67. An Analytic Approach to Points Travel with Kevin Zanes

Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devon Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am really excited to bring you a conversation today with friend and fellow points educator and enthusiast, Kevin Zanes. Kevin has a background in data science and analytics that he now uses to scour award programs for the best points deals. 

Today, we're talking math and data, but not boring math and data. No, Kevin is going to show us how he leverages technology to find trends in award travel, including which airline programs have the best and worst award availability, which U.S. airports to aim for and avoid if you have your sights set on long-haul premium cabin award availability, and the three best times to book award travel. 

Kevin also dispels some common myths of the award travel community and reveals the math-backed truth about what he says is the single best points-earning credit card on the market. Whether you're brand new to award travel or a seasoned points traveler, this episode is sure to educate and entertain. Please enjoy this conversation with Kevin Zanes, also known as The Points Analyst.

Devon: Welcome to the podcast, Kevin. How are you doing today?

Kevin: I am doing great. Thank you so much for having me here. 

Devon: Absolutely. I've been looking forward to this conversation for such a long time. You and I have chatted kind of offline back and forth about things, and you are such a wealth of knowledge about award travel, especially business class flights, and I'm really excited to share your experience with everybody on the podcast today. So for people who may not be as familiar with you and your work as I am, can you just quickly tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do? 

Kevin: Yeah, sure. Thank you for the very kind introduction. I'm not sure if people can see me blushing on the other side of the camera here, but it's definitely happening. So my name is Kevin Zanes. I go by the handle of The Points Analyst on Instagram, and that's where most people can find me.

I've been in points and miles for only about three years, which is actually a little bit different than most people who have kind of been in this game for like 10, 15 years. So I'm actually a late comer to the points and miles space. But I was able to very quickly kind of get up to speed on what's going on due to my background in kind of data science and analytics.

So kind of the way I looked at the points and miles world was more of a numbers puzzle that I needed to solve and I needed to crack in order to figure out how I can earn millions of points per year, take incredible vacations. So that's what I've been doing, and that's kind of how I got to where I am in a shorter period of time. 

The other kind of impetus or the main driving force that a lot of people don't know about me because I kind of keep this part a little bit private is I have four kids. So we're a family of six. so when you're traveling, big families mean two rooms minimum and six airplane tickets. So when you kind of multiply that over multiple vacations per year, the number of points that you need to make this possible becomes very big very quickly.

So in order to travel with my family, which is where I actually do most of my traveling, needed to figure out the math on how to earn one, two, two and a half million points per year so that we could take these aspirational vacations as a family. So that's a little bit about me, but happy to answer any other questions that you have about my background, my journey in points and miles.

Or the one other thing that you said, so I completely forgot about this. I briefly mentioned it, but mainly my focus is on luxury travel, business class flights and kind of luxury hotels, thus the large number of points. I do that as both a solo traveler and as a family traveler. So that's kind of the niche within the points and miles world is the intersection of data and analytics with luxury travel. 

Devon: Yeah, and I think it is your background in data and analytics that brings such a unique kind of spin to the work you do and the points education that you do. We're definitely going to dig a little bit deeper into that. But first, just hearing you mention that you really, by necessity, had to figure out how do you earn a lot of points and miles on a sustainable basis unless you only ever wanted to do solo travel.

But since you do travel with your family, I'm just curious to hear from you right now, like in today's current points and miles landscape, do you have a favorite points earning method or a favorite points currency that you have found to be particularly useful, especially when you are looking to do this type of expanded family travel? 

Kevin: It's a great question. So I'll tell you that one of the tricks that I use, and the number that I aim for every year is between two and two and a half million points. So that's the number that I aim for every year. Again, not all points are created equal. So this isn't like two and a half million Amex points, but that's the number of points I aim for.

Everyone always kind of gets really fixated on the numbers, like two and a half million. That number is crazy. Like there's no way I could ever earn that. I say well okay, that's fine. I get that. Could you earn half a million points just for you as a single person player? They say, yeah, half a million. I could do it. That's pretty easy. I say okay, well, let me tell you a secret. I have a player one, I have a player two, I have a business one, I have a business two. So right there, that's four different players that I'm leveraging to earn points. So if you earn half a million with each of those players, two million points per year.

If you break that down even further, if you can just get an average of 100,000 points per sign-up bonus, do it once per quarter, so this isn't even anything crazy, that's 400,000 points. So one, two, three, four, that's 1.6 of your two million points just from sign-up bonuses averaging 100,000 points once per quarter.

So when you actually break it down, it becomes a lot more attainable for people than they realize. Because they get fixated on the two, two and a half million number and then try to figure out how to get there versus trying to figure out how to break it into smaller subsegments and figure out how to earn those points. So that's kind of my first lesson. 

So the second thing that I use a lot and I've really started to enjoy, and I think this is particularly a good method for people that have a large savings account is there is a program called Bask Bank, or a bank called Bask Bank. Bask Bank is very unique in that it functions exactly the same as a normal savings account, except you earn interest in American Airlines miles as opposed to cash. The current rate that you earn is 2.5 American Airlines AAdvantage miles per dollar that you put in per year.

Again, I'm just using numbers just to show people how this can work. If you put in $100,000 into the savings account, every year without doing anything, not opening a single card, you will get 250,000 American Airlines miles. They pay you out every month. So you don't need to wait for the whole year to accumulate these miles. You're going to get, in that example, roughly 20,000 points per month will come into your American Airlines account.

So it's a great way if you have that extra savings, and we were fortunate enough to have a little bit of extra savings, to have a very passive way to earn a lot of points in a very valuable currency, in a hard-to-earn currency that I can then leverage for both short and long-haul flights within the One World Alliance. So it's a great kind of tool that I've started to use in the last year, and it's been really, really helpful for me. 

So those are kind of two things is leveraging those sign-up bonuses across multiple players, but then also looking for opportunities like with Bask Bank that may not be as well-known but can actually be very lucrative. People always say, well, isn't it better just to put it in a savings account or invest it in the S&P 500? 

So again, math, because I'm a data person, is the average return in the S&P 500 is 8 to 10 percent. Let's just use that as a ballpark. If you look at 250,000 American Airlines points, what can you get with that? So with 250,000 American Airlines points, you can take three trips in QSuites on Qatar Airways. The average price of those is between $4,000 and $5,000, and that's me kind of low-balling that figure. It could be much higher. So that would be, let's just keep my math simple, $15,000. 

So I'm getting a 15 percent return on my investment every year in Bask Bank. Now you earn it in terms of travel rewards, and you don't earn it in terms of cash, and there's no compounding. So I get those arguments. But just in terms of a single-year return, you're getting a 15 percent return, which is a pretty good return on your investment. 

Devon: Yeah, absolutely. I love those tips. That's one of my favorite things in the realm of earning points is we obviously have the very traditional way of earning points that most folks are familiar with, right? We can open up new credit cards, earn welcome bonuses. I really really, really heavily on strategically getting credit cards that give me the best bonus categories for my spend because I personally am not always working on sign-up bonus for a new credit card. So I think depending on what your approach is and your strategy, obviously you need to kind of create a points-earning approach that works for you.

But I love finding these very, like you said, sort of low-energy but high-impact ways to earn points. That's what I love about the example of Bask Bank. For someone who does have either it's an emergency fund or say that you are saving up money for something that you know you're going to want maybe two or three years down the line but you don't need access to immediately, like a down payment for a home or whatever it is that you're saving up for. 

To be able to just take that money and have it do the heavy lifting of points-earning for you, I think is, again, one of the easiest ways to really leverage a lot of these points-earning opportunities that are available. So I love that you brought that up because that's not one points-earning method that we've talked a lot about yet on the podcast. So I think that's going to be a new idea for a lot of people, and they're going to benefit from that.

But let's dive in a little bit more to your background because you mentioned that you love to math, that you have this background in data science and analytics, and that that is one of the things that you attribute your relative sort of quick gaining of expertise in the points and miles world to this background. So I'm curious to hear a little bit more about what that looked like for you. What exactly were you doing with data science and analytics that you think really helped you become so good, especially on the award redemption side, in a relatively short amount of time?  

For other people like, say, me, who don't understand technology, what are some ways that we can also leverage technology to help us save time and money when it comes to booking flights? 

Kevin: Yeah, it's a great question. I think even over the last couple of years, the way technology has been used in the points and miles space specifically has been a cataclysmic change, again, even in the last two to three years.

So, my background is I actually have a finance and accounting degree, but spent the entirety of kind of my professional corporate life working in analytics in varying capacities. The last five years, before I decided to make the jump and do this full time, I was managing a team of data scientists at a Fortune 200 pharmaceutical company. 

A lot of what we were doing was different types of statistical analysis. We were doing kind of risk analysis. We were doing natural language processing. If any term that I use you do not know, just let me know because sometimes I get a little too deep into acronyms and terms and forget that not everyone knows what those things mean. So please feel free to interrupt me at any point. 

Part of that was, and while I was doing that, I was working in the ethics and compliance department. So a lot of it was looking for risk and doing detailed analysis. So it was a lot of this kind of number analysis and quantifying not only quantitative data but also qualitative data. So putting numbers to words is a lot of what my job was. 

I kind of took that thinking and started to apply it to the points world. So it was kind of if I have a limited number of points, how can I use them most effectively? The reality is a lot of times there was just a question that I had in my head that no one could answer. Then it just really bugged me that no one had an answer to this question. 

So then I was like well, you're going to find the answer to this question, and you're not going to be happy until you do. So then like seven hours later, I have this massive spreadsheet built with like all kinds of different types of analysis on answering that question. I'll always remember the first question that I challenged. This was at the very beginning of my points and miles world is everyone was saying, can I say the C word on this podcast or? 

Devon: Yeah, you can say anything you want. The beautiful thing is that I don't have any official affiliations or business relationships with anyone. So we can actually say all of the words. 

Kevin: I always forget to ask that question.

Devon: And we can talk about any aspect of any program that we want and no one's going to come after me. I also make zero money from any of those organizations. So we have full latitude to just tell the truth on this podcast. 

Kevin: Okay/ Awesome. So when I first joined the points and miles space, everyone was saying Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best initial card to sign up. It wasn't one of the best. That's not the language they use. They always use the best, the absolute best. 

So I remember thinking as I started to, like, see some other cards like the Amex Gold and the Citi Premier and the Capital One Venture. I started to see them, and I was like oh they kind of look similar. I was like is the Chase Sapphire Preferred really the best card? Like, is that really above board? Or is that just kind of a bunch of nonsense people are spouting? 

That was actually like the very first question I answered in the points and miles space is I looked up what does the average American spend by category? There are about 20 different categories of how people spend their money. 

So then I mapped the categories, mapped the spend, and then did an analysis of all the different cards, including year zero, year one, year two, to figure out what was the best card in the first year? What was the best card long term? Does it ever switch? What point does it cross? All these graphs with lines all over the places to figure this out. So it was a really cool analysis. 

The reality is Chase Sapphire Preferred in 90% of the circumstances, again, sign-up bonuses can swing things a bit. 90% of the time, Chase Sapphire Preferred is not the best first card from an earning perspective. If you love Hyatt Hotels and you want something that's simple and easy, and you are, the Chase 5/24 rule is part of your Bible then yes. Maybe in those scenarios that is the best card. 

But just for an average person with flexibility, is it going to be the best card? Is it going to earn you the most points? The answer is no. The answer to what the best card is, is the Amex Gold, and it's by a landslide. Like, it's not even close. 

So, like, the second analysis I did is what is the best combination of cards that you can put together? Let me just explain how much better the Amex Gold is. If you take the Amex Gold by itself and compare it to the Chase Sapphire Preferred plus your choice of Flex or Unlimited, so pick either one, doesn't matter, the Amex Gold is still better by itself. 

Devon: Yeah, I think a lot of people would not believe you. Honestly, there's a deep part of me that does not believe you, only from the perspective of loving my combination. I don't have the Preferred. I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve. But my personal favorite points-earning combo is my Chase Sapphire Reserve and my Chase Freedom Unlimited card. 

But again, speaking to your prior point, I think that a huge reason for that is, especially over the last two to three years, my family has, more than any other transfer partner, gotten so much value out of specifically that one single Chase transfer partner, Hyatt, that we get so much value from that. But honestly, even trying to take a step back and take a more impartial view, I really believe if I was not as beholden to Hyatt as I am right now for the way that my family travels. Obviously, I think that Chase has some really great opportunities. But I don't think that it is the one end all be all points currency. 

I think that's what's so fascinating about this level of analysis and detail that you have done because I do think there are some now very, very commonly held just points beliefs that just get passed around and everyone kind of, not that they say the same thing, but I think that we don't question some of the very common beliefs in the points world. It is so interesting to hear from someone who's actually gone through and done the legitimate legwork to look at some of these numbers and say, okay but when? But when is this commonly held belief actually true? Or when is it never true? So it's really, really interesting.

It was not surprising for me to hear from you that based on your analysis, the Amex Personal Gold card is just hands down the single kind of best points earning card, that does not shock me. The piece where you said it even outperforms like your favorite combo of Chase cards is where my brain starts to have a little bit of problem following you, but I don't think you're wrong. So please continue. Tell us more about where you were going with that. 

Kevin: No, I mean, that's really the moral of the story. Then it kept being, and before I just do, I'll tell you my dirty little secret that I don't broadcast. So this is a podcast exclusive sneak peek behind the scenes here. 

So from February of this year going back two years, I have been over 5/24. So 5/24 be damned. I still earned two to two and a half million points per year being over 5/24 for two years. That's my dirty little secret. 

Devon: Well, I'm glad that you felt comfortable enough to share that on this platform. But, again, I think that it's so important to talk about kind of what are some best practices, but when do those best practices break down, right? I think sort of the entry level of learning about points are we all need to kind of hang on to some foundational principles, right? Because otherwise you're just trying to learn too much information in a disorganized fashion, and then you just get overwhelmed and give up. 

So I do think it is great from a beginning perspective to learn some of these foundational ideas about Chase 5/24 and about earning transferable points currencies over the more fixed points currencies. But once you sort of have that initial handle of things, then I think the perspective actually flips on its head, and it's then starting to look for okay, where do all the rules break down? Or where are all the exceptions to the rules that then is going to really allow you to elevate the way that you personally want to earn or use points. But I don't think that that's where people should start.

So that's part of the reason why I'm loving this conversation so much because I think it's really showing kind of both sides of that story to remind people that yes, a lot of us, including myself, will try to teach some foundational principles. At a certain point, everyone outgrows those principles, and it's okay to start playing around and breaking them when you know why and when you know your reasons for doing that. 

So I really love having a points rogue on the podcast here to tell us all the ways that you break all of the regular rules because it's so good for people to hear. 

Kevin: I'm just happy that you're not calling me nut job, so that's appreciated. 

Devon: Well, I can edit that part in afterwards. 

Kevin: Have like a peanut flying in the screen. 

Devon: Yeah, exactly.

Kevin: But here's the interesting thing. So Amex Gold, like I said, is mathematically the best card. Now, is that the card that I would recommend? The answer to that question is also no, especially for people that are just beginning and have a bit of hesitation. The card that I actually recommend is the Capital One Venture Card. Not the Venture X, which everyone loves and is a great card, I have it. But the normal Venture Card. 

Now, why do I say that? So one, you normally get a solid sign-up bonus. You get 75,000 points. Great start to your point earning ability. Two, it earns a flat 2x. It is simple. It is easy. You don't need to worry about where are you using it? Maximizing, how do I, which card, no. Just two points every purchase. End of discussion, right? 

This is the piece that I think some people don't fully understand, especially when they start getting a lot of cards and they start getting rejected. Don’t get me wrong, I have been rejected a lot. Again, that's the other part that no one talks about. You will get rejected. For me, I get like, because I have so many and I do this at such a level, like I get rejected a lot. It's not a bad thing. I'm still okay. My credit score is still over 800. But, you know, I get rejected still. 

Capital One in particular, from my experience, is not happy when it sees many credit cards on your credit report. So getting that card or Capital One cards at the beginning of your points and miles journey is also extremely beneficial because it increases your chance of getting approved for those cards more than if you're one or two years in and you have 10 open cards, which Capital One does not like. You may still get approved. 

I'm not saying that you won't, but your chances are much lower than if you're just starting out with a good credit score, with a good credit history, and you want to start getting into points and miles. That's another reason that I really recommend the Venture Card at the beginning as your first card. Simple, easy. You're going to get approved most likely, and it has a solid signup bonus with good transfer partners that you can take advantage of.

Devon: Yeah, and that's such a great tip. Now, I mentioned that, or I think I mentioned, that I follow you on Instagram because I love the way that you talk about points and miles. I love the education you do, and you are just a really fun person in terms of the way that I think that you're doing. 

Kevin: No one knew about the fun part until like the last three months, though. 

Devon: Well, I'm glad that it's starting to come out more because you really do have a fun way of talking about points and miles, and you do a lot of polls on your Instagram account. I, as an introvert, don't always enjoy actually talking face-to-face or computer-to-computer with human beings, but I like interacting with my screens. So when I can take a poll and then see what other people are saying and compare my answers to other people, it's really kind of fun and gratifying.

One of my favorite things that you posted really recently, it may have even been earlier today, was that, again, sort of harkening back to your background in data science and analytics and the work that you do probably partly for work and also partly just because it's fun for the way that you think about things, is that you posted that you have a list of 25,000 international business class flights bookable with Delta SkyMiles. These are, again, international business class flights originating in the U.S. and then going either to Asia or to Europe. 

You posted this poll asking people to vote on what percentage of those 25,000 flights cost less than 100,000 SkyMiles, which is Delta's currency of points, cost less than 100,000 SkyMiles one way. Now, I very enthusiastically participated in this poll. I'm pretty sure that I got the answer right. So I feel like I have a little shred of credibility in terms of my points and miles knowledge, but I'm going to let you reveal the answer to that. Then we're going to spin that off and kind of talk about trends that you've seen in terms of award availability because it is not the same across airlines and across booking programs. 

Kevin: So I really wish there was some kind of like drum that I had on the side where I could do like a drum roll to like reveal the answer. So the most popular answer, which was the correct answer, was zero to 10% of those 25,000 flights would cost under 100,000 points. Fly business class using Delta SkyMiles to either Europe or Asia. That is the correct answer. About 50% of the people voted for that. So good job to those 50%. There were some wackadoodles who wrote 50 plus percent, and there was like 10% of them.  So I don't know. They need to follow me more closely. 

The correct answer is zero. Zero percent. Not a single flight out of the 25,000, again, 25,000 on, I think it was, what was it, 40 routes for the rest of the year. So the whole year. Uptime, downtime, times no one is flying to all kinds of locations of all kinds of distances. Not a single flight was under 100,000 points. 

Devon: Now, I do want to say because I mean I'm sure of like the four people who listen to this podcast, I might get like one angry post saying that they were able to, this person was able to book, you know, again that 50k points Delta One flight somewhere. So we're not saying.

Kevin: That's through Virgin. 

Devon: Right, exactly. We're not saying that you will never, ever, ever be able to book a decent priced award flight through Delta. The reason I wanted to talk about this is because I do really think it is representative of a larger trend, which is that across all of the different airlines and all of the different booking programs that we can leverage our points and miles currencies for, again, not every single airline or booking program is going to have the same amount of award availability or the same amount of what we call saver award availability.

So the lower kind of very competitive points priced flights, especially when we are talking about your and my love of premium international travel in terms of business class and first class flights. So I think that Delta is really, really emblematic of an award program that tends to have across the board, pretty abysmal well-priced, long haul international premium cabin award availability. 

Number one, I'm curious if you would agree with that assessment. Then number two, I'm curious to hear from you, given the fact that you do so many different, again, extensive award searches, are there other award programs that you can think of off the top of your head that you personally just consider to have low award availability versus ones that have the best award availability? 

Kevin: Yeah, so one interesting fact in Delta, and this is something I learned recently. So kind of our point of you're always learning something. No one has all the answers. I was at the Travel Summit a couple of weeks ago, which is a great conference for anyone interested in points and miles. It's held by Prince of Travel. Had a lot of good time. Awesome, awesome event. 

One of the facts that they told me, that they told the crowd, not just me, was that 85% of Amex transfers are to Delta. So let me say that again because some people may thought they misheard. 85% of Amex point transfers are to Delta. I want to combine that fact with what I just said. 

Devon: Yeah, and I have to interject here because I think this is so important to point out. I think when you are in a community of points and miles enthusiasts, right, or you're in several communities of points and miles enthusiasts. I think one of the things that I feel like I hear more with each year because with each year, generally more people are learning about this and getting involved in this hobby, is that the downside is essentially with so many people interested in earning and using points, aren't all of the good award flights going to get booked up? Or is the inventory essentially going to contract in terms of any one person's experience? 

It's statistics like that, that really, really convince me we have nothing to worry about because if 85% of Amex points users. So we're not even taking into account the people who have only ever been familiar with redeeming their points for travel directly through their credit cards travel portal. So there's that whole category of people who never even venture into the world of actually transferring their transferable points currencies out of their credit card account and into a partner airliner hotel loyalty account. So we're not even taking them into consideration.

So of the group of people, Amex points users who have access to this amazingly valuable and powerful transferable points currency, the fact that 85% of them, out of all of the Amex transfer partners, are choosing to use Delta. Again, not that there might not be a worthwhile Delta redemption, but the fact that 85% of people, that is where they're transferring their points. 

It is very, very reassuring to me, again, in addition to my 10 years of experience, that I don't really have to worry about all of the, quote unquote, good award flights disappearing. Because the truth is that, first of all, the number of people who understand earning and using points is I think minuscule compared to the number of people who have no interest in this hobby or just are not that engaged in it. 

Then even within the amount of people who are earning and using points, we have statistics like that, that show us oh, it's not that every single person is leveraging these points in the same exact way. So I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I really just wanted to throw that comment in there because it is a concern I hear from so many people. I wanted to reassure everyone that the golden years of award travel, I do not think are over. But please go ahead and finish that thought, if you can remember what you were saying before I rudely interjected. 

Kevin: No, no, that’s perfect. Yes, trust me. I'm part of enough Reddit groups where they're like dear God, don't share that. You're going to bring down the system. No, guys, guys, guys, guys, no, stop. Just stop. You're not going to bring down the system. It's fine. 

Now, again, the one thing I really want to clarify here, this in no way is a commentary on Delta's actual business class, which is a great product. It is probably, until American launches their new business class product which I think will eventually take over, it is probably the best U.S. business class on the market. JetBlue Mint could make an argument, but probably the Delta One Suites, the nice version, is probably the best hard product on the market for U.S. airlines. Again, U.S. airlines. 

So again, it's not that you shouldn't be flying Delta. It's that if you want to fly Delta, you could transfer points to Virgin Atlantic to book that exact same flight for 50,000 points or less because Virgin Atlantic has a lot of transfer bonuses instead of the 250,000 to 300,000 points. Again, the exact same points. So you could take six to seven business class flights by transferring to Virgin instead of to Delta. The exact same flight. 

So, again, this in no way is a commentary on Delta's product. It's a good product. It's more of a commentary on how to maximize the value of your points. So that is kind of the conclusion of the thought, if you will, on the Delta chapter of SkyMiles, aka Sky Pesos. 

Devon: Okay, so we hammered on Delta a little bit, but they do legitimately have, I think, the worst award availability for, again, international long-haul premium cabin travel. So on the flip side, let's talk about the reverse trend. What are some of the airlines or booking programs that, in your experience, seem to have the best award availability at competitive points prices?

Kevin: So I jokingly say a lot of your questions are perfect because in the last two weeks, I've done posts on all of these things. So I just need to think back to my posts, which is great. So I'm a big fan of Air France, KLM's Flying Blue program. It's a great program. Let me give you an example of part of why I love it. 

Last year, Air France did something that was borderline insane. They dropped the rates on a lot of their flights to the U.S. What they did was they made a flat rate for business class flights between North America and Europe at 50,000 points. You want travel from L.A.? 50,000 points. You want travel from New York? 50,000 points. That's the saver rate. 

So your baseline that you're starting at is going to be 50,000 points if you can find one of the saver rates. Air France also has the crazy 400,000 point redemptions, but we're not going to talk about those. They have 50,000 point rates, unlike Delta who does not have those rates. So that's point one. So Air France, great starting saver rate.

Air France also has a program where once a month, they announce something called promo awards. What the promo awards are is on certain routes in different classes, so this also works for economy and premium economy, and I know we mostly focus on business, but it also works for the other classes where they give you an additional discount. What that does is it drops the business class rate on those routes to 37,500 points. So now we're talking about 37,500 points for a one-way business class on some of the best business class products flying to Europe. Insane value. 

Now, we're going to make it even better. Air France, KLM's Flying Blue program, usually has at least one transfer bonus from each of the major point currencies every year. So it's about one per quarter, sometimes, again, this is all an average. One per quarter, one per point currency each year. That ranges between 25% and 30%, again, based on historical averages.

So what that means is now you're dropping the rate even further down to 30,000 points or less, depending on the transfer bonus for a business class flight. So man, again, imagine flying from LA to Paris in business class for 30,000 points. Insane deal. Now, that's great for solo travelers. 

For those of you with families, which I do. Again, remember, for kids. I'm looking to maximize every single point that I can. Air France has this great policy where, again, in any class but I use it for business, if your child is between the ages of two and 11, you get an additional 25% discount on award rates. Now, there's some varying evidence on whether you can still get the 25% discount on the promo awards. I've seen it done. Others have seen it not done. So I'm not going to comment either way. I've seen it be possible, but sometimes it doesn't work. 

So what does that mean? So let me give you an example. I literally just did this like three days ago and made a post about it that went minor viral. I booked my entire family in business class from the U.S. to Europe for 200,000 points. So, again, six people in business class for 200,000 points. Insane deal. Insane deal. That's why I love Air France. 

Also because they very frequently have lots of award space. So it is, I don't want to say super easy, but it's pretty easy to find six, seven, eight award seats with Air France KLM. So your chance of getting that business class seat is very high compared to other programs that are only releasing one or two business class seats that you're then fighting with everyone else for.

Devon: Yeah, I completely agree. It's one of my favorite programs as well. I only have two children, but I rely almost entirely on Air France KLM Flying Blue when we are trying to fly mostly to Europe just in terms of it's always the first place that I look for multiple premium cabin award tickets. It's not that I always find them or I always am able to get them, but they are so reliable in that way that it's always the first place that I start looking. 

Again, just because of the nature of transfer bonuses to them, how many different transfer partners they have, the number of airports and cities that they service, it's just a program that has so much going for it. So I second that in terms of airline with amazing award availability.

Talking about another trend, and again, this is something that I saw you post, and so this is why I wanted to bring it up for you because I think that there's a lot of anecdotal stuff that flies around the points and miles world about good programs, bad programs, or good availability, bad availability. 

So the fact that you are a data enthusiast, and I know that you've actually run these searches in real time, you have the numbers to back this up. I think it's so helpful to really hear your real experience for some of these trends. One of the things that you recently were posting about and talking about that I would love to get more information from you on is when we're thinking about specific major international airports, and this is in the continental U.S. 

When we're thinking about the East Coast airports, the Midwest, the Southeast, and the West Coast airports, tell me a little bit about some trends that you've noticed in terms of award availability. Are there one or two major U.S. airports that, hands down, sort of similar to what I was saying about Air France Flying Blue, that are so good in terms of award availability that they're a great place for people to start their searches? 

On the flip side, are there even major international airport hubs that you tend to see very poor award availability coming out of so that maybe we shouldn't all hang our hopes of starting and ending our searches in certain airports? 

Kevin: Yeah, so I'm going to give you the good, the bad, and a bonus. The bonus was actually a reel I was going to make later this week. So you guys will get a sneak peek of this reel. So, there's a reason everyone hates people on the East Coast. I'm from the East Coast. So I can say that very, very objectively. Part of the reason is it's kind of like a tongue-in-cheek hate because East Coast airports, in general, have better award availability.

So, two of the best airports that I've seen based on my data for award availability are JFK, now again, this is not a commentary on how much I like the airport. That is a completely different conversation, especially for JFK. Washington Dulles. Those two airports, again, in general, have very, very good award space. It is very easy to find award space at those two major airports. 

Boston usually has pretty good award space. Chicago would kind of be like a mid-tier award space. Probably a step below, though. So, those are some of the airports that have really good award space. 

On the flip side, airports that have terrible award space. LAX, I'm sorry. You are the grand champion of terrible award space. So, LAX, in general, again, I'm not saying that there aren't special deals or one-time award drops, but in general, LAX has the worst award availability of any major airport in the U.S. Miami is also on that list. Miami is also on my list of looking at you airports for places I never want to go to. It's up there with JFK. 

So, those two airports, especially, do not have great award space. So, I'm sorry for everyone that lives in those. LA is the top airport of people who are on my subscription list. Things that people ask for, like I want to see West Coast deals. I'm like I'd love to give you West Coast deals. Talk to the airlines. 

Now, with that said, here is my bonus tip. So, a lot of times when we're thinking about trying to maximize the value of our points, we can see that there are great deals from airports that are not our home airport. So, think of all those poor people sitting in LAX who have great plane spotting, but they can never actually get on the airplane. 

So, we think about these things called positioning flights, and the positioning flight is basically I live in City A, but I found a really good deal out of City B. So I'll take a short flight to get from A to B so I can take advantage of that deal and go. So, that's a positioning flight. Everyone always thinks about what other airports in the US they can get to. 

So, here's my secret. Canada is the answer. Airports in Canada in general have more award space, cost less points, and in some circumstances have less taxes and fees. All three of those things. So, if you live on the West Coast, don't just check San Francisco and Seattle, check Vancouver. Vancouver has amazing award space to the Pacific and to Asia. Incredible award space. For people that live in Seattle, it's a two-hour drive. I've done this multiple times. I spent a summer in Seattle. I would always drive to Vancouver to fly out of there. The border crossing is not that difficult. It's not hard.

If you live in the East Coast, Montreal and Toronto have incredible award space, and those Flying Blue promos that I talked about before at the 37,500 rate, over the last year, roughly half of them have been to airports in Canada, not to airports in the U.S. So, if you want to get amazing deals, fly those amazing products with a higher chance of success, look at the airports in Canada. That is my absolute revealing the secret tip to everyone.

Devon: That is such a great reminder, and I think even for people whose home airport is a large international hub, even if it's not, the dreaded LAX. But no matter where you're located in the states to still keep your mind open. Again, my home airport is O'Hare, which I would argue, from my experience, has really, really great award availability. I've traveled east, I've traveled west, I've traveled solo, I've traveled with my family. Is it as good as JFK? No, but, again, in my experience, it's got really, really solid award availability.

That being said, no place is perfect. Certainly, I have seen especially kind of trends or times of the year around specific premium products. I'm thinking right now about Qatar's QSuites where they tend to go in batches and swings where sometimes they'll have really great award availability then they'll go six months, a year where it's not amazing award availability. 

For a while, I was looking a lot out of O'Hare for flights on QSuites or just any business class product on Qatar, and there was really nothing out of Chicago for months and months and months at a time. But again, like you were mentioning, Montreal had really, really great award availability. 

So, again, even if you are, your home airport happens to be Dulles, which is a great airport, or happens to be Boston, which, again, has great award availability. If you're striking out there, keeping in mind some of these other international hubs that you can still pretty easily get to, I think is such a great tip. 

Now, sort of the last trend that I want to get your take on before we wrap up this episode is speaking kind of about some of these long-held beliefs in the award travel community, and certainly one that I'm sure I've said on this podcast, and I actually kind of do believe is true is when it comes to the best time to book award travel. 

Again, there are so many different nuances and details. We cannot possibly cover every single scenario, but especially the scenario of looking for international long-haul premium cabin travel for more than, let's say, one or two people. So you're looking for three or four seats. 

One of, I think, the tenets of award travel is the single best time to book those seats, or to look for your flights is as far in advance as you possibly can, even down to the day the award booking calendar opens. I have never taken this approach, but I know there's, again, speaking of Reddit, lots of Redditors who will dissect down to the minute. This airline releases their award space or opens their calendar.

Kevin: At 5:00 a.m. You need to set the alarm. 

Devon: Right, exactly. So whatever noon time Tokyo is in the East Coast, and then trying to be on your computer at that time to book. So, I'm curious to hear from you. Do you think it is true that the best time to book award travel really is when award calendars open for booking, or have you seen just other trends in terms of, again, the highest probability of being able to successfully book award travel? 

Kevin: So, the real answer to this question is the answer that no one wants to hear. The answer is the best time to book award travel is when there's a bunch of award space that drops. When the deal hits, that is the best time to book. It is impossible to predict. It is impossible to know where you're going. It is impossible to plan the number of points that you will need to book that. That's why everyone hates it, but unfortunately, that's the best answer. 

Point in case. About a month ago, Japan Airlines dumped a ton of first class award space on their New York and Dallas-Fort Worth routes. Now, why is that important? Because those are the two routes that are flying the brand new A350-1000 business class, which by many accounts is going to be hailed as the best business class in the sky. Potentially the best first class as well. First class is a little bit more debatable. Business class is probably going to hit that mark.

But they dumped a ton of first class award availability. No way to predict it. I think it vanished in a couple of hours, but that's an example of the deal hit, people booked it, and then you figure out what to do. That's kind of another point is a lot of times, there is some logic to just booking it and then figuring out if it works later. 

Because, unlike a lot of the cash fares, many of the points and miles bookings have minimal to no cancellation costs. So if that Japan Airlines deal that I talked about, I can tell you right now I'm sitting on four different reservations for that Japan Airlines flight. I have three business class and one first class.

Why would I do that? That sounds ridiculous. I can cancel it, get 100% refund on my points. I can get 100% refund on my taxes and fees. Even if I couldn't, the taxes and fees are $5. So, I'd be out $5 to have an option to take this flight whenever I want to, up until the date, obviously. So, there is a lot of logic in the deal hits, book it. If you have the points, if you can make it, if you're not going to regret putting them into a program that you may or may not use. 

So, again, coming back to the Air France example. Air France drops stuff, I move points there. I can't book the deal, I know I'm going to use them at some point in the future. They're not going to go anywhere. Versus if I put them in some weird obscure program, like I transfer it to Thai Airways, which yes, is a transfer partner of one of the five currencies, and then the deal vanishes, I'm probably not going to use those points ever, if not for a long time. So then I've kind of lost my points. So if you're putting them into a program that you've used periodically, like there's very low risk to this. 

Anyway, kind of coming back to the original question now. If you don't have that level of flexibility, if you don't feel comfortable booking when the deal drops, then figuring out later, if that's not your mindset, I get it. I have a family, four kids, school schedules, doesn't always work. There are actually three different time periods that have the most award space. 

So one, you've already mentioned, it's kind of when that next month opens up, so that tail end of the calendar. One important thing to note, and this is what a lot of people don't realize, different award calendars have different time periods that they open up. 

So one of the examples, kind of coming back to this Japan Airlines example. American opens up their calendar 330 days, but I think British Airways opens up their calendar 390 days, so 13 months. So it's actually two extra months that you will not see in the American Airlines booking for the exact same flight. So sometimes you can book it over there before it actually gets to the American kind of allotment of Japan Airlines flights. 

Thrifty Traveler actually has an article, and I forget what the link is, that says by award program how far out they open. That's actually really important to know for people that want to try to snag these back-end deals is knowing how far out each of the programs goes. That's one. 

The second time is within a month. So this is your last second award space. It's the airline saying oh no, we have tons of seats that are open. Let's just open up a ton of award space so we can at least do something with that space. There tends to be a lot of award space that opens up within a month of travel. 

I actually literally did this, and I was shocked. I was just, again, I had a question. I was on my way to the Travel Summit. I was sitting on the train, going from my house to the airport in Zurich, and I was like I'm not too excited about flying British Airways. Let me just kind of casually check and see if there's a better flight option. I found seven or eight different flights for 70,000 points or less in business class that were flying from Zurich to Toronto that left within four hours of my search. Eight at 70,000 points or less. Minimal effort. 

I was absolutely blown away by that fact that I could literally change my flight and then get to the airport and get on a different plane than what I had booked four months ago. It blew my mind, and that's just one of those moments where the data's never going to tell you that, but I had a question. I wonder what other flights I could fly out. I did the research and was just blown away by the results. That's an example that literally even four hours from when you're about to get on an airplane, there's still actually decent award space sometimes. That's just another tangent story. 

The third time, which is what I call the Goldilocks time. The time at the end, you've got to be sitting at your computer ready like refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh, book, book, book, book, book, book, book, book, book, book. That's what you've got to be like. The last second one, you have to have infinite amounts of flexibility to be able to pull off. The Goldilocks one is six to eight months.

So, there's another peak around that time where six to eight months out you can normally find pretty decent award space. I think this falls in the realm of where most people like to book. If you want to book your flights to Europe for the summer, start looking in Christmas, New Year's timeframe for those summer flights between June and August. If you want to fly to Asia over the winter, start looking in the summer. That six to eight month time frame, there's another bump that you see for good award availability. 

Devon: Thank you for dispelling that myth that the only time that you're ever going to find great award availability is if you are able to book immediately once the booking calendars open. It is really great to hear that there are actually these different time points. I think that, again, not everybody is always going to have the flexibility to book either very last second or 12 to 13 months in advance. Knowing that there is this other zone of time that can potentially work for a lot of people is really great to hear from someone, again, who has done the research and looked at the data to see what is actually out there.

Kevin, there are actually 27 other questions that I have for you that I would love to talk about. Out of respect for your time, we'll go ahead and wrap up this episode today. I would love nothing more than to have you back on another episode to dive even deeper into some of these topics and adjacent topics another time.

For people who have loved hearing your take on award travel and your background and how that influences the work that you do in the points and miles space, they want to follow you and learn from you. Where can people find you? 

Kevin: Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity to give the shout out to myself. My main platform is Instagram. You can find me there at The Points Analyst. That's my handle. That's where you can find me. I now show my face more often so you can actually link this with what you see on there. 

As part of some of the products and services I offer, I have just recently started a community on school. I periodically post on Instagram for people to join that. I'm really excited about that. It's been a real goal of mine to create an actual community and not a group. 

Some of these Facebook groups have tended to get a little chippy over the last couple of years. So, I've really focused on trying to create that more community feel. If people want to learn some more facts like what they've heard today, they can sign up for that. 

The main service that I offer is an award newsletter. So, using the technology that I've built over the last couple of months, I'm able to do searches for business class award space to save people the time of having to do it themselves. My fun fact is on average, people spend between five to seven hours per trip searching for award space. I want to reduce that as much as possible so that people can spend more time planning the fun things they're going to do on their trip versus searching for the flight.

I have a service. There's both a free one and a paid one. It's called the Premium Passport. So, people can sign up for that. Again, I periodically post links to sign up for that. That's a little bit about my social media presence and some of the different services that I offer.

Devon: Fantastic. We will go ahead and put all the links to all those different places that you exist online and your different services in the episode show notes. For anybody who is driving or walking and can't actually look those up right now, no problem. You will have those all for you in the episode show notes. Kevin, thank you so much for your time today, for sharing your wisdom and your expertise. I've really, really enjoyed getting to know you and learning from you. So, thank you so much for being here today. 

Kevin: No, thank you. It's been wonderful. I will gladly come back on whenever you'll have me. 

Devon: Amazing. We'll have to do it again in the future.

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Point Me to First Class. If you want more tips on turning your expenses into travel, visit pointmetofirstclass.com to learn more. See you next week.