4 ways to use credit card rewards to save on last-minute Thanksgiving flights

• Thanksgiving airfare — even prices in miles — can be off the charts, especially if you’ve waited till the eleventh hour to book.
• You can search for a ticket on an airline’s partner airline and often find it for fewer points or miles.
• Booking airfare through a bank portal, such as Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, is a good option if award availability is slim.
• If you need flexibility, you can lock in an award ticket that’s free to change or cancel. Southwest is especially generous in this regard.
• Some airlines have same-day change options that you can gamble with, but remember that your ability to change your flight will depend on availability.
• Read more personal finance coverage.

We’ve all been there. You have an event you know is coming up, and you had all the notice in the world to book cheap plane tickets months out. For some reason, though, you just haven’t done it, and it’s crept up on you to the point where prices are now through the roof.

That problem gets compounded when this event is Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel days of the entire year and a time when airfare prices are no joke. If you’re in my boat — booking tickets six weeks out or less — here are some rewards credit card strategies that can help ease the pain.

Keep in mind that we’re focusing on the rewards and perks that make these credit cards great options, not things like interest rates and late fees, which will far outweigh the value of any points or miles. It’s important to practice financial discipline when using credit cards by paying your balances in full each month, making payments on time, and only spending what you can afford to pay back. 

1. Leverage airline partnerships

With airlines moving to dynamic pricing — that is, award prices that fluctuate and tend to align more closely to a ticket’s cash price — you’re likely to find prices in miles that look pretty steep, particularly on Delta and United. And this is where airline partnerships come in. You can often find the exact same award ticket for fewer points on a partner airline, which is why the ability to transfer points — earned with credit cards including the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card and the American Express® Gold Card — to a range of different partners is so important.

If Delta is committing highway robbery with its SkyMiles prices, try looking for award space on Virgin Atlantic. If you’re striking out on United, see if you can find your flights on Avianca. British Airways, with its distance-based award chart, often fields better award-ticket prices for Alaska and American flights than those airlines do for their own flights (although note that you’ll have to call British Airways to book Alaska flights).

2. Look to credit card travel portals

Of course, the easiest thing to do when award space is pricey — or scant — is use your points to book a cash ticket for free. Holders of the Chase Sapphire Reserve, for example, can book any flight they want through the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal at a rate of 1.5 cents per point — compared to just 1 cent per point if you don’t have a premium Chase card. It’s a great strategy for when award prices are off the charts or you just can’t find award availability on your route.

While it won’t yield quite the same value, using the Purchase Eraser feature from the Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card is another way to achieve the same result — you can redeem miles to cover travel purchases on your card statement.

On the flip side, if you have the Business Platinum® Card from American Express, you can get even better value, though it’s a little more complicated. Cardholders will get a 35% rebate in points for business and first-class tickets booked through Amex, or for economy tickets booked through Amex on a single airline they’ve preselected for the year—the same airline for which they receive the airline fee credits that come as a perk of the card.

One bonus of booking through a portal or using your purchase eraser? Since these are revenue tickets, you’ll still earn redeemable airline miles when you fly, so you can work toward your next trip booked on miles. You’ll also earn qualifying miles and dollars toward airline elite status.

3. Book something flexible

If you’re dragging your feet because you don’t quite know what your plans are yet, I have two words for you: Southwest Airlines. Instead of watching award and cash prices tick higher with every passing day, snag an award ticket on Southwest — you can always change or cancel it later with no penalty.

No Southwest Rapid Rewards points? No problem. Southwest is a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, and you can earn its points through cards including the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: Better to save those Ultimate Rewards points for international business class so you can really maximize their value. And it’s true that you’re definitely not going to be winning any “best redemption” awards by transferring to Southwest. But at the end of the day, if what you need is to lock in a flexible ticket without spending cash, this could be the way to go.

(Do take note that if you do transfer from Chase, while Southwest may let you cancel your award ticket and get your points back, you won’t be able to transfer them back to Chase. But with Southwest’s new-ish flights to Hawaii, you could argue that sitting on a stash of Rapid Rewards points isn’t the worst thing in the world!)

Southwest, of course, isn’t the only airline that’ll let you change or cancel an award ticket, but with other airlines, you’re likely to see some kind of change or redeposit fee associated with the move. Something to investigate before you book!

4. Take a gamble

It’s no secret that you can often find the lowest-priced flights, both in miles and money, at undesirable times. If you’re willing to accept the fact that you might end up stuck with it, you can always go for one of the low-priced tickets and try your luck at a same-day flight change.

Airlines differ on what type of changes they allow — and whether or not they’ll charge you, which often depends on your elite status or lack thereof — so make sure to read up on your airline’s policies if you think you might go for it. Also, remember that your ability to move to a different flight depends on availability, which is generally pretty scarce on, say, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. But you never know!

(In case you’re doubting that this is actually possible: I’ve had a friendly gate agent, apparently in the giving mood, make this type of switch for me free of charge on the Sunday after Thanksgiving — and he even let me change the city I was flying into from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Proof that anything can happen!)

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