Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel

Positioning Flights for Families – What You Need to Know!

• Raya & Duane

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Positioning flights are a strategic tool for families who want to access better award flight availability and save money when traveling. These flights take you from your home airport to another airport where you'll begin your main journey, opening up more travel opportunities.

• Alaska Airlines offers the best value, with flights as low as 4,500 miles per person for short haul domestic routes
• Book positioning flights at least 11 months in advance for best availability and lowest prices
• Always fly in the day before your long-haul flight when traveling with a family to avoid missing connections
• Use hotel credit card free night certificates for airport hotels to minimize costs
• Consider the total travel time and flight patterns - sometimes a positioning flight creates a more comfortable journey
• Watch weather forecasts carefully for both your home city and positioning city
• For families, positioning to airports with direct international flights often means better flight times and fewer overnight flights
• Budget airlines can be good options if you factor in baggage costs and use shopping portals for extra savings
• Always try to arrive at and depart from the same airport when possible
• The Ride Safer Travel Vest is a great alternative to car seats when navigating transportation at your positioning city

If you've gotten any value from our podcast, please leave us a rating or review wherever you listen. That helps more people find our podcast and my goal is growing the podcast.


Speaker 1:

Have you ever found the perfect award flight for your family? But it leaves from a different city. That's where positioning flights come in, and with a big family it's a whole different ballgame. Listen in for some logistical tips and ways to save big on your next positioning flight. Hi, I'm Raya and I'm Dwayne and we are your hosts of the Travel Party of Five podcast, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world. We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible and sometimes even completely free. So if you're wanting to travel more with your family but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in. So welcome to our podcast, where we hope you learn a thing or two to get you closer to your next trip. Hi, friends, how are you? Welcome back to Travel Party of Five podcast. I'm so happy that you're here. Thank you so much for listening today. My name is Rhea. I am your host. I am solo again today.

Speaker 1:

We are just in a very busy season of life, but I do think Duane will be back on next week's episode. So today we are talking all things positioning flights. I wanted to do this episode because I just booked us a another set of positioning flights for our spring break trip for 2026. And I got to thinking you know, this is like the third time that we're going to do this in a year and I've learned a ton about like kind of the best time to book and how to book them for where we live specifically. But I think I have some good tips, no matter where you live in the country, for how you can find maybe the best airports for you to position to, and then some tips on how you can get flights you know you to position to, and then some tips on how you can get flights you know for your family without spending 1000s of dollars. So let's jump in Number one. What is a positioning flight? So, if you're brand new to points and miles, a positioning flight is essentially a flight that you will take like a long haul flight that you will take like a long haul flight that you will take that leaves from a different airport than the one closest to your house. So, for example, you know booking an award flight from JFK when you live in Denver or Dallas or whatever.

Speaker 1:

And there's kind of two main reasons, I think, why someone would do this and, as a side note, these flights are fairly common in the points and miles travel ecosystem, but I think when you have a big family they become more difficult and sometimes cost prohibitive to make this work. But here are the main two reasons that I think in my experience someone would book a positioning flight. So number one would obviously be to get better or cheaper award availability than what's available at your home airport. Especially if you live in a smaller airport, there's either going to be limited options for points flights out of that airport if it's again a smaller airport, or the points cost is going to be very high, whereas if you fly to a bigger airport, then that you know that has more international flights, there's a greater supply of these points flights, which means you can typically find them for cheaper points cost. So that's the first reason is to find either better award availability or cheaper award availability on points. The other option is to find better flight times. So sometimes again, especially if you are living near a smaller airport, the flight times that will leave out of your home airport are maybe they're a red-eye flight and you don't want that, or you know the connecting options that you have are just not good. So those are, I think, the two main reasons. So, number one, obviously, define better award availability. And number two, better flight times that are more convenient for you and your situation.

Speaker 1:

Now, booking for a family of five is much trickier, right, because maybe it's okay, it's $150 for me to fly from Phoenix to LA. Okay, lax is a huge international airport. They have a ton of flights in and out every day, obviously, but, more importantly, a ton of points and miles availability. And $150 is no big deal if there's just one of you, but when you have a family of five or even more, you know, for a family of five that's $750. That is a lot of money, in my opinion, and kind of defeats the purpose a little bit of using points, right, because we're using points here to save money and so we don't want to spend a ton of money just to get to an airport to take a points flight, right? So here's a few tips that I've learned and I'm going to share my most recent example of flights that I booked.

Speaker 1:

So for spring break 2026, we are going to go to Thailand, and when I was looking at this was a last minute. Well, sorry, a fully aware that booking a year out is nowhere near a last minute decision. However, if you've been listening for a while, you've probably heard me talk about how our spring break 2026 trip was going to be Belize, and that was the plan for a long time. I planned almost the entire trip. I had lodging booked. The only thing I did not have booked was our flights, and that was because we were planning to fly Southwest and we were planning to use companion passes, which we don't have yet. So at the end of 2025, we were planning to start the companion pass process and we very well may still do that.

Speaker 1:

But, number one, southwest has rolled out a lot of changes and the points costs have gone up considerably. And the points costs have gone up considerably, and a big reason that I chose Belize is because I was having to choose from places that Southwest flies into and you know that's a fairly limited set of options when you compare it to a regular international airline. So we were going to go to Belize. I was not super excited about it, but I still thought it would be fun and memorable and enjoyable for our family. However, with all the changes Southwest has come out with some of which are not bad, I might add I was hesitant to kind of put all our eggs in one basket and have this trip fully planned.

Speaker 1:

That where I wasn't sure number one, if the companion pass, was even still going to be a thing and you know, it does seem like it will be but I also wasn't sure what the points cost would be. Southwest does not have their calendar released out that far, and it just felt like I was forcing a trip that I was not super excited about. And the lodging was very expensive. Like we wanted to stay in some nice places because spoiler alert we're used to nice places now because we typically use points for nice hotels. So the lodging was going to cost like almost $4,000. And that just I mean that's a ton of money, like a ton.

Speaker 1:

And so I just thought, you know what, like where else can we go that I feel super excited about and that you know we're March, which is when our spring break is, is a good time to visit, and Thailand is very high on my list. And so I did a quick little bit of research, found a few super helpful blogs and was like you know what this is? I feel so much more excited about this trip and so we are going to go to Thailand. It's not fully booked yet, so probably when I do fully book it I'll do a whole episode. But we are going to. I do have our flights there booked and I have our hotels booked. The only thing that's not booked is flights back, and we are going to fly there out of San Francisco, I. So I'm going to walk you through my process and then how I booked the positioning flight from Phoenix to San Francisco, and to bring this back to our main topic, which again is positioning flights. The process that I went through for this is exactly the process that I would recommend for anyone who is trying to find, you know, award flights for their family and maybe isn't having a ton of luck out of their home airport.

Speaker 1:

So I always start on Google flights, number one. I go onto Google flights and I type in first. I start with my home airport and I type in the destination airport. I do a search and then I look to see if there's any nonstop flights. That's step one. So you have to do the search and then filter the search results by nonstop flights, even though and I feel like a broken record because I feel like I say this so much but even though Phoenix is an international airport and is a fairly big airport. So much. But even though Phoenix is an international airport and is a fairly big airport, we do not have a lot of good direct nonstop flights. So if that, if you are in the same boat and there are no nonstop flights to Thailand because there are none from Phoenix, I've, I've checked.

Speaker 1:

The next step is going to be to think about the airports that are near you. Right, and when I say near, I mean like within a one to two hour flight. Ideally, is what I think makes a decent positioning flight without being too overwhelming. If that's not, you know, if that timeframe is a little different for you, that's fine For us. That's kind of what I'm thinking. So that gives me airports like Dallas, so DFW, denver maybe, um, lax, san Francisco, maybe San Diego, um, and then like maybe Seattle, but Seattle is a little bit far, um, those are the ones that I typically look at. And then so if we're going to Europe, I would probably start looking at DFW or Denver or Chicago. Chicago is another one, that's actually where we positioned to fly to Paris, and Chicago is probably the farthest I would go. That's a three hour flight from Phoenix. But the reason I'm looking at those airports are those are airports on the way to Europe, right? So, like we're going east and those are east, I probably wouldn't fly to LAX, which is west, and only to then fly east, because that just gives me a longer, long haul flight. I mean, I might if it was business class, but generally I won't.

Speaker 1:

And then for Thailand, for us it's the opposite, right, we're flying west, and so I'm going to look at San Diego, lax, sfo those are probably the three main ones that I'm going to start with, and then I'm going to start searching from those airports. So I'll do, for example, lax to Thailand or SFO to Thailand, and then I'll look and see, okay, what are the nonstop flights and there will be nonstop flights from those and then I look at, okay, what are the carriers and what is the cost? Um, one thing that I also like to use is the points path extension. Um, this is a free extension you can install on Chrome and it will then show you when you do your search on Google Flights. It will show you if there's points availability and, if so, what it is kind of next to the cash price, or if there is no good points. Availability it will say use cash, and so for Thailand, we actually did pay cash for our flights there. I'm attempting to use points for the way back but have again don't have the points I need and therefore have not booked yet. So TBD on that part, on that piece.

Speaker 1:

But using the Google flights plus the points path helps give me a rough idea of okay, like. These are the carriers that fly direct flights from this airport to the airport I want to go to, and from there I will do two things. So I will go to seatsarrow and I will do a search there. You can also do this, checking your home airport to the airport you want to go to. The only problem with seatsaero is if you're using the free version. I think you can only search two months out, and so I do the paid version for that, because I'm searching for award flights constantly and so I do pay for that.

Speaker 1:

If you have the free version, I mean yes, if you have the free version, I would just stick with the Google flights option and then, whatever airports fly direct, then I would go to their individual websites, like, for example, american Airlines, and then I would do the search and I would see what the points cost is looking like. Or Singapore Airlines is another one. I would do the point search and I would, you know, see what kind of points we're looking at here. For for me it's for five people, right. And from there I'm going to start to just formulate in my mind, okay, like this is probably the flight that I'm going to take, because I have these points that I can transfer to this airline and book it and I have enough points and whatever. Fine, perfect, okay.

Speaker 1:

Once I have the date that I think we're going to fly, before I book the flight I need to figure out what my positioning costs is going to be. So if we're going to fly on, I'm going to make up a date Saturday March 8th. I don't think that's actually a right date, but it doesn't matter. If we're going to fly on Saturday March 8th, singapore Airlines has a flight that I can book. There's availability on points. I need to look for March 7th, probably for the positioning flight. 7th, probably for the positioning flight.

Speaker 1:

If your flight leaves super late in the day, like maybe 6, 7, 8 pm, then you could fly over in the morning, but you want to leave at least, I would say, six hours between the time your positioning flight arrives and the time that your long haul points flight leaves the airport, and I am too nervous to do that. So we typically will fly over the day before, we'll stay the night in an airport hotel and then we'll, you know, fly out on our flight the next day. When there's five people, it just increases the chances of something going wrong Maybe someone's bag getting lost, maybe you know the flight being delayed or canceled. And if the flight gets delayed or canceled it's going to be much harder for me to find another flight when I have to find five seats on that flight versus if it were just me. It's easier, right, one seat much easier to find than five, you know, day of.

Speaker 1:

So typically I would recommend for bigger groups flying over the day before using the free night hotel certificates that come with some of your hotel cards, like the Hyatt card comes with a free night every year, the IHG premier card comes with a free night every year. There's, you know, a bunch of Marriott cards come with free nights, and using those nights for a positioning flight, like staying in a hotel the night before your long haul flight, that can be a really great use of those certificates and that is you know what I, that's what we did when we flew to Paris, and I think we're using points when we stay. Uh, we're positioning to San Francisco when we fly to Japan and I'm pretty sure I booked that hotel using points. But because it's a category five and it's a Hyatt and the Hyatt free night certificate is only category one through four, but again a Marriott card would do the trick as well. They have a lot, of, a lot of cheaper airport hotel options for points. So that's what I would recommend for staying overnight and how to kind of do that on the cheap. And then booking early is going to be one of the best ways to make sure that you are not spending a ton of money or points on the positioning flights.

Speaker 1:

So let me get into kind of a few tips for how I would book these for cheap. Number one I would use points, and some of the best ways to use not a ton of points is going to be to use Alaska Air and book their flights using miles. You can book short haul domestic flights on Alaska for as cheap as 4,500 miles per person, so I can fly my entire family of five for 22,500 Alaska miles one way from, let's say, phoenix to San Francisco. That's the positioning flight that I just booked for Thailand, and it costs 22,500 miles plus around $90 total in taxes and fees. The cash price would have been, I think, between seven and $800 total for all five of us. So that is a great value. That's close to three, three cents per point, I think, if not a little higher, and so super happy with that.

Speaker 1:

But one thing I've noticed is that you have to get these Alaska fares. They're called saver fares. That's like the cheap ones, because they only have a certain amount per day that's available and it's not on every flight either. So you're going to be a little limited in when you can fly over. And so that's the one thing that I've noticed is, the earlier you book, the more likely you are to find those cheaper saver fares.

Speaker 1:

So, again for March 2026, I have already booked our positioning flight from Phoenix to San Francisco, and it is well. When I booked it it was April 2025. So a full 11 months in advance. I'm booking the positioning flight because I number one, I'm not going to fly over more than a day early, right, like no way. That doesn't make any sense and there was only one flight left that had the saver availability and there were six seats and I booked five of them. So booking early is my number one tip, especially if you're using Alaska to save points.

Speaker 1:

You can also find cheaper points flights using American, but they're not going to be as cheap as Alaska, and so I would always start with Alaska. Um, even if you think Alaska airlines doesn't operate near me, um, you're, you're booking American Airlines flights using Alaska miles, so I would check it anyways. And again, short haul flights 4,500 points a person. For us, seattle is not considered a short haul flight, so I think the Seattle points were from Phoenix, were maybe 7,500 points a person or 10,000 points a person they were more. And so I kind of realized okay, san Francisco is like the farthest of the three California airports that we could fly to for the 4,500 miles per person. The only way for you to figure out what that is from your airport is just by doing searches, and it doesn't take that long. You could probably find that out in 10 minutes or less.

Speaker 1:

So tip number two for saving money on positioning flights if you don't want to use points, can't use points. Whatever it may be, I would say don't skip over the budget. Airlines, right, the spiritsirits, the Frontiers, the Jet Blues of the world, even Southwest sometimes runs really cheap fare sales from you know, like domestically, and so check all of those. And when you're doing like Frontier or Spirit, just factor in the cost of your bag, because you're going to have to pay to bring your bag on board, you're going to have to pay to bring your, your personal item, your backpack, whatever. So make sure you're factoring that in. And again, try to find a direct flight, because if there's a direct flight there's just much less chance for things to go wrong, things to be delayed, and again, you shouldn't be flying very far, so it should be rather easy to find a direct flight. You can also set up Google Flight alerts and Google Flights will tell you if the pricing of you know the route is normal or high or low, and so that'll give you a rough idea to have, like what you can expect if you're not wanting to use points. So again, you can set up an alert so it'll alert you if the price drops.

Speaker 1:

You can check like mistake fares if you are a member of thrifty traveler or going I think it's called, which used to be Scott's cheap flights. You know you can watch those as well. And then, obviously, if you have one or two Southwest companion passes, this is a fantastic way to utilize those, because you essentially only need to book three flights and then, if you have two passes, you can get the other two flights for just the taxes. So, obviously, if you have those, this is a fantastic way to utilize them, and if we do end up getting our companion passes again at the beginning of next year, that's likely something that we will utilize them for throughout the year as well. And then, if you are going to fly a budget airline like a Spirit or a Frontier, if they have an office in your city, like an office in the airport, you can often go to the ticket counter in person and buy flights and then you save I forget what it's called, but you save paying some of the taxes, essentially. And so, again, when you're paying for five or six people, that money can really add up. And so check that out.

Speaker 1:

But just be careful, because my understanding is it's generally a very limited window of time maybe like one day a week, for example, like maybe Sundays from two to four that you can go and do this in person. So look on their website, maybe try to search Reddit threads for your specific airport and see if that's even an option. It is an option here in Phoenix, but I've never personally done it because I hate those airlines. However, they are cheap and so it can definitely be a money saver and I think I would do it if I were going to try to fly them. So if you are going to be paying cash instead of using points, you just want to make sure you're maximizing the amount of points that you can earn on a purchase. So if you are booking direct with an airline, I think the Amex Platinum, amex Biz Platinum for sure earns 5x on flights booked directly with an airline. If you don't have that but you have a Chase Sapphire card, chase Sapphire should earn 3x on travel and then also check, like Rakuten, and see if there's any offers for cash back you know worth booking with a specific airline, or check Capital One, and then you can also check if you're going to use a chase card. Check your chase cards for like money back every once in a while. That'll happen.

Speaker 1:

The reason I mentioned this is when I booked our Thailand flights. Part of the reason I decided to pay cash one was. It was fairly cheap, like it was around $500 a person one way to fly again from San Francisco all the way to Phuket, thailand. So that's incredibly cheap. But there was also a Amex an offer on the AMX business platinum to spend $2,500 on airfare and get a $250 statement credit. I feel like that is not super common, but it happened to come around at the time when I was looking at these flights anyways, and so I earned 5x on my spend because I used my AMX business platinum and then I also earned a $250 statement credit. So if you are going to be paying cash for the positioning flights, just make sure that you're maximizing the amount of points that you're going to earn on that transaction.

Speaker 1:

And then I think my last two tips are going to be first of all, make sure that if you're going to fly in on the same day that your long haul flight leaves, make sure that you're flying into the same airport that you're going to fly out of. If you're flying in the night before and leaving the airport to stay in a hotel, it doesn't matter as much. For example, when we flew to Paris, we flew into Chicago Midway and flew out of Chicago O'Hare, but we were staying in the city so it didn't really matter for us. But if you are, for example, flying over in the morning to Newark Airport and then your flight at the end of the day leaves out of JFK, you just have to factor in the time and the cost and the stress of getting from Newark to JFK and I just feel like the more like hoops you have to jump through, the more opportunity you have for things to go awry, and I would just hate for you to miss your long haul flight that you are clearly working so hard to get on. So try to fly into and out of the same airport whenever possible.

Speaker 1:

Plus, if you've got kids, you know that limits the car seat kind of logistical thing. Um, as a side note, let me just um, let me just promote the ride safer vest, though really quickly. That was a game changer for us when we went to Europe. I will link it in the show notes. Um, it's not super cheap. I think it was between two and three hundred dollars on Amazon, but it came in so helpful for us and basically opened up a whole nother world of transportation, like taxis, that we wouldn't have been able to take otherwise because we're not lugging a huge car seat all around Europe. So if you do need something logistically like that for kids, look into that.

Speaker 1:

And then my other last tip is make sure that you're checking the weather forecast for both the city that you live in as well as the city that you are positioning to, because if there is a storm coming and there's a chance that you might not be able to get out of your airport or into the current airport, you may want to either move your positioning flight up and try to get there early so that you know, especially if the storm is where you live right and you need to get out before they close the airports. You know, especially if the storm is where you live right and you need to get out before they close the airports. You know, I would just pay close attention to the weather the few days leading up to your flight so that you can pivot if needed, because you know your airport may be closed. But the the airport you're positioning to may be just fine, and obviously in that scenario you would miss your flight and nobody wants that. So keep an eye on the weather Super important, just fine, and obviously in that scenario you would miss your flight and nobody wants that. So keep an eye on the weather Super important, okay, so let's quickly recap.

Speaker 1:

We have talked about what positioning flights are and why someone would want to use them, why families need to approach them differently and how to save some money on those flights, especially for a big family. Um, so I think reminders are plan ahead, book early, use points if you can, and never assume that everything will work seamlessly. Always be prepared with a plan B. Check the weather. So you may be listening to all this and thinking is it worth booking two separate tickets just to use like a points redemption? I think that the only person that can answer that is you. For us, yes, it is, when I.

Speaker 1:

So let me go back to my Thailand example, when I was looking at flights from Phoenix direct to Phuket, the. So there were flight options, but the points options were not good and the cash options were much, not much, but they were like over $3,000 total for all five of us, like closer to maybe 3,200, I think, which, again, that's not terrible. That's a little over what that's like? 650 a person or something. But the flight times were not ideal. Some of them had like a 24 hour layover in South Korea and then we would have to get on another overnight, like a second overnight flight. That was like seven hours to get to Phuket and the times just were not ideal for a family with younger kids. We would have essentially been on a plane for two overnights versus just one, and so the cost was one factor in me booking out of San Francisco instead of Phoenix, but the other factor was the flight times, and I was able to get us a flight direct from San Francisco to Singapore and then we will stay overnight in Singapore. I think our layover is like 10 or 11 hours, so we will get a hotel directly in the Singapore airport, we will not have to leave, and then our flight leaves early in the morning for Thailand and it's only a two hour flight.

Speaker 1:

So I am thinking about what it's going to feel like in the moment, and I know myself and my family well enough to know that we're not going to want to be on like a 12 hour flight and then have a whole day to explore another country which I love that part, but with kids it just doesn't, it doesn't work and then have to get on another overnight flight, right? So sleep on a plane twice. That sounds terrible to me as a parent. So as if I were going solo. I would 100% do that, because then I would get a whole day in South Korea, which sounds great. But with kids we were like we just want to take the super long flight, we want to get as close as we can. Then we'll hang out in the Singapore airport, which is one of the best airports in the world as a side note. We'll get a hotel and then we will continue on to Thailand in the morning. A two hour flight is a much easier sell to three kids than a seven hour flight. So that's kind of how I'm thinking of it and how I'm deciding.

Speaker 1:

Every one is different and every family is different. So you know, you may feel completely differently about it, and that's fine. Do what works best for you. But the flight times just happened to be way better out of San Francisco and it was cheaper and I could get a good positioning flight. So all of those things added up to we are going to position for the third time flight. So all of those things added up to we are going to position for the third time.

Speaker 1:

And I really wanted to do this episode because I think if you're open to positioning, it can open up a whole nother world of points and can oftentimes save you a lot of points as well, or cash if you're booking cash. So that is all I have for today. Please tag me on Instagram. If you have done positioning flights with your family, you know I'd love to kind of share that story. If that's fine with you, come say hi to me on Instagram If you have questions. At Travel Party of Five. I answer anyone who DMs me, unless you're spam, and I would love to hear from you. And, last but not least, if you have ever gotten any ounce of value out of our podcast, if you would be so kind as to leave us a rating or review wherever you listen. That helps more people find our podcast and my goal is growing the podcast. So, thank you all very much. Come say hi on Instagram and we will catch you on the next episode. Bye.