Several airlines allow booking one-way award trips. If they do, always search for your award trip as both a round trip or as two one-way trips. The miles needed for booking usually adds up to be the same. At the most, if there is a booking fee, you may have to pay that twice. There are multiple reasons to do this:
Seat availability:
Surprising as it may seem, I have in some cases found availability when I have searched for a one-way award trip that did not show up for a round …

If you want to get on any sort of waiting list for your flight – whether it is for an upgrade or to get a seat if the flight is not assigning you one, it is best to check-in online and check-in as early as possible. In the US every airline lets you do an online check-in 24 hours in advance of the flight.
Key point to note here is that it is 24 hours in advance of your first segment. If you have a connection, you can check in to …

Just like getting delayed, flights get cancelled – whether it be due to weather, mechanical aircraft issues or unavailability of crew. In an earlier Expert Tip (#3), I gave tips on how to potentially get compensated for delayed flights. Those tips hold equally good for cancelled flights. In this post, I give detailed steps of what to do if your flight gets cancelled, irrespective of the reason or potential compensation. Here is what you need to do:
1. Call your airline
As soon as you hear that your flight has been cancelled, …

Flights get late. Be it due to weather delays, Air Traffic congestion or Aircraft Technical issues. Whenever you are on a flight that is late, ask why it was late. If the delay was caused due to a fault of the airline’s – such as Mechanical Issues, crew getting stuck in traffic, jammed cockpit door (that has actually happened to a flight I was on), the airline will compensate you, but only if you ask them to. You need to ask for the cause of the delay as there is …

Focus all your Airline Mile earnings – from all sources (flying, credit card, surveys, etc.) – on one airline or no more than one airline per Alliance. The thinking here is pretty simple and straightforward. If you do not do this, you end up diluting your miles earned and also potentially lose your ability to get to a higher Elite Level in one airline. 25,000 miles earned with one airline’s program is worth much more than 10,000 miles spread out over 5 or even 12,500 over two. If you have …

Note: As announced in our UnRoadWarrior 2.0 post, we are starting a new series of posts called Expert Tips. This series will feature, short, to the point, no longer than a few sentences tips from us and experts we have learnt from. The idea is to create a whole set of tips on how to handle situations as you encounter them. Our eventual goal is that anytime you run into a new situation, you should be able to search this set of tips to get advice on how to handle …