip from somewhere other than your home airport. 

A beginner probably thinks it’s straightforward when booking an award ticket from Buffalo to London. You can do that search right from the airlines’ websites. But the search will say nothing is available unless saver space exists on domestic and transatlantic flights. 

While saver award flights may be available from New York, Philadelphia and Boston to London, you’ll never see them because you’re searching for a ticket from Buffalo. Or maybe you need to get to Edinburgh, but there are no flights available, so you book award tickets to London but still need a separate flight to Edinburgh. 

Welcome to the wonderful world of positioning flights. 

A positioning flight is a separate airline ticket you book to get you to/from where you are to the airport where your award flight is departing or arriving. 

These flights are necessary when you can’t find award space for a trip’s first or last leg. 

While airlines used to cooperate about opening award space for people to get these flights included on the same award ticket, those days are long gone.

For example, take the flight we took from New York – JFK to London Heathrow on Virgin Atlantic in Premium class. While there were several flights from Orlando to London every day, none of them had award space for our desired date.

We needed to get from Orlando to New York for our evening flight to London. Understand, that these arrangements are not the same as a normal flight connection. There are several unique things you need to consider when booking tickets for positioning flights:

Choosing An Airline

You need to pick your airline for a positioning flight carefully. For several reasons, my first choice is a flight on the same airline as the award ticket. There’s a good chance they’ll fly from your home airport to their international gateway and flights will usually be timed well to make connections. If a flight with that airline isn’t possible, I’ll look for airlines in the same alliance

You may be able to check in for your entire itinerary and check your bags all the way through if all your flights are on the same airline. This can also work with airline alliance partners, but the rules vary, depending on the airlines. 

If you pick a different airline, or an LCC or ULCC for your positioning flight, you’ll need to pick up your checked bags, head back to the ticket counter, check-in for your second flight, and re-clear security.

Flight Delays

If your positioning flight is delayed or canceled, there’s a greater chance that an airline will help you rebook your award ticket if you were delayed because of them. But don’t think American Airlines will help if you miss your award flight because your Southwest positioning flight was canceled. 

Some airlines have specific policies about these situations, so I’d check them out before booking any ticket.

Airport Terminals

If you’re flying into a large airport, there’s a chance you’ll need to change terminals. Some airports make this easier than others but it’s additional time you’ll need to figure into your travel plans. Even though we were flying on partner airlines Delta and Virgin Atlantic, we had to take the JFK Jitney to get from one terminal to the other. Fortunately, this transport is past security so we didn’t have to re-clear the TSA checkpoint.

Baggage

We always need to check bags on international trips. As I mentioned, if you pick a different airline for your positioning flight, you’ll need to wait for your bags to come off the plane and re-check them with the second airline.

If your baggage is delayed, the positioning flight airline is only responsible for getting bags to the destination on their ticket. You’ll then have to arrange to get the bags to your destination.

This is why booking with the same airline or one with an interline agreement is preferable when booking a positioning flight. 

Overnight

There are times when your award flight is scheduled such that you can’t get to the airport on the same day. In this case, you’ll need to fly in the day before. You could fly in late and stay at an airport hotel, or you could fly in early and make it the first day of your vacation

When arriving the day before, the above issues don’t matter. You’re going to be collecting your bags. It will be necessary to check in the next day. You can search for this flight the same way you book any other flight. Just try not to book the last flight of the day because you’re in trouble if it’s delayed or canceled.

If it’s an important trip you have planned for months, I’d try to fly in the day before if possible. When we took our trip to Australia from Los Angeles, we arrived the day before and headed to Disneyland. Our flight wasn’t until the next evening so we had plenty of time to relax and get to the airport early to spend some time in the lounge. 

How to pay for positioning flights

Positioning flights is one of the expenses you incur when booking award travel. Depending on the flight times and locations, they can be expensive and more than you’d want to pay for a “free” vacation. 

There are some ways to alleviate the cost of these tickets. One of the easiest ways to offset these costs is to use a card like the Barclays Arrival+ or the Capital One Venture X. Since you can use your points to pay for travel expenses, these cards are great for positioning flights. 

Finding an inexpensive award ticket with a different airline from your award trip is also possible.

You can use the money you’ve earned with a straight-up cash-back card to pay for these flights. The 2% cash back you earned with the Fidelity Rewards card can pay for these tickets. 

You can also book flights through the travel portals using your Membership Rewards, Ultimate Rewards, or ThankYou Points but in most cases, this isn’t a great use of points. 

The last thing you can do is keep looking to see if there’s any fare sale or points discount on a positioning flight.

Final Thoughts

When searching for and booking award tickets, one thing that often goes overlooked is positioning flights. If you need to get to some faraway airport, you could be looking at a $500+ round-trip ticket on a connecting flight to get to where you will start your trip.

If thinking about everything makes your head spin, you could always consider using an award booking service.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

8 comments

steve case August 15, 2019 - 12:51 am

Alaska Airlines award ticketing is really good about positioning flights. My wife and I flew first class to LHR on BA using miles. After doing a lot of searchin, we booked BA from AUS to LHR and the return from LHR to LAS. Since I know the rules of Alaska Airlines award ticketing, I was able to get the positioning flights in first class included in the BA award. It pays to know your airline’s rules on award ticketing.

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joeheg August 15, 2019 - 12:56 am

Curious. We’re the positioning flights on Alaska metal?

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steve case August 16, 2020 - 11:33 pm

Yes, see the post that I just posted on 8/16/20,

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Deltahater August 16, 2020 - 11:50 pm

They would have to be since AS does not allow you mix and match partners.

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steve case August 16, 2020 - 11:30 pm

I replied to this post a year ago when you first posted it. I’m back to say that I am still using Alaska Airlines to supply my positioning flights when I have international award tickets paid with Alaska miles. I am flying first class on BA from PHX to LHR on miles. I have a positioning flight from PDX to PHX on Alaska without paying anymore miles or money except for a small change in the tax calculation. Here are the rules: you have to find an award Alaska flight that costs no more than 20,000 miles for economy or 25,000 miles for first class. They will add the positioning flight to your existing Alaska reservation for the partner award flight. I do this every year and it always works.

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joeheg August 17, 2020 - 7:06 pm

I wish we could fly on AS from Orlando. Wonder if this will change when they join Oneworld.

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Helena October 4, 2020 - 6:53 am

Thank you! I’m prefer get kashback instead of miles for flight))

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DaninMCI September 19, 2021 - 2:22 pm

I know this is a recycled blog post that is older but most airlines these days won’t through check bags with different PNR’s. There are exceptions but it’s very rare anymore. I speak from a ton of experience on this as I’ve booked a lot of positioning flights over the years. The last trip I took a group of 6 with me all with miles and with positioning flights on both ends of the trip. Going through security to recheck bags at Seattle and again at Antalya Turkey.

The terminal changes don’t always matter that much since the arrival terminal can change and at large airports there are usually separate international terminals anyway. So if you arrive domestically on the same award or from a positioning flight you’ll still likely need to change terminals.

One bit of advice I would give it to try and book two positioning flights if you can cancel them up to the last minute. For example say you are going STL-ORD-LHR but you can’t get the STL-ORD leg included in the award. You could book an AA award flight and also a UA flight and then cancel one or the other based on the cancellation rules and deadlines. This won’t always help if there is a major weather delay but it can if a flight gets cancelled which is more common place today than in 2020 it seems.

Being able to pack light and roll aboard your luggage is a huge time saver if you can manage that. It can also save some bag fees if you don’t have the right credit card, status or award class. The other problem with positioning flights is that you don’t want to cut the connection too close so you tend to book earlier flights with long layovers. If the layover is more than 3 or 4 hours it can be difficult to re-check the bags so again carry on helps a ton on that issue.

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