Let’s say you have a trip planned this summer. You just booked your award ticket, now what do you do?

Kick back, start daydreaming about all of the things you are going to do when you are on vacation and wait expectantly for your departure date, right?

Wrong.

As jackplum and daninstl point out in this Milepoint thread, booking your award ticket is just step #1. Step #2 is checking and double-checking the reservation and aircraft assigned to the route right up until the departure to see if you can get some miles put back in your account.

I routinely check my reservations and today I saw that my wife’s ticket in F to the Caribbean for President’s week went down by 15k. It may have been part of the new pricing but doesn’t matter. A quick call and DL put back the 15k miles into my account. ~jackplum

I’ve also had luck getting partial mile refunds when I book an F ticket from a smaller airport on a two class plane then connecting to a 2 or 3 class plane overseas and then later they switch the positioning flight to a 1 class regional jet. ~daninstl

Finding savings like these are rare and arguably not worth the effort to a lot of people. But it is certainly worthwhile to be aware of the possibility, and as you can see, the savings can be significant.

Read the thread in its entirety: It pays to check your award reservations …