Once you start credit card churning, you’ll realize that there are several websites that can help you figure out how to stretch your points the furthest. In the beginning, I used to stupidly search on Sky Scanner for flights and then check if those airlines were transfer partners with my credit cards and then go onto their direct websites to see how many miles it would take to purchase the flight in question. This was a tedious process that would result in many missed opportunities for better itineraries and point values. Luckily, I discovered this awesome site called PointsYeah that makes booking flights with points soooo much easier.
Table of Contents
What is PointsYeah?
Before I stumbled across PointsYeah, I would rely on manual searches for award travel. If I was transferring from my BILT card, I’d use their BILT-in (haha, get it… *built-in*) partnership with Point.me to search for flights with their transfer partners. It a great tool if you only have the BILT card, but if you want to see all your transfer options with all your cards, that’s not an option with BILT’s travel portal. Who wants to be limited by one credit card anyways?
Luckily, a fellow credit card churner turned me on to PointsYeah.com and there was no looking back. With PointsYeah you can look up all point transfer options with all major credit card programs and their specific transfer partners, as well as all possible flight itineraries. It’s a one stop shop that makes transferring a breeze.
How To Search For Award Flights
Say I have American Express and Bilt and Chase, and I wanted to look up flights to Argentina to see which airlines I could use and how many points I would need to transfer. I’d simply search for the flight as I would on any other search engine, but then I would select which bank partners I want to use under the filter choices. I could narrow it down by how many stops, airlines, connecting airports, max points, if I wanted to fly economy or business, etc.
Then all the flights that met those criteria would show up in the search results. Next to each flight would appear which bank program, which frequent flyer program, and how many points are needed to purchase. Sometimes if an airline is a transfer partner with multiple credit cards, then you would see both bank programs in the results.
Being able to see all point transfer options in one place eliminated the mind numbing task of going to each and every airline’s website to search and compare. Websites like Kayak, Skyscanner, Expedia, and such compare full fare flights only, so there is no way to compare award travel. Sometimes a flight might be cheaper than another one if paying cash, but the values can change drastically when paying with points.
Then their are the taxes and fees associated with each frequent flyer program. Sometimes two flights with two different airlines might cost the same amount of points, but can have different taxes and fees. PointYeah also shows you the taxes and fees of each flight so you can accurately compare which flight is overall cheaper. If one flight is 15k miles and $20 in taxes and fees, but another one is only 13k miles and $100 in taxes and fees, I’m going to go for the 15k miles flight.
Discovering New Airline Partners
My favorite feature of PointsYeah is that I constantly discover airlines who are partners that I never knew of before. If you just searched on Skyscanner or Kayak and saw an Austrian Airlines flight you wanted to purchase, you may not have realized that Austrian Airlines is partners with United, therefore you can transfer miles to United’s frequent flier program to purchase that Austrian Airlines flight.
Tips For Maximum Point Value
One Way Flights
Being able to research all frequent flier programs and bank partners is useful to take advantage of the best point value. I almost never buy roundtrip tickets these days, instead opting for two one-way tickets. With roundtrip tickets, you are limited to that airline alliance for both the flight there and back. If you book two one-way tickets you can now mix and match the itineraries that best suit your needs, meaning you can fly with One World and return with Star Alliance.
When you search in PointsYeah, this gives you the option of transferring some points from one credit card for half the trip and from another for the return ticket. This is a lifesaver if you don’t have enough miles on one card.
Clearing Cookies & VPN
Everyone knows that flight prices are dynamic and change every single day, sometimes even multiple times a day. Not only is this true when you pay cash for a flight, but it’s also true when you opt to use points for reward tickets. I learned this the hard way while over-researching a flight I wanted to take to Colombia. It started off as only 16k points and jumped to 18k points the next day, I kept checking on the flight and it went up to 22k points just a few hours later. Panicked so it wouldn’t go an higher, I transferred that amount of points to the airline’s frequent flyer program.
As I was waiting for the points to complete their transfer, it dawned on me what happened–I triggered those price hikes. I cleared the cookies on my phone and laptop and downloaded a VPN to research the flight from a different country and lo and behold the flight was only 19k points. It already started to go back down. I vowed not to check on the flight for 48 hours. When I was ready to purchase the flight, it was all the way back down to just 16k points. Moral of the story, use a VPN and clear cookies frequently so that you too don’t trigger a price hike by constantly researching and comparing flights.
Have Multiple Credit Cards
Okay, now I give this advice in all my credit card and frequent flyer posts, but in this case it’s to maximize airline partners. The most desirable flight (time-wise and points-wise) might not be with an airline that’s a transfer partner with your credit card. The more cards you have with different transfer partners, the more options you have to explore on PointsYeah.
For example, Delta is only a partner with American Express. If I had a BILT card, which is a partner with United, but saw a Delta flight I wanted, I’d be out of luck. But if I had both cards, so many airlines and flight itineraries become available to me, allowing me to always book the most desirable flights.
PointsYeah gives frequent fliers the flexibility to research effectively and thoroughly all their choices like never before. It’s thanks to them that my ability to stretch my points increase substantially the past year. Whether you are new to the game or just starting out, PointsYeah will make your travel planning much easier. The best part is–PointsYeah is completely free to use!
