Flight Booking
Guide

How we find cheap flights, book with points, and avoid the Spirit Airlines disaster zone

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Finding Cheap Flights

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Google Flights — Start Here Every Time

Hands down the easiest way to find deals. The calendar view lets you browse an entire month of fares at once — perfect for flexible dates. Set a price alert and Google emails you when the fare drops. Our first stop for every trip.

✓ Free · Best Starting Point

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Faredrop — Deals Come to You

Set your home airport and preferred regions, and Faredrop emails you whenever a great deal pops up. Domestic and international economy alerts are free. There’s a paid tier for international business class deals — worth it if that’s your thing.

✓ Free for Economy Alerts

Always book directly with the airline. If something goes wrong — delays, cancellations, seat changes — it’s significantly easier to resolve when you’re the airline’s direct customer. Third-party bookings add a layer of friction you don’t want when you’re stranded with kids.

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Budget Airlines — Proceed with Caution

We generally avoid Spirit and Frontier, especially with kids. But sometimes the price gap is hard to ignore — and occasionally it works out fine. Here’s our real experience to help you decide.

“We flew Spirit to Puerto Rico. Our flight was canceled days before departure. No email, no text — we only found out because we called the day before and the agent casually mentioned it. We scrambled and booked JetBlue last minute at $900 per person. Lesson learned.”

✅ When budget airlines are ok: Short domestic flights with no connection, where a cancellation isn’t catastrophic. No checked luggage, no tight schedule on arrival.

❌ When to avoid them: International trips, connecting flights, trips with non-refundable hotels or tours at the destination. The risk isn’t worth it.

💳 If you do book a budget airline: Pay with a card that has trip cancellation insurance (Chase Sapphire, Amex Platinum). At least you have a fallback if everything goes sideways.

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Booking Flights with Points

Finding award flights for a whole family is genuinely hard. Availability is limited and most search tools don’t show it well. These are the two tools we actually use.

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Points Yeah

Searches across multiple bank and airline programs at once — economy and premium. The Daydream Explorer lets you browse award availability across full months to find the best windows. Our go-to for family award bookings.

★ Best for Families

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Seats.Aero

Great for finding award space that other tools miss. Particularly useful for business and first class redemptions. Use alongside Points Yeah to cover all your bases.

✓ Great for Premium Cabins

✈️ Real Points Redemptions We’ve Done

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Hawaii from the Midwest

41K Avios per person via American Airlines. Also spotted 16K per person via Turkish Airlines on United — didn’t work for our dates but the deals are out there.

41K Avios/person

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Orlando (Disney/Universal)

Transferred 15K Amex points per person to Virgin Atlantic and booked return Delta flights. One of the best transfer partner values we’ve found.

15K Amex → Virgin Atlantic

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Loyalty Programs

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Sign up every family member. Even kids. Points and miles accumulate across every member of the family — those add up faster than you’d expect, especially with flights for 4.

🔗 Amex points are the most flexible. They transfer to dozens of airlines including Delta, British Airways, Air France, Virgin Atlantic, and more. One stash, many redemption options.

📺 Watch Max Miles Points on YouTube. Our go-to resource for learning the transfer game — practical, up to date, and specifically focused on maximizing airline redemptions.

Which cards do we use? Our full credit card strategy

Our Cards →

Flight BookingGuide