Points, Miles & Credit Cards

How to Book a Going with Points Deal

September 18, 2023

7 min read

Table of Contents

At Going, we alert our members to deals on cheap flights that you can pay for with cash, regardless of membership tier. Now, our Premium and Elite members also get alert emails for deals bookable with credit card points and airline miles. It’s our new feature called Going with Points.

What is Going with Points?

Going with Points is a feature available for Premium and Elite members.

Premium members get all economy-class domestic deals (including Hawaii, Alaska, and US territories) and international deals to destinations all over the world.

Elite members receive all economy deals, plus deals on seats in premium economy, business, and first class.

Whenever we see a good deal on flights that you can book with points and miles, we send an email to our Elite members with the flight information—the destination, available departure and return dates, the cost in points and miles, and more—as well as instructions for how to book the ticket.

The email looks like this:

A screenshot of a Going with Points deal email for travel to Japan in economy class

We also have a weekly Going with Points newsletter with advice, recommendations, reviews, and stories about all things points and miles. It’s available to all Going members, whether you have a Limited, Premium, or Elite membership. If you want to upgrade your travel game and learn more about traveling with points and miles, please sign up here.

Our newsletter will help you become your own points and miles expert—but if you’re already a whiz at this thing, or if you have a stash of points burning a hole in your pocket, let us at Going find the points deals for you and join Premium or Elite today.

What do I need to book a Going with Points deal?

To book a Going with Points deal, you’ll need enough available points in your account with the airline loyalty program we recommend as a booking tool. For example, if the deal email says you can book the deal with 70,000 United MileagePlus miles roundtrip, you need that same amount or more in your United MileagePlus account.

If you don’t have the necessary number of miles available in your account, try transferring points from your travel rewards credit card to the airline. For example, if you need more United miles, you can transfer points from Chase, which partners with United.

Got your points? Good. Let’s get going and book you some flights.

Step 1: Click the “Book with [airline]” button in the deal email of the flight you’d like to book.

Every deal email includes links to the airline loyalty programs through which you can book the flight deal with points. Sometimes, you’ll have multiple options, but we’ll always recommend which program offers the most value.

‍Step 2: Customize your search criteria to explore availability.

After clicking the booking button, you should be on the award search tool for the airline loyalty program. You may need to change some of the details of your search to meet your travel needs, such as:

Departure airport
Departure dates
Return dates
Number of travelers

In a Going with Points deal, we’ll share a variety of departure and return dates where we’ve found deal availability. You can choose any departure date and book it as a one-way ticket, or combine it with any return date to create a roundtrip booking.

As for seat availability, we’ll only send out a Going with Points alert on trips where we see a minimum of two seats per departure. If there are four or more seats departing on most dates, we'll call that out in the deal, too.

All flights must be booked directly through an airline loyalty program. (Going is not an online travel agency, so we don’t have any involvement in the booking process.)

In a Going with Points deal, you can sometimes book a flight directly with an airline using their loyalty program. But more often, we'll guide you to the best possible redemptions by booking "partner awards"—that is, flights booked with points through an airline's partner. For example, in a recent deal we sent out, Elite members could use Virgin Atlantic Flying Club miles to book this roundtrip flight to Tokyo on flights operated by Virgin Atlantic's partners, either ANA or Delta.

Pro-tip: You can often maximize the value of your points and miles by using one airline’s loyalty program to book travel on their partner airlines.

For example, a one-way flight in economy on Delta from New York-JFK to London-Heathrow, booked through Delta SkyMiles could cost 66,000 miles and $6 in taxes and fees.

That same one-way flight—Delta 001 on March 12—booked through Flying Blue (Air France-KLM’s loyalty program) costs only 24,000 miles and about $10 in taxes and fees. That’s a third of the points cost.

Of course, all that doesn’t matter if you only have miles with one airline and not another. But in this example, both Air France-KLM and Delta miles can be transferred from American Express. So if you had 75,000 American Express Membership Rewards points ready to go, you could get a single one-way flight to London if you booked through Delta SkyMiles at the cost of 66,000 miles, or three one-way flights to London if you booked through Air-France KLM Flying Blue miles at the cost of 72,000 miles.

Voila, that’s the power of points.

Can’t find the points deal quoted in the alert email?

If you’ve followed the instructions above and still can’t find the deal, there are a few things that could be going on.

The deal is not available for your departure dates or route.

Double-check the dates and route (departure and destination airports) in the deal email to make sure the dates you’re searching for are listed.

Or, the deal is no longer available.

We do our best to estimate how long deals will last, but it’s more of an art than a science. If you have a question about a deal, please contact us and we’ll be happy to take a look at what’s going on.

What counts as a good Going with Points deal?

The goal of our Going with Points deals is to open up new travel opportunities you may have never thought possible. We hope that, by using points and miles, Going members can travel to destinations that are harder to get to with cash fares, or during times when cheap flights are scarce.

Think of Going with Points as a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, the flight deals we send every day.

What makes a good deal when booking with points? We’ll alert Premium member to based on these cost parameters on travel from North America.

Premium member Going with Points economy deals

North America to:	Economy class points each way
Europe	30,000 miles or less, each way in economy
South America	30,000 miles or less, each way in economy
Asia	50,000 miles or less, each way in economy
Africa	50,000 miles or less, each way in economy
Oceania	50,000 miles or less, each way in economy

Elite member Going with Points economy deals

Elite members will receive all the Going with Points deals Premium members get, plus receive Going With Points deals on business class tickets based on these cost parameters on travel from North America.

North America to:	Economy class points each way	Business class points each way
Europe	30,000 miles or less, each way in economy	65,000 miles or less, each way in business class
South America	30,000 miles or less, each way in economy	65,000 miles or less, each way in business class
Asia	50,000 miles or less, each way in economy	85,000 miles or less, each way in business class
Africa	50,000 miles or less, each way in economy	85,000 miles or less, each way in business class
Oceania	50,000 miles or less, each way in economy	85,000 miles or less, each way in business class

This is the most you can expect to shell out in points when we send you a Going with Points deal. We’re excited to find and share even greater deals that undershoot these numbers. For what it’s worth, you can expect that deals to Europe will routinely cost less than these maximum limits, while deals to Asia will likely be closer to these cost ceilings.

We’re prioritizing points and miles flight deals bookable with transferable points currencies, i.e. Chase, American Express, Capital One, and/or Citibank credit card points. We’re also keeping our standards flexible in the event of points transfer bonuses, promotional awards, opportunities for peak-season travel, uncommon deals and destinations, and the occasional first-class fare.