GOOGLE FLIGHTS EXPLORE
Many travel search engines, like Kayak or
Orbitz, have highly flexible search tools. Google
Flights offers a feature called “Explore” that
allows you to search in a totally wide-open way.
You enter your departure city, the length of
trip you’re looking for and your price range,
and Google returns a handful of deals to a
bunch of destinations at random times within
your date range.
POINTS AND MILES
Travel bloggers love to rave about how they
scored a first-class ticket using miles, but
they don’t often describe their true secret:
extreme flexibility.
Redeeming points and miles for reward travel
all but requires a high degree of flexibility to
get the most value from them. For one thing,
the availability of these awards can be spotty.
Before you can even determine if an award
booking is a good deal or not, you need to
actually find an available award booking
option. For another, airlines often double the
price or more during high-demand dates.
In short: If you’re looking to use miles on a
specific flight on a specific day, you might
either pay too much — or not be able to score
a ticket at all.
To make things easier, many airlines offer
award calendars that let you see which dates
and prices are available by month, which can
be especially helpful when rooting out hard-to-
find premium cabin tickets.