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🤙🏿 Welcome back to the Better Than Points Newsletter - the premier place for all things Credit Card Points News and Travel

My name’s Luis and I’m the one writing this (hit me up here!)

Happy Friday Everyone!

We had some last minute news drop yesterday that I definitely want to cover today.

A little late on the send but we’re still here.

So lets get to it

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This is probably one of my least favorite parts about booking flights.

You find a price that looks good, book it, and then wonder...

“Should I have waited?”

With airline prices changing constantly, sometimes that exact same flight drops after you book.

That’s where pAiback comes in.

They monitor your flight after you buy it.

If the price drops, they work with the airline to help get you a credit for the difference.

So instead of checking Google Flights every day like a crazy person, you can just book the flight and let them watch it.

And the best part?

You only pay pAiback if they actually save you money.

No savings = no fee.

If you already have a flight booked, I’d throw it in there and see what happens.

👉 See If Your Flight Drops In Price

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.

I’ve had a few people email me about the same problem.

They have points and know where they want to go, but they can’t figure out how to actually get there because their destination isn’t one of the major airports we always talk about.

So I wanted to walk through a real example and show you exactly how I think about these searches so you can use the same process yourself.

A buddy of mine, Moby, wanted to go back to Pakistan.

The closest major airport to where he needed to be was Lahore (LHE).

It’s not necessarily a tiny airport, but compared to places like London, Paris, or Tokyo, finding an easy points redemption from the U.S. takes a little more work.

The first thing I did was pull up FlightConnections.

I love starting there because it gives me a visual map of every airline flying into Lahore and where those flights originate.

Instead of randomly searching airline websites and hoping something appears, I can work backward from my destination.

Looking at Lahore, Pakistan International Airlines operates quite a few routes, but using points and miles to book those flights isn’t necessarily easy.

So instead, I started looking for airlines and connecting cities where I knew I could use transferable points.

That led me to Istanbul.

Turkish Airlines flies nonstop between Istanbul and Lahore, and Istanbul also has Turkish Airlines flights to a bunch of cities in the United States.

Now we have the beginning of a plan.

Instead of searching for something like Austin to Lahore and hoping the perfect award magically appears, I’m breaking the trip into pieces.

First, how can I get from the United States to Istanbul?

Then, how can I get from Istanbul to Lahore?

Depending on where you live, you might also need a cheap positioning flight to a larger U.S. airport to make everything work.

This is one of the biggest things I want people to take away from this.

Focus on finding the hardest and longest flight first.

For an international trip, that’s usually the flight getting you across the Atlantic or Pacific.

Don’t get hung up on finding the perfect itinerary from your home airport all the way to your final destination.

Sometimes working backward is much easier.

Once you know the airlines and routes that can get you there, the next step is figuring out which points can book them.

In this example, Turkish Airlines uses its Miles&Smiles program, and you can transfer points from several transferable currencies to Turkish.

That gives us the possibility of booking the U.S. to Istanbul flight and then continuing from Istanbul to Lahore.

You don’t necessarily have to book everything as one itinerary either.

Maybe you find an incredible award from the U.S. to Istanbul through one program and then use Turkish miles for Istanbul to Lahore.

Mix and match if that’s what gets you the best combination of availability, points, and fees.

That’s really the strategy.

Start with your final destination. Use FlightConnections to figure out which major airports connect to it. Find the airlines you can book with points. Then work backward until you’ve built a route from your home airport.

It takes a little more work than typing your home airport and destination into one search box, but it can open up destinations you might have assumed were impossible to book with points.

Hopefully, seeing how I think through a trip like this makes it a little easier to do the same thing for wherever you’re trying to go.

In what I can only describe as a win for people with Avios, it looks like Avios just launched its own version of the Virgin Atlantic Reward Seat Checker, but honestly, it might be even better.

Check it out here.

The tool lets you search award availability across British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus all in one place.

All you have to do is enter your departure and destination airports.

Personally, I recommend searching one way because it gives you a lot more flexibility when trying to piece together an award trip.

Once you search, you get a calendar view showing availability by month, which is huge.

Instead of searching one date at a time and constantly changing your dates, you can see a much broader picture of what's actually available.

You can also easily switch between economy, premium economy, and business class.

Even better, the tool isn't hiding how many seats are available on each date.

That's especially useful if you're trying to book for two people or an entire family and need multiple award seats on the same flight.

It also makes Avios transfer bonuses even more interesting.

Since you can move Avios between participating programs, being able to quickly see where availability exists makes it much easier to figure out where you should ultimately move and redeem your points.

The one downside is that you can't actually book the flights through the calendar tool.

Instead, it gives you a real time look at award availability, and then you head over to the appropriate airline's website to actually book the flight.

Still, this can save you a ton of time compared to searching manually.

Anything that makes finding award availability easier is a win in my book, so kudos to Avios for actually making the process better for customers.

With AI being something more and more companies are starting to integrate into their systems, it looks like American Airlines has started doing the same.

But it’s already causing some issues.

American has been using an internal system to automatically rebook passengers when it believes they’re going to miss a connecting flight.

In theory, that sounds great.

If your first flight is delayed and there’s no chance you’re making your connection, automatically finding you another flight before you even land could save you a ton of time and stress.

The problem is that the system has reportedly been rebooking people who actually could have made their connections.

Imagine landing, running across the airport to make your connection, getting to the gate on time, and then finding out American has already taken you off the flight and rebooked you because its system assumed you weren’t going to make it.

That would drive me crazy.

I can definitely see how AI could eventually make this process better, but there need to be more guardrails before an airline starts making decisions like this for passengers.

At the very least, give the passenger the option.

Send me a notification saying, “It looks like you might miss your connection. Would you like us to rebook you?”

Then let me decide whether I want to make a run for it or take the later flight.

It’s even worse if the system is automatically putting you on another flight without giving you a choice of which alternative works best for you.

There’s a big difference between AI helping you make a decision and AI making the decision for you.

I think this could eventually become a really useful feature, especially during major delays and cancellations.

But until the system gets better at understanding what’s actually happening, I’d rather have the final say over whether I’m giving up my seat on that connecting flight.

With plans for Austin Airport to add 15 new gates by 2030, it looks like Delta is making a bigger push into Austin with its first transatlantic flight from Austin to Paris.

Delta plans to operate the route daily from March through October 2027, and flights are scheduled to become bookable starting August 15 2026.

This is a pretty big deal for Austin, especially because Delta will be the first U.S. airline to offer nonstop service between Austin and Paris.

The part I’m going to be watching closely, though, is the award availability.

Something I’ve noticed with new routes is that airlines release a decent amount of award availability when the flights first become bookable.

That doesn’t guarantee Delta will do the same here, and we all know how ridiculous Delta SkyMiles pricing can get, but August 15 might be a date worth checking if Paris is on your list for next year.

It’s also just cool seeing another U.S. carrier step further into the international market at Austin Airport.

We have Houston and Dallas relatively close by with significantly larger international networks, so every new nonstop international route out of Austin gives us another option without having to position to one of those airports first.

It also gives us another opportunity to use our points.

I’m not sure how long the route will stick around or how profitable it will ultimately be for Delta, especially since it’s starting as seasonal service.

But I’ll definitely be checking when the schedule opens on August 15 to see what those initial SkyMiles rates look like and whether we get lucky with some good award availability.

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