Planning to Travel with Family? Here's How to Use Frequent Flyer Miles

Traveling with a family of four? That looks impossible to travel for cheap with family— but it isn’t! So you can use your flyer miles to plan a cheap family travel trip. I have been saving thousands of dollars on every milestone trip with my family and it has been a wonderful experience for me. If I can, why can’t you?? Most airlines offer frequent flyer miles programs. It has been a great experience for me & my family planning lavish vacations without spending a fortune & utilizing our points and miles. 

Of course, with a family of four, it takes a lot of points & miles to travel for cheap but we manage to do that mindfully. You can’t believe it, but whether we are on a trip or at home, we are always talking about our next vacation. We book our accommodations in high-end hotels, eat in fancy restaurants & book business class air travel tickets. Anyone can enjoy some awesome vacations with just about planning it all smartly & with the help of points & miles. Can you believe, last summer, we took a week-long luxury vacation under $2,000!! You can do it.

Most major airlines have made their Frequent Flyer Miles programs complex, and for a lot of passengers, it’s hard to get through it. But, you don’t have to be the one— in this article, we’ll tell you how you can Use Frequent Flyer Miles for cheap family travels. You can go on an opulent luxury vacation without breaking your bank using your accumulated point+miles. But travelers often, don’t know how it works or how they can make use of these miles & save money while traveling. 

Related: You'll Thank Us! 8 Reasons To Stop Saving Money While Traveling

Let’s see how:

1. You Must Set Your Travel Goals

Forget about everything— points & miles, getting the best credit card, or traveling for cheap. You need to start it over from scratch, sit back and contemplate on your travel goals, where you want to go & how you want to spend your time there. No matter how much time it takes, it has to be done right so you do not get stressed out further. You can start by building up a list of top destinations you would like to travel to— that will help you figure out if that’s going to be just a short flight or long haul flight, this will be consequently helpful in determining the way you can strategize the Frequent Flyer Miles for your family travel. After you have worked on your travel goals, the next thing you need to do is, know your cabin preferences— will you be traveling in business class, economy class, or first class. So, it would be the first step towards understanding which is the best credit card to earn miles & how to credit your flight miles. 

2. Get Access to The Airline Lounge 

Even if you have got an economy class ticket make sure, you have got access to the airline lounge. Nevertheless, rushing through the massive crowd, standing in the long queues, it’s all exhausting. But you can always make the experience of waiting for the flight to take off at the airport fun—  by sitting comfortably in the lounge area. Most savvy travelers would know that no matter what class you are traveling, they can get access to the business class lounges by showing their club membership card when they are traveling internationally. Like if you have a membership of the US Airways club, you can relax on any of the Star Alliance business-class lounges while waiting to hop on your flight taking you to your dream international family travel trip. 

3. The Game is to Book in Advance

You might get confused with how you started in the beginning and where the airline is dictating you when you are left with only a few days for your family travel trip. The Frequent Flyer Miles might look absolutely different from what you have understood at the beginning with your airlines making a lot of new developments in the middle of it. And, this might affect how you might have been able to use your points & miles. But if you have booked your flight in advance, there would be almost no chances of your frequent flyer miles getting affected. Furthermore, waiting to fly & use your frequent flyer miles in a particular part of the year, might leave you out of luck as it might fill up quickly as you might have thought to navigate your family travel trip planning. 

4. Learning the Rules that Matter

Of course, you know the first & the most important RULE to planning a family travel trip— find the best possible way to redeem your flyer points where you could the most value. And, the second rule is to understand that which is the partner airlines where you might redeem your miles. So, to start with you can familiarize yourself with a couple of tools that would help you know— for instance where the airline flies. An important thing to know here is that, earn miles on any of the carriers in the alliance and redeem on the other carrier. Like you can earn miles for AA airlines & redeem them for Cathay Pacific.

5. Let Your Child earn Miles for Your Family Travel Trip

So, you can use your airline's miles credit card to help your child (over the age of 2) earn frequent flyer miles for your next family travel trip. However, certain things will depend upon the policies of the airlines you are booking your flights with— for instance, whether the miles that your child earns would be accrued into the individual account or go into the family plan. In most cases, children of this age are less often discounted when buying flight tickets. But don’t miss a chance, if your child is eligible for earning miles for this family travel trip.

Related: Go the Extra Mile: Expert Advice on Redeeming Air Travel Miles

6. Book Tickets Individually for Your Family Travel Trip

So the idea is to find ways to multiply your frequent flyer miles & rewards— one way is booking the tickets individually for every member on any family travel trip. Searching for four award tickets under the lowest mileage tier and with only three available, the system will indicate non-saver awards are available. But when you search for award seats individually, one or more seats are available at the lowest mileage and a few others at the higher mileage. This would also be true in the case of paid bookings. Further, you can take a decision on how you want to divide the ticket reservation for your family travel trip between award & paid seats. 

7. Don’t Hoard Your Miles

So if you have been hoarding your miles for too long in the hope that it will get doubled with time like the money that you deposited in the bank does— you are mistaken, my friend. Indeed, that will only take you, in the direction where you’ll never get the best value for your miles and that’s for sure. The best way is to burn them as you find the right opportunity to burn them. Make sure you have your family travel plans lined up in advance so you can book your flight tickets & use your frequent flyer miles before they lose their value. 

8. Use Different Ways to Search for Awards 

Some flyers would complain about getting stuck with finding ways to use their frequent flyer miles whether they are planning a family travel trip or a solo vacation. In most cases, the airlines would be hiding the best award tickets from the customers but you have to be smart enough to find other ways and use your flyer miles. For instance, you would not find any Singapore award on the United.com website (partners under star Alliance). But you have to know the workarounds if you are smart enough— like you can call the airlines to support the team directly. 

Well, if you find this all complicated, keep in touch, and keep reading our latest articles on how to redeem points & miles. 

Read here: https://www.leisure.com/travel-tips/points-and-miles

9. You Can’t Afford to Expire Your Miles

So if you and your family love going on opulent vacations, you definitely can’t afford to let your miles expire. Family travel trips are often expensive, and if you plan one, often, your frequent flyer miles will help you in a number of ways. While a number of airlines including Delta, JetBlue, Southwest & United have updated their frequent flyer programs to no-expiration date, there are a few still left, which will require you to be active in order to keep your account working. And, thankfully, you don’t always need to travel with the same airlines to redeem your miles— today a number of airlines have partnered to help travelers earn & redeem miles. So, even if you are flying with some other airlines, that can’t be a reason to let your miles expire. In fact, you can also use your miles to shop on an airline’s shopping portal or maybe book a car rental. 

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