When searching for reward flights, it’s always important to be flexible with dates and departure cities. This is especially true when booking long-haul international flights. Your biggest hurdle will be getting across the ocean. So, do whatever you can to make that work! Sometimes, this requires leaving at an inopportune time or a less-than-ideal day. It often also involves some hopper flight – also known as a positioning flight.
What is a positioning flight?
A positioning flight is a short hopper flight you book from your home city to a different city from which you will then jump on a long-haul flight. This strategy is especially useful when taking advantage of flight deals or award availability.
Let’s breakdown an example
A few months ago, I stumbled across an AMAZING deal – a roundtrip ticket from San Francisco to Tokyo on Japan Airlines in business class for 120k Alaska miles. Annnndddd there were four available seats. But, our home base is San Diego. Rather than forgo the deal because it didn’t leave out of our home airport, I instead jumped on the tickets and then began working on finding us affordable positioning flights from San Diego to San Francisco.
Pros and cons of positioning flights
PROS
- Being open to flexible departure cities can lead to significant deals and award availability.
- Positioning yourself a day early allows you to see new cities. For instance, on our trip from San Francisco to Tokyo, we arrived a day early and utilized the extra time to visit Alcatraz.
CONS
- You’ll need to pay for these positioning flights (either in money or miles). When you are traveling with a family of four, these costs can add up.
- If you book your positioning flight on the same day as your long-haul flight, there’s a risk of delays or cancellations, causing you to miss your international flight.
- To mitigate the risk of delays or cancellations, I generally take my positioning flight the day before our long-haul flight and stay overnight in an airport hotel. So, add the price of this hotel to your list of costs as well.
Conclusion
Positioning flights are short hopper flights you book to take advantage of deals and award availability. The key to successful award redemptions is to be as flexible as possible, and positioning flights are a great way to achieve maximum flexibility.
