Using your Korean Air miles effectively can open up some decent redemption options on both Korean Air and its partners if you can find the award space.
For this post, I’m not going to get into the details of the elite status aspect of the program and instead focus on the redemption side of the program.
No banks currently transfer to Korean Air
Right off the bat, it’s going to be difficult to accumulate Korean Air miles. That’s because no U.S. banks currently transfer points over to the program. Back in the day, Chase had Korean Air as a travel partner. I did end up transferring over a small stack of Chase points back before that loophole closed. And I’m still sitting on a decent balance thanks in some part due to borders closing during the pandemic.
If you’re looking to build a point balance quickly, your best bet to accrue Korean Air miles is to sign up for their credit card. Or you can fly Korean Air or their SkyTeam partners. Sadly, even Marriott points don’t transfer over to Korean Air these days. This is one of the tougher programs to accrue miles.
Award flights booked with Korean Air miles can be booked 360 days in advance
As a planner, I love being able to book awards well far in advance. I feel like I can lock down my preferred dates of travel before the majority of other award seekers. And so the earlier the schedule is released, the better it is.
But perhaps what matters more is being able to book awards before those with a large balance of miles with U.S. programs are able to book. Those programs generally open schedules and award bookings 11 months in advance. So if you can find a program that allows awards weeks before the comparable U.S. airline (here, Delta), you can generally book what you want.
Award flights booked with Korean Air miles are allowed as far out as 360 days–nearly a full year. That’s awesome if you can take advantage of it.
Cheap (or free) award cancel fees
Need to change or cancel an award flight? You’ll be happy to know that there is the potential you can do so for free. The fee structure varies depending on if it is a domestic flight or an international flight.
- Domestic Korean flights
- All changes are free of charge as long as they occur before the flight departs
- A fee of 500 miles applies if the flight is canceled before the ticket expires
- A fee of 3,000 miles applies if the flight is canceled after the ticket expires
- International flights
- A change fee of 30,000 KRW applies for changes before the flight departs
- Cancelations up to 91 days before departure are free of charge
- Cancelations between 90 days before departure and until the end of ticket validity are subject to a fee of 3,000 miles
- Waiting until after the ticket expires is subject to a fee of 10,000 miles
Given the fee structure, if you’re looking to make a change on an international flight and you’re at least three months before departure, it’s better to just cancel and rebook.
Award booked with Korean Air miles are zone-based
Awards on Korean Air
If you want to use your Korean Air miles towards flying Korean Air (a great option), you’ll find charts for economy, Prestige (business), and first class. Award prices will also differ between off-peak and peak rates. Thus, you’ll end up with six award charts that display rates broken up by zone.
SkyTeam awards
If you’d prefer to instead book an award with Korean Air’s SkyTeam partners, there are separate award charts. While SkyTeam awards require round-trip travel, the amounts in the table below reflect one-way travel to be consistent with the Korean Air awards above. Personally, I find it easier to just look at everything on the same basis to make it easier to compare.
What are the sweet spots?
Korean Air first class awards
Want the single best use of your Korean Air miles? Consider flying Korean Air first class, which is as cheap as 80,000 miles one-way between Northern Asia and North America. That’s a fairly cheap rate these days for true first class. We’ve flown it before and enjoyed our time in the cabin.
Domestic Korea awards on Korean Air
If you can find off-peak awards on Korean Air for flights within Korea, you’ll only pay 5,000 miles for economy and 6,000 miles for Prestige/business. That’s cheap.
At those rates, I’d far prefer the business class rate than the economy rate, but paying only 5,000 miles for a flight is pretty darn good too. Even opting for peak periods isn’t all that much of an upcharge (50% more miles, but off a cheap base price).
Korean Air business class awards
First of all, with first class only a small upcharge over business class, you’d want to go for those awards as a first choice. But let’s say first class isn’t an option. Well, you should still consider their business class product.
While we’ve never flown Korean Air’s business class, paying as low as 62,500 Korean Air miles between Northern Asia and North America is still a great deal these days. I can’t imagine you’ll be disappointed at those award rates.
Intra-North America awards on SkyTeam partners (Delta)
Delta has devalued their own program quite significantly, which is quite unfortunate. But what if I told you there is a way to book economy Delta flights for only 12,500 miles or business class/Delta One for just 22,500 miles one-way? I’m sure you’d be pretty thrilled with the prospects.
Now, the real “gotcha” of this redemption is that Delta doesn’t make all that many saver awards available these days. On top of that, you’ll need to find roundtrip travel to redeem with your Korean Air miles. It’s going to be hard to find dates that line up. It’s worth a check just to be sure, but it will be difficult to make this one work.
Trans-Atlantic SkyTeam business class awards
Want another great hypothetical award? How about just 40,000 miles one-way (80,000 roundtrip) between North or Central America and Europe in SkyTeam business class? That’s a simply fantastic rate these days.
Again, the problem is that you’ll need to book this as a roundtrip award and finding partner award space is tough. But if you can find it, you might be jumping for joy for paying these rates.
And, yes, looking for first class SkyTeam award space is fools gold. Don’t try to look. It’s never going to realistically happen.
Family pooling is possible
First of all, if you’re looking to book for others besides yourself, you’ll need to prove you’re related. Not only that, but only certain types of family members are eligible from your account.
Who is allowed?
- Your grandparents
- Your parents or your spouse’s parents
- Your spouse
- Your siblings
- Your children
- Your children’s spouses
- Your grandchildren
That means others such as your cousins, your friends, your domestic partner(s), your exes will not be eligible.
Once you register your eligible family members, you can also pool your miles, which is a handy feature.
Infant awards are 10% of the miles price on their own flights
Back when we flew internationally with an infant, we ended up sometimes paying a pretty penny to allow our child to sit in our lap. Without getting into the debate on the safety of the lap child, I can say it sometimes got expensive.
With most airlines, you would be forced to pay 10% of the cash price of the ticket. Say you found a flight for 75,000 miles in business class one-way. But if you want to bring your lap infant, you’d have to pay 10% of the cash fare, which could be thousands of dollars. A one-way flight is painfully priced high, and you might pay less if doing a roundtrip, but it’s still quite a dent. I’d say the rough average of what we paid for an infant was around $600 for the ticket.
Korean Air is great in that you’ll end up paying 10% of the mileage price for lap infants if you’re flying Korean Air. We have taken advantage of this in the past. Just know that if you want to do this online, you’ll need to register your family members first to prove you’re related. After approval, the option to book online becomes available. I have heard success from those adding an infant over the phone after booking without needing to prove relationship status. But YMMV.
If you’re instead flying one of their partners, expect 10% of the cash price to apply. If you need any advice or considerations when booking infant award tickets, see our separate post on the topic.
How to best search for availability?
Searching for awards on Korean Air is probably the most reliable method to search Korean Air flights. Just log onto your account and it’s straightforward to make it work.
If you’re looking for partner awards, I’d recommend looking through another website (like Air France Flying Blue’s site for Delta awards or Delta for Air France awards) to see what’s available.
Unfortunately, the free point.me award tool won’t help you since Korean Air is neither a partner of Amex or Bilt.
Do Korean Air miles expire?
Yes, the miles expire after 10 years. That might sound like a sufficiently long time to book your award, but consider what happened to many of us with Chase Ultimate Rewards points.
- You transfer your points over to Korean Air knowing about the 10 year expiry period.
- Point transfers close up, making it hard to adjust your balance.
- Political pressures cause international borders to close for an extended period of time.
- Mergers happen that negatively impact your ability to redeem award flights.
- Award availability patterns completely dry up compared to what life was like when you transferred your points.
Suddenly, that 10-year expiration policy has a rather soon looming deadline. The moral of the story is not to transfer your points prospectively. Just don’t do it.
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