There are ways to find inexpensive award tickets on the major US carriers for very close travel as a backup or replacement (you can get most bank points into one or more of these currencies with a 1:1 transfer ratio):<\/p>\n
- \n
- Cheap AA and Alaska awards can often be found using British Airways Avios<\/a> (use Seth\u2019s<\/a> Avios calculator<\/a> to look into costs)<\/li>\n
- Cheap United awards can be found using Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles<\/a> (warning: Turkish can be persnickety to deal with), ANA<\/a> (round-trip awards only), or Air Canada Aeroplan<\/a><\/li>\n
- Cheap Delta awards can be found using Virgin Atlantic Flying Club<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
In almost all cases, using one of the above currencies will be cheaper for travel starting in the next couple of weeks than using the airline\u2019s mileage program directly, but definitely check and choose the cheapest option. They\u2019re all likely to be better than playing Russian-roulette with your Southwest flight though.<\/p>\n
Remember, if you get stuck and you paid for your airfare with a premium card (Chase Sapphire Preferred\/Reserve, American Express Platinum, Citi Prestige), you\u2019ll likely be covered for hotel and meal expenses while you wait to get home. None of these cards will cover alternate airfare though, so don\u2019t fall into that common trap and expect to be reimbursed for booking a new ticket home.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s going to be a cluster-hug over the next week or two out there, good luck!<\/p>\n
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Lizzy Air Lines currently has a better completion ratio on flights than Southwest. Unfortunately, no major bank rewards program partners with Lizzy\u2019s Juice Box Miles\u2122 program.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have several friends traveling on Southwest over the next week and a half. Two things: 1) they\u2019re going to miss their first class upgrades,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":1,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[60,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airlines","category-miles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2845"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7184,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2845\/revisions\/7184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Cheap United awards can be found using Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles<\/a> (warning: Turkish can be persnickety to deal with), ANA<\/a> (round-trip awards only), or Air Canada Aeroplan<\/a><\/li>\n