The Best Strategy Booking Award Flights with No Cancel Fee

~ Chris Wada

What’s the best strategy to booking award flights with many airlines allowing cancelations without any fees? Let’s take a dive into the theory.

Many U.S. airlines offer free cancelation of award flights

One of the best things to come out of the Covid-19 era in relation to travel policies is the ability to book awards with no cancel fee. No one likes paying a fee when canceling, so on the surface, it can absolutely save you money.

Which award programs offer free cancelations for award flights?

There might be some nuances to what is considered cancelable, like Alaska Airlines, which charges a non-refundable fee for partner awards. However, by and large, the programs listed offer great flexibility for booked award flights.

So what’s the best way to take advantage?

Firstly, we’ve talked about the timeline for booking awards in a separate post. There, we outlined a rough schedule of when to first consider booking award flights and monitoring reservations to ensure of no problematic changes.

However, we didn’t get into much detail other than generally stating that if you find something else that works better, switch to it. So let’s go into the theory a bit more.

Award programs that have no cancel fees are best when you might not take the booked journey

Ideally all programs would have the ability to cancel without penalty. But we all know this isn’t the case. Instead, it’s best to think of programs that have free cancelations to be your primary backup option.

Let’s say you book an award with British Airways Avios nearly a full year in advance. Your intention is to take that flight. But you have some hesitation that you might not take the journey, or you want a backup flight in case the flight booked with Avios runs into issues. When the booking window opens for American Airlines, you book an alternative flight with AAdvantage miles. Then, when it comes time to fly, you decide to keep the Avios flight and cancel the AAdvantage miles flight. You may then do so without penalty.

Alternatively, let’s say you find a flight that you might take but you just aren’t sure will happen. You have either Air Canada Aeroplan miles or United miles. While the price is a little cheaper with Air Canada, United offers free cancels for awards. The decision on which program to choose is dependent on each person’s choices, but should be weighed against the likelihood you take the journey. The more unlikely you take it, the more likely you should book with a program with free cancelations.

Improving your options… including the price paid

Let’s say you’re looking for flights to London. You have a flight booked with AAdvantage miles and with United miles. Both will get you to London around the same time. However, both programs have dynamic award pricing for their own flights. Rather than the old Ron Popeil approach of “set it and forget it”, you should continue to monitor award pricing.

The same flight you already booked could become cheaper, especially as that travel date draws closer. At that point, airlines have a better sense of who will actually be traveling. They may even offer a discount on the award price to make the booking at the last minute. And with no cancel fees for awards, you can come out ahead by canceling and rebooking.

In my opinion, this is the best approach to taking advantage of free cancelations on your award flights. Always seek to improve what you booked. Dynamic award pricing was intended to charge customers more for the same flights. But we might as well do what we can to put the advantage back into our court.

Putting this approach to practice on our award flights

Let’s walk through a case study of my own. We had a journey planned for Tahiti for quite some time. I booked an award on Air Tahiti Nui (via AA miles) in premium economy for 65,000 miles/ticket. Additionally, I also had an award on United (via United miles) in Polaris business class for 170,000 miles/ticket. I wasn’t thrilled with the business class pricing, but it was the cheapest business class fare I could find (Air France cost more).

Within one week of flying, I decided to check out the united.com website to see what award pricing is there for our flight. Sure enough, there was a discount for cardmembers for 50% off (I have the no annual fee United Gateway card). Our original booking had business class the whole way, but this alternative meant no business on the flight between LAX and SFO. And our flight time moved from 8AM to 6AM. Collectively, a small price to pay for a significantly better award price.

Canceling my award was simple enough. United’s website spelled out what would be redeposited into my account. It is a little nerve-wreaking to cancel a flight so close to departure in the event something goes wrong (like my miles aren’t immediately returned). But in my experience, United has been instant in returning my miles and this time was no exception.

Logging out and back into my account to ensure the miles appeared, I could then go through the standard process to book my new flight. The price for the journey would be a total of 340,000 miles that includes United Polaris business class.

And as an extra potential win, we could even same-day change for free into the flight we had from before. So, really, we saved 340,000 miles just by sacrificing business class on a one-hour segment (remember that points aren’t “free”). And we agreed we’d rather fly business class at that price than premium economy for marginally less, so we canceled the Air Tahiti Nui awards (for no fee as well).

Remaining flexible is the best approach

Without free cancelation of award flights, we would be unable to take full advantage of saving money for our trip. Having flexibility is the thing that ultimately might save a boatload of miles. It certainly has saved us on this particular trip, but there are other adventures we’ve taken where it has come in handy. So while US-based programs might not have the best pricing up front, the flexibility the programs offer can’t be beat.

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