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✈️ If You Have Points but No Time, This Is the Move (Thrifty Traveler Premium)

Award travel is not hard because points don’t work, it’s hard because finding availability takes hours, and the best deals disappear fast.

That’s why I use Thrifty Traveler Premium.

They’re a flight deal alert service, they find award + cash flight deals and email them to you, then you book directly with the airline.

And they feed you deals like this one:

✅ Business class to Europe from ~65k points (wide summer availability)
✅ Bookable via Air Canada which is especially clutch when there are transfer bonuses running
✅ Instead of you searching every day the deal hits your inbox
✅ You save time and you stop missing the good stuff

If you’ve got points sitting around but you don’t have the bandwidth to hunt award space, this is hands down the easiest way to stay on top of it.

👉 Try Thrifty Traveler Premium and let the deals come to you.

Each week, I’ll share something cool I’ve discovered or tackle a question from the community. It’s my little corner to explore ideas, offer fresh perspectives, and hopefully spark your own curiosity.

About a year ago I had to attend a newsletter conference, and the whole thing came together last minute.

Honestly, it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t use points to cover the flight and hotel.

With prices being what they are right now, I thought it’d be helpful to break down trips like this.

If you’re thinking about traveling this summer, this is the exact process I’d use to find flights and hotels without getting wrecked on cash prices.

Because while airfare and hotel rates keep climbing, award rates haven’t jumped as fast.

So points are quietly becoming the better play again.

So first lets start with the flights.

A lot of this depends on what airport you’re based out of and which airlines dominate there.

For Austin and Houston, I’d start with.
United out of Houston
American out of Austin

For American flights, I like booking through Atmos since economy can price better there.

For United, a lot of those domestic routes hover around the 15,000 United and Air Canada points

And even if you don’t have United miles, I’d still check Air Canada Aeroplan.

United is an Aeroplan partner, and sometimes the same flights show up there at similar pricing.

Plus, Aeroplan has more transfer partners and more frequent transfer bonuses, which makes it easier to top off.

In general, if you’re booking U.S. domestic flights, my top three programs to check are:

Air Canada Aeroplan
Flying Blue (Air France KLM)
Atmos

All three can give you solid value without getting hit with crazy taxes and fees.

You can also find some great American flights through Alaska as low as 12,500 points.

The only downside is Alaska miles are harder to earn since there aren’t as many transfer partners.

But now moving over to hotels.

Lately, I’ve been finding the best value by booking hotels through either the Capital One portal or the Bilt portal.

I’m usually aiming for at least 1 cent per point or better.

And don’t forget, if a hotel doesn’t show up in the portal, Capital One also lets you “erase” travel purchases.

So you can book a hotel however with their card, then redeem points to pay that purchase down later.

That’s been super useful for last minute trips when you don’t feel like hunting for award space.

Last thing.

Flying Blue can be hit or miss for domestic.

Delta doesn’t always release great partner award space close in, but if your trip is further out, it’s worth checking Flying Blue vs booking through Delta directly.

Sometimes the pricing is similar, and sometimes Flying Blue wins.

Hopefully, this helps if you’re trying to plan a domestic trip in the next couple months.

Start with the right airline programs, check partner availability, and use portals strategically when award space is annoying to find.

If you’re not familiar with Air France KLM’s Flying Blue program, it’s one of the better ones out there.

They’ll often drop multiple award seats at once, run discounted Promo Rewards, and they’re also pretty family friendly (kids under 12 get a discount).

And some recent news dropped that could be good for the program long term.

Tiffany Funk is stepping in as the new head of Flying Blue.

I normally don’t talk about internal airline moves, but this one matters.

A good example is Air Canada’s Aeroplan. That program is run by someone who actually understands points and award travel, so the program stays useful for us while still being profitable for the airline. It’s one of the reasons Aeroplan has stayed strong.

Tiffany feels like that same vibe.

She’s got about 25 years in the points and travel space, and she was also a co-founder of Point.me, so she actually gets how award travel works across different airlines and programs.

From my perspective, this is one of the rare cases where it feels like someone who understands the points world is now steering the ship.

Hopefully it means Flying Blue keeps improving and stays one of the best programs out there.

I’m definitely excited to see what changes come next.

It looks like United flight attendants and management finally came to an agreement on a new pay plan, which is honestly good news for everyone, from the crews to travelers.

They’re also getting $740M in retro pay, which is wild.

What’s interesting to me is the hourly pay breakdown and how much it changes based on seniority.

Here’s the breakdown of their hourly pay and how it increases over the years based on how long you’ve been with the company.

As time goes on, labor costs are only going to keep climbing, so it’ll be interesting to see if this deal shows up in any positive way for United, whether that’s better staffing, fewer disruptions, or just happier crews.

With Delta acknowledging they’ve done a pretty sucky job managing pilots and trying to cut costs at all costs, it’s starting to show up in cancellations and them not being able to run smoothly.

In Delta’s words, they’re now trying to beef up staffing and cut some routes so they’ve got more breathing room when they need to pivot.

Honestly, that’s good to hear heading into summer and storm season.

We’ll see how well they actually adapt.

The more interesting story though.

With the SpaceX IPO coming up, there’s been some chatter that Delta had the option to put Starlink on their planes, but decided to go with Amazon’s version instead, and that one isn’t expected to be ready until 2028.

United went with Starlink.

So by the time Delta’s option is even live, United will probably have Starlink rolled out across most of their fleet.

And the sticking point here is kind of wild.

Delta cared so much about branding that they didn’t want to call it Starlink.

They wanted it under “Delta Sync,” with Starlink basically hidden behind Delta’s name.

What feels like a small ego thing could end up costing them real money.

Over the next couple years, anyone who needs reliable inflight internet is going to start choosing the planes with Starlink.

We’ll see how far Delta’s brand can carry them if the Wi-Fi stays subpar for an unknown amount of time.

Check out these crazy award deals!

This section includes some of the best award flights of the week bookable with points and miles.

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This section includes some of the best links videos and articles of the week around the points and travel community