Flying Smart: What, Why, and How to Book a Positioning Flight
You’re listening to points talk with the travel Mom Squad previously known as the travel hacking mom show follow the links in the show notes to stay up to date with what the travel Mom Squad has been up to do you think that just because you live near a small airport that travel
Hacking won’t work for you think again and today’s episode we’re taking a deep dive into positioning flights keep listening to hear all about how positioning flights are a powerful tool that could save you thousands of points of Miles welcome to the travel hacky mom show we are three moms who’ve discovered
How to leverage credit card welcome offers to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel expenses for nearly free we’ve used credit card points of miles to take vacations to places like Hawaii Paris Greece the malds Italy and so much more and the best part we each
Still have an 800 plus credit score imagine being able to book a vacation without having to check your bank account it’s totally possible and we’re here to show you how hey I’m Alex and I’m Pam Alex’s mom and I’m Jess we are travel hacking moms in today’s episode
We are covering positioning flights what they are why they’re important and how we use them to our advantage so first we’re going to start at the very basic level and talk about what exactly a positioning flight is so a positioning flight could be when you fly from a
Smaller airport to a hub airport for better award availability or to save points and miles because maybe the flights from the bigger Airport have more award availability or the points of miles are lower and it offsets you know the difference in the cost to fly there and
So that’s an example of when you might want to use a positioning flight another one is if there is a specific flight that you want to take that only flies out of a city obviously you’re going to need to position to that City so some pop ular fifth Freedom route only fly
Out of certain Hub cities an example is I flew to Milan from JFK on Emirates that’s a fifth Freedom flight if you want to get to Milan on Emirates you have to fly out of JFK so I could go to the Emirates website and I could search
From Houston to Milan and it’s going to say error no flights available so if I want to fly Emirates to Milan got to do it out of JFK I could fly to Manchester from Houston on Singapore Airlines that’s another fifth Freedom route so Alex could not fly to Manchester from
Salt Lake City but if she came and met me in Houston we could both fly to Manchester from Houston on Singapore Airlines so that’s just a couple of examples the airline you fly for your positioning flight doesn’t have to be and I think for most of us usually isn’t
The same airline that you’re flying to your main destination so when I flew to Milan from JFK I actually flew Jet Blue to get from Houston to JFK so I flew Houston to JFK on JetBlue and then I flew from JFK to Milan on Emirates Southwest Airlines comes in really handy
With positioning flights because even though they don’t have a ton of international destinations you can use something like your Companion Pass to position yourself within the US to a city they do fly to and then fly from that City abroad to a destination that maybe they don’t fly to
So those are just a couple of examples the bottom line is that we use positioning flights to save points and Miles because you can often find a better deal or more award availability out of those major hubs than you can from some of the smaller airports you know what I find
Interesting is that I live near a big Airport I live near Denver International and you would think that I would find so many great um award redemptions from there and that’s I wouldn’t have to position but I position probably 80% of the time just because I
Can find a better deal out if I go to Chicago or I go to San Francisco or I go to New York City and so I’m positioning not because I live near a small airport cor but just because I can find a better
Deal and it’s huge in what I do I like I said probably 80% of the time I’m positioning for a better deal I totally agree and I find myself doing the same thing and I’m in Houston so obviously a pretty large hub for international travel I don’t have to position as much
If I’m going to South America Mexico the Caribbean I don’t have although I did have to BU I did have to position when I went to St kits but a lot of I feel like especially if you’re trying to findly Business Class A lot of those business class
Deals that pop up are like LAX to Sydney LAX to Tokyo Chicago to Rome you know like they are out of a few select hubs and so I also find myself positioning a lot of the time I so my Hub or my airport is Salt Lake it’s a Delta hub
They not a ton it’s it’s a smaller for an international airport it’s maybe it’s well it’s quite a bit smaller than like an LAX or JFK so my options are very limited and I have flown out of Salt Lake internationally one time that I didn’t have to position and that’s also too
Because I’m trying to fly business class I think if you’re okay doing economy then positioning you might not have to do it as often there’s still sometimes where you’re going to find better deals if you position even in economy but business class especially I’ve only
Flown out of Salt Lake once and not hide a position and that’s because they have a nice flight from Salt Lake to Amsterdam on km and that is I’m G to try to find more of that flight because it is really nice to not have to position I
Get jealous of you especially Jess because you have such a major Hub flying out of Houston and and I’m like oh what would this be like to just wake up and head to the airport when I did it I thought wow this is what Jess gets to do
Sometimes this is so nice and I will say though I also I agree with you about it making a lot of sense when you’re trying to fly business class because a lot of times if you’re flying economy you know you have to figure out the points and
Miles that you’re spending to take that positioning flight and so you have to do the math and see okay if I fly economy and and I have a layover or if I can fly direct economy and it’s x amount of miles or I can position maybe I’ll get a
Better maybe I’ll get a better deal but if you add in the miles that you’re spending to get to that second Destiny you know your your positioning flight is it actually working out to be a better deal there tends to be a ton more miles required for business class so you know
Trying to fly business class out of a smaller nonh airport might be a difference of like a 100,000 miles you know whereas with economy it’s not going to be as big of a difference so you always got to kind of do the math um but Alex is going to tell
Us some of her positioning flight tips so why don’t you yeah well and you guys chime in too because I want to hear what you have to say about these things but first of all let’s talk about how much time you should leave between your flights so between your position iing
Flight from your home airport to the bigger airport Hub how much time do you need there because the tricky thing is is often times you know you’re flying different airlines it’s not one connected itinerary so if you miss that main flight then you’re out of luck like
The airline has no obligation to get you on the next flight because your itinerate didn’t worked out didn’t work out you so there’s not it’s not without risk 100% without risk so I like to give myself at least 4 hours but even I say that because I know I’ve done that but
Now I think that that’s not enough time it kind of makes me a little nervous so I would prefer like 5 hours at a minimum between my flights so if there is a delay then I have enough time to hopefully make that up there’s enough
Buffer where I will have time to to get to the airport and make my next flight what about the two of you well I have always done about the same thing four or five hours but I have had some scary situations where I’ve kind of rethought
That um I’m kind of almost in the camp now of trying to get somewhere the night before and then staying in a a airport hotel with points and then knowing for sure that I’ve got that because when I travel internationally it’s usually business class I do not
Want to miss that business class seat I do not want to have to end up going on economy when I was planning on business so I don’t know I’ve just been spooked enough that I’m kind of heading towards the camp of getting there the night before and and Jess actually her
Hours she’ll get their hour Jess you’ll get get there like six seven hours I mean you’re there half a day usually yeah I’m more comfortable with six I actually have a what would you do question that fits in well here because I booked a positioning fight today because I remembered that we were
Recording this episode and then I was like oh I have a flight I need to book that’s a positioning flight so here’s the situation you know I’m following Taylor Swift around Europe next summer and so I am once again doing the JFK to Milan flight on Emirates because I’m
Going to see her in Milan so I have to fly I have to get from Houston to JFK the only airline that flies directly from Houston to JFK is JetBlue and so my Emirates flight leaves at 10:20 p.m. I find it hard to justify flying in the night before when a flight doesn’t
Leave till 10:20 cuz then I’m then I’m there like all day you know so the Jet Blue flight lands at 411 do you think I’m safe 4:11 p.m. land at JFK Emirates flight leaves at 10:20 p.m. you know what I would do and what I have started doing a couple times is of
Course the only one that gets there you said is Jet Blue because I was going to say I’ve started thinking about when I can to make a backup Southwest flight in case I can’t in case I can’t get somewhere I could book a backup Southwest flight that gets into
LaGuardia and then like worst case scenario I just have to get from LaGuardia to JFK um but I’d rather do that than have I mean I could take another airline and have a layover and get into JFK but that makes me that makes me more nervous like I’d rather have the transit between
Theoria and JFK than rely on my flight and my layover flight both being on time yeah I think that brings up a good point I think when you’re doing a positioning flight you got to do a direct flight because it’s just too many things that could go
Wrong just just do a direct flight otherwise you’re just kind of asking for things to go wrong or increasing the odds that something could go wrong so what time does the other Jet Blue leave that day or is there just that one there’s only one there’s one direct Jet
Blue flight I would do it and then I would do a backup to LaGuardia okay and yeah because I mean I I say that like I would but I don’t I would be really stressed if I had to figure out how to get to if my original plan didn’t
Work out and had to get to JFK from LaGuardia but I mean it you just take a Newber it’d be fine yeah um yeah that’s the thing is like not only do I not want to miss my Emirates business class seed I don’t want to miss Taylor I am flying
In I’m not playing in the day of the concert yeah so I mean even if I couldn’t leave till the next day I would still make it but this is in the summer too right so you shouldn’t have any weather problems yeah that’s my worry is
That like it’s in the summer it’s New York there were tons of crazy weather events that affected flights this summer in New York yeah which which is weird though cuz normally like oh weather delays that’s I’m going to be okay that’s usually in the winter but you
Just yeah you never know but that’s the that’s the good thing about having points and Miles though because honestly that you know if I wake up that morning to JetBlue system outage I’ll just use miles toly Southwest or miles to fly United you know it’s not the end of the world and
So I’m with you though I I feel like I do not want to go and stay the night when I have a flight that leaves that late that’s just kind of a waste but I will say like kind of Switching gears how do you feel about when you’re traveling with
Your family or more people with positioning I feel like I maybe would travel the night before and stay in a hotel with kids because the idea of entertaining a bunch of kids at the airport for five to seven hours or whatever sounds kind of rough so I would what I
Would do if I was bringing my kids is I would maybe even fly in a couple days early and say we’re going to go do a couple things in New York before we go on our trip and then it’s a little you know you’re going to make your flight CU
You’re there I feel like the stress of bringing kids along and something going wrong with all of the kids would just make it much more stressful yeah I agree 100% we’ve positioned a few times when we fly to Hawaii we’ll position to the West Coast and every time we stay the night because
And we usually just stay the night at a an airport hotel nothing fancy although the San FR San Francisco has a grand Hiatt attached to it that is really really nice and so we actually stayed there on our last trip to Hawaii overnight and that was like as good as
It gets as far as staying overnight um for a positioning flight but yeah when we position with Molly we definitely stay overnight yeah so in what other scenarios would you guys stay the night so I did this when I flew to St kits I had to position to Miami and I could
Have flown the morning of but it was only going to give me around 35 minutes in between flights and there was only one flight to St kits every day so it’s like if I miss my connection I wouldn’t be able to go until the next day and
That was way like that short of a connection was way too stressful for me so I flew into my Miami and this was I did not have a kid with me I was going I was meeting some friends in Miami so I flew into Miami the night before I
Stayed at the high at Place Miami airport and then I just got up and flew the next day and that is a scenario where I think I did the math and I think it would have actually been fewer miles for me to just go all in one day and
Obviously I spent the points on the highed hotel room but in that scenario it was worth it for peace of mind for me to spend a little bit more of my points and not have to stress about a 35 minute International layover yeah I completely agree I think that’s a really good time
To to do a positioning flight so let’s talk a little bit about what happens with checked bags I feel like people ask us this question quite a bit if I check my bags and I am positioning flight what happens I will tell you that is why I do
Not check bags is because it’s just another layer and another thing to stress about I also don’t check bags because I worry about them getting lost and my mom has experienced that when I’ve been on trips with her so I I don’t want to go down that road so I
Just keep my bag with me but if you do want to check your bag you are going to have to go get your bag from baggage claim and recheck in and so that’s just you’re going to have to account and add more time for that I just feel like if a
Flight’s delayed I mean I think we’ve all had that time where you get on the plane and you sit on the tarmac for forever and you’re going a little bit insane and so the idea of having something like that happen and then having to go rush to baggage claim get
My bag recheck in it just is too much for me so I don’t want to deal with that but if somebody wants to deal with wants to be able to check their bag definitely give yourself a little more extra buff buffer time or come in the night before
What do you guys think oh I completely agree you know I just got back from a trip and I was like so amazed at the amount of baggage that some people had and I thought that was me in my 20s and 30s when I traveled it’s like I’ve got
To have an outfit for everything and I’ve got you know a huge big bag and then a medium bag and I’m like there’s no way you know when you’re trying to position yourself you’re trying to make connections if you’re traveling on trains you learn really quick that you
Can get by with a lot less and so I’m I’m really in the carry on Camp I never ever thought that I would say that but it can make traveling a way easier and yeah and and I’ve had multiple now experiences of losing bags so I suggest
You do carry on and then you don’t have to worry about it yeah I am also 100% team Caron the only issue is my husband is not and so when we travel together he has to check a bag and he’s like he’s like my toes are
Bigger he’s like I’m six feet tall my clothes are bigger than yours my shoes are bigger than yours and so Ted what are you bringing why is Ted bringing so much up when we went to Milan he checked a bag on jet blue and then we had to so
We had to stand in line in Houston to check the bag and then we landed at JFK and we had to go to baggage claim and get his bag and then we had to go back through security and then we had to go back to the emeris counter it was a
Whole thing if I had been by myself I would not have done that I just got back from 10 days in Australia I did not check a back I carried on my bag for all of my flights in Australia so when there’s a will there’s a way but there’s
Just not a will with him so I have to just choose my battles well maybe it’s because then you could be the one in this podcast episode to talk about what it’s like to bring a bag but I will say too even if you don’t check a bag there’s often times where
You still have to go through security again not all the time it depends on the airport where you’re flying in where you’re flying out of but I’ve flown into Chicago and I’ve had to you know go to a different terminal and you actually have to like leave the airport take a bus
It’s I think it’s a huge pain but and then you have to go through security again so you might still have to go through security when you’re positioning even if you’re not checking a bag but you won’t have to go check your bag at the ticket counter which is
Huge yeah and usually coming if you’re coming home like for example we flew from Sydney to LAX and then I had to fly from LAX back to Houston on a different Airline and when you’re coming back internationally you have to go through like customs and IM ation and all that
And then that forces you you like have to go back through security no matter what when you come back internationally so I had I didn’t check a bag but I still had to go through my Global Entry thing and then that routed me out and then I had to go back through security
And so yeah that’s something to keep in mind too okay so Mom why don’t you tell us about positioning on the other end of things you don’t always have to position from the US so give us some examples of when you’ve done that or when we’ve done
That because I’ve done it with you yeah I’ve done it a lot more I’d say in the last couple years where maybe it’s hard for me to find a flight from any major city in the United States say if I’m going to Rome or I’m going into you know
Going into any city um Amsterdam anything and I just can’t find a good deal so sometimes it works out to do I always call this reverse positioning this is totally a Pam madeup board Pam likes to makeup boards and I I reverse position so I get myself into Europe or
Into Asia or somewhere and from there I take a cheap European carrier like Ryan a or EasyJet to where my real vacation is starting so like Alex talked about us going on that her one trip her business class seat from Salt Lake Lake City to Amsterdam that wasn’t where we were
Trying to get to we were trying to get to Milan and so that we could go to Switzerland Switzerland to the Villa or Selena and so we took that flight into Amsterdam from there we got I believe it was an EasyJet um Airline those are really cheap and that got us into Milan
And I’ve done that several times I did that um going to Croatia where I took an Air France flight over to Paris and then I got on um actually it ended up being another Air France flight but they weren’t joined we bought them separately to get into Croatia and
One thing that I’ve often thought that I’d like to do is another really good thing especially for business classes Iberia has a really inexpensive flight that you can get into Spain on business class seats I haven’t done it so I can’t say how great it is I don’t think this
As good as some business classes um but going from Iberia into Spain from say Boston or there’s some other um cities that you can fly and then say say you want to go to London you want to go to Paris and you’re not finding good deals and they’re all
Expensive 34k in business is pretty nice I’d be willing to do that to Spain and then take that Ryan a that easy jet flight into the place that I really want to go to in Europe so Pam’s reverse positioning again that’s only my term but positioning outside of the United
States is a great way to be able to you know get really good deals I really like that one too because I find it worth it to do it so I can fly in business class and have that time to sleep on that fly over versus just booking an economy seat that maybe
It’s the time is convenient and I don’t have to do the res reverse positioning things but then I get to the destination and I’m so tired and jet lagged so I really I like reverse positioning even more than regular positioning if it works out like for this example flying
From Salt Lake to Amsterdam I’m going to try to do that whenever I can because it’s one it’s a little bit of a it’s a longer fly then if you’re going from the East Coast that that’s the only downside I feel like sometimes of those flights is you
Get on the plane and you feel like you got to go right to sleep and I like to enjoy the experience a little bit too I want to watch a movie I want to eat dinner and then go to sleep and so I really liked doing that reverse
Positioning out of Salt Lake City and getting a little bit of a longer flight so yeah I’m a fan that was one of my favorite flights I I loved that flight and and want to do that more often now for me it means I have to position in
The United States to Salt Lake and then probably position once I get to YK but that was a great flight and again it’s because we had plenty of time to enjoy the experience of business class but also get sleep and be rested we can call that Pam’s double positioning oh okay in
The US and then you also reverse position that’s called a Pam’s double positioning flight and we need to make some merch um with all of Pam’s little phrases on it one other thing I wanted to say is that we forgot to mention earlier is when you’re thinking like oh
I got to the get to the airport that early what in the world am I going to do for so long the good news is with most of these business class flights you should be getting lounge access you can’t usually go in seven hours early but what is it usually like four hours
Or so three to four hours well it technically is but I have never had an issue with the business class lounges I think that maybe like the Centurion lounge and the Capital One Lounge are a little bit more strict but I went to the quantis lounge at LAX for seven hours
And they did not bat an ey so I kind of feel like if you if you’re a business class passenger they’re a little bit more lenient with it yeah so that definitely takes the sting out of being at the airport for so long yeah for sure
Yeah so you may be wondering how do I know where to position myself to so we’re going to give you a few tips first of all you’re just going to want to imagine the United States in your head and so obviously if you are flying to Europe if that’s your goal then you’re
Going to want to position somewhere on the East Coast some of the more popular options are JFK Newark Washington DC Boston those are all really popular on the East Coast I really like Chicago too I feel like that’s been a good one for me yeah Chicago is also really good for
Um Europe too and I’m I’m positioning to Chicago actually when I fly to Tokyo so Chicago is kind of good for either direction um if you want to go to Hawaii or some Asian destinations then you’re probably going to want to go to the West Coast like LAX or San Francisco are
Probably the two most popular on the west coast if you want to fly to South America Mexico the Caribbean then something like Houston or Miami it’s probably going to be your best bet you also want to think about Airline alliances so if you say you’re flying on United or Another Star Alliance partner
You’re probably going to have the best luck out of United hubs so San Francisco is the Hub on the West Coast Houston is a hub like Pam said Denver is a hub Chicago’s a hub Newark is a hub Washington DC is a hub so you want to
Know what the alliances are and where those Hub cities are those will kind of clue you into what’s going to be your best option for positioning there is a website that we really like I know Pam you use it pretty frequently that flight connections website and so you can s you
Can just put in you know where you’re starting where you’re going to or you can just put in the destination and you can see which cities fly non-stop to that destination and so I find that website incredibly helpful when I’m trying to figure out where I want to position myself
To yeah I completely agree and the website is there’s a free version if you want the paid version I think it’s pretty cheap like you you can pay for a whole year and I don’t remember how much it is but I know it’s not
A ton and I find it worth it to make it easier to figure out where should I even be looking all right Pam I think you have a cautionary tale for us about maybe a positioning flight gone wrong or potentially gone wrong yeah I have a
Couple for you but so one recent one is I was going to Europe and I was positioning I found a really good deal out of Calgary Canada and I was leaving from Denver and I you know told on which normally you’ve never done that before
No right so it’s not it wasn’t like I’m G this is my first shot I’m gonna go look at Calgary it was because you found you could not find anything in the US right so yeah I’ve never done Calgary before but it showed up on I think I was
Looking at a site called U seats arrow and I was kind of looking at last minute available ability because I had suddenly had to go to London and it went through Calgary and um it was starting in the morning so I knew that I had to spend
The night you would think so so I’m flying the the day before I’m going to spend the night you would think this is a no-brainer I’m going to make it there’s not a problem in the world I don’t know what happened to Denver airport that night that I got there
Though everything was delayed delayed delayed cancel can so cancel I was freaking out because I wasn’t even sure if I was going to make it to Calgary for my early morning flight and so that was really scary did everything right and still so I mean the biggest thing is I
Just tried really hard to remain calm and I started looking at other flights but everything was delayed so it was one of those things that was really scary I did get there I got they’re very late but it had my heart racing there was another time when my husband and I were
Going to Dubai and it was on Emirates it was his first um business class seat we were it was it’s a really long flight from we were uh positioning to LAX it’s 19 hours really long flight obviously I wanted everything to go good I wanted to
Be all on board with the whole travel hacking thing I wanted to see what it was like and we got word that the day before we’re flying out the next day in the morning that they’re having this freak SN snowstorm they it was it was like
Just flurries it’s going to be crazy it was nuts what they even called it I can’t remember but I was like oh my goodness this is not going to happen for us we have got to get out of Denver and we’ve got to get out of here now and so
That’s where the beauty of points and Miles comes in is that I could look and because weather was good that day we just knew it was going to be terrible the day we were supposed to leave so I was able to look I could find a couple options to get us to
LAX we back really quickly I booked an airport hotel and we got to LAX we were able to take that flight in um on Emirates to Dubai and seriously nobody got out of Denver that next day so you really want to when you have these positioning flights to make sure that
You kind of keep an eye on the weather I think that if you’re traveling in the winter be really careful if you live somewhere where it snows because it it can change really quickly definitely have a backup plan maybe definitely plan to go a day or two earlier it’s a lot of
Miles it’s worth a lot of money if you miss it and so just be careful and plan accordingly I think especially too where it’s like a bucket list trip where you’re going somewhere like Dubai or when I went to the Mal Dives we we went and stayed the night the day before as
Well we flew out of JFK and so I yeah you want to have a backup plan especially especially if it’s a bucket list trip because that would be so sad for something to make it go terribly wrong and sometimes sometimes these business class flights are part of the bucket list trip you
Know and I’ve been really lucky I think we’ve all been really lucky I don’t think any of us have ever not made a positioning flight it’s always knock on wood exactly it’s always worked out but I’ll tell you what I’ve been nervous a few times all right well we hope this
Episode has helped you better understand positioning flights and how you can use them to your advantage for your next International or Long Haul flight if you enjoyed today’s episode make sure to check out our course award travel Academy where we have an entire module all about booking award travel that
Includes positioning flights with step-by-step videos you can learn more by visiting the link in the show notes thanks so much for listening to the travel hacking mom show make sure to hit the Subscribe or follow button from wherever you’re listening so you never miss an episode want to start jet
Setting even faster follow links in the show notes to learn about everything we discussed in today’s episode and to stay connected and follow along follow us on Instagram at Travel hacking mom we can’t wait to see where in the world points and Miles take you
In this episode, we cover positioning flights—what they are, why they’re important, and how we use them to our advantage. Positioning flights can be a smart way to maximize travel rewards and ensure we get to our desired destinations efficiently.
At its core, a positioning flight is a short, separate flight that helps travelers reach a major hub airport (often times with better deals). The beauty is, you don’t necessarily need to stick to the same airline.
Alex stresses that timing is crucial when it comes to positioning flights. Since they’re usually on different airlines and aren’t connected itineraries, missing a flight could spell trouble.
Another perk of positioning flights is the flexibility it affords when using points and miles. In the face of delays or system outages, being able to switch airlines quickly using your rewards points can be a lifesaver.
Alex tackles the topic of traveling with a family and its challenges, especially when it comes to positioning flights. For many, arriving a day early and staying at a hotel near the airport can alleviate the stress of long airport waits, especially with kids.
So, fellow travelers, positioning flights might be an extra step, but they’re often worth the effort for the savings and options they unlock. Curious about more insider tips and strategies? Hit play to hear the full conversation and immerse yourself in the world of traveling on points!
Links:
Free Gifts and Resources To Start Your Points and Miles Journey:
Award Travel Academy: Award Travel Academy I https://travelmomsquad.teachable.com/p/thmata?coupon_code=THMWEB150
Our Website:
Connect With Us:
Newsletter signup: https://travelmomsquad.com/newsletter
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travelmomsquad/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@travelmomsquad
Facebook group: Travel Mom Squad: Travel on Points | Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/travelmomsquad
Episode Minute By Minute:
01:00 What is a positioning flight?
03:50 How positioning flights can effectively be used to get better deals
07:58 Alex gives us her best positioning flight tips
14:48 How to tackle positioning flights with kids
18:15 Pack less luggage and avoid checking a bag to make travel easier
22:27 Pam shares about her idea of “reverse positioning”
27:41 Best tips on where to position your flights to!
30:18 Pam gives a cautionary tale of a positioning flight gone wrong
34:58 If you enjoyed this episode, remember to check out our course Award Travel Academy!