Wikipedia is a powerful tool many people use in the award travel space. Richard Kerr, found of the Award Travel 101 Facebook Group, recommended the tool to me to book cheap flights. The platform is helpful due to the amount of information available to award travelers.
Wikipedia
As many may know, Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world. For award travel, this means that all airports are listed and continually updated reflecting up-to-date airline routes.
As an example, the New York JFK Wikipedia page lists all American Airlines that fly into and out of JFK airport.
When you first use Wikipedia to book an award ticket, it’s helpful to know how best to utilize the platform. I recommend starting with what award program you plan to use. Next, start with your destination first and work your way back to the airport you want to fly out of. Last, search for award availability on the route(s) that you found in an airline search engine that provides the best results.
Choose Your Program
As I mentioned in this post, it’s important to choose transferable point programs. The reason is because these programs give you flexibility when redeeming your points. To help explain how to choose a program, I’ll use the flights I recently booked to Italy as an example.
Italy is serviced with non-stop flights from the U.S. by SkyTeam Alliance members Alitalia and Delta. I chose the SkyTeam Alliance redemption because I have Chase Ultimate Reward (URs) points. With URs, I can book any SkyTeam airline because Korean Air, a SkyTeam member, is a UR airline partner. This means that I can transfer URs at a 1:1 ratio directly to Korean Air and book a Delta flight.
Work Backwards
The best way to book cheap flights using Wikipedia is to work backwards. This means you’ll start with the airport/region you want to fly into first. You’ll then work your way back towards the city/region that you want to fly out of.
Let’s go back to the Italy flights example. Italy is serviced by three major airports in Milan (MXP), Venice (VCE), and Rome (FCO). In order to find flights that best matched our travel schedule, I looked at each airport’s Wikipedia page to see which airlines flew non-stop from Italy to the U.S. Once I had a list of airlines, I matched those airlines with the URs that I wanted to redeem.
Begin Your Search
Above is a list of destinations from SkyTeam partners Alitalia and Delta from the airport in Rome (FCO). As you can see, Alitalia has non-stop flights to many cities including Boston (BOS), Los Angeles (LAX), Miami (MIA), and New York (JFK). Delta has non-stop flights to Atlanta (ATL), New York (JFK), and Detroit (seasonal).
With the non-stop routes I located, I went to the Delta website to begin my search. After locating non-stops award flights at the lowest point level that met our schedule, I went to the Korean Air website to confirm the availability I found on delta.com. I finished this process off by calling Korean Air to compare the availability I found on their site versus what was shown in their system.
Richard Kerr, also a contributor to The Points Guy, has a post that I really like on searching for SkyTeam availability. I recommend reading through it to understand the nuances of each search engine. Follow that up with a few award searches of your own and you’ll be well acquainted with the process.
Book Your Flight
After locating and confirming award availability with Korean Air, I transferred my URs directly to Korean Air. The Korean Air agent then debited the Korean Air points from my account. Shortly after paying the required taxes and fees, Korean Air issued my award ticket via email.
Conclusion
Wikipedia continues to be a powerful tool in my award search arsenal. The ability to locate any airport and route is what I appreciate about the platform. It’s a tool I am glad I know how to use and will continue to recommend.
Have you used Wikipedia to book cheap flights? What do you like most about the Wikipedia airport pages? Please let me know in the comments or by sending me an email pointswithq@gmail.com.
Thanks for reading!
