When do I use Chase Travel℠ to book flights?

Booking flights is often a complicated and delicate process. Inexperienced individuals often opt for the cheapest price they encounter, even if it means booking through a third-party service. For example, I’ve seen my friends book their flights through Expedia, which scares me a little since I’m well aware of the horror stories and risks associated with booking through third-party service providers.

When it comes to my thought process for booking flights, I go through four stages of consideration, which include the platforms I would consider for booking my flights. These are:

1. Booking directly with the airline with points or cash
2. Booking with a partner airline with points or cash
3. Booking via a credit card travel portal (i.e. Chase Travel℠)
4. Booking via a third-party service provider (i.e. Expedia)

Technically, you can consider credit card travel portals third-party booking platforms since they aren’t directly affiliated with the airline or a partner airline. While I generally consider it risky and not worth it to book travel with a third-party provider, credit card portals are generally considered safe, as they typically offer ample customer service coverage.

The risk associated with third-party booking systems is that if you encounter any issues with your flight and need to make changes to your itinerary, you’ll be required to resolve these issues directly with the third-party provider that booked your flight.

This is usually a nuisance, especially if your issues arise at the gate of your flight at the airport. If your flight ends up being cancelled and you need to be rebooked, the gate agent at the airport won’t be able to help you, as they are only entitled to assist passengers who have booked directly with the airline or a partner airline. If you booked your flight with Expedia, for example, you’ll need to step aside and call Expedia to resolve your issues.

Credit card portals are most useful when you want to use your points to book a flight, but there aren’t any direct point booking options with the airline that you can reserve by transferring your points to the airline’s loyalty program.

Deciding When to Book With Chase Travel℠

The deciding factor when choosing between booking with Chase Travel℠ or directly with the airline usually comes down to whether or not I want to fork over the cash to spend on the flight, or save my money and use my points instead.

I’ve used Chase Travel℠ a handful of times, and I’ve had a relatively positive experience. I even had an issue with my itinerary, as there were multiple schedule changes with my flights. Resolving the issues with a Chase agent was relatively straightforward and easy.

Making Use of My Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card $50 Travel Credit

Back in late June of this year, Chase gave out a gift to Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card cardholders: a $50 bonus credit to use on Chase Travel℠. Since I was a relatively new Chase customer, this credit enticed me to take a look at the travel portal and consider using it to book my flights.

I decided to immediately make use of my credit by booking a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I was living in San Francisco and doing an internship for the summer, and I wanted to take a quick weekend getaway and explore the city of angels as I had never been there before.

With the travel promotion, my flight from San Francisco (SFO) to Burbank (BUR) on United Airlines only costed me $58 out of pocket. If I were to pay with points, it would’ve cost me about 4,678 points at the old rate of 1.25x.

However, since it was such a small amount of money, I didn’t mind paying for the flight with cash out-of-pocket. I like to use my points sparingly, and for more expensive itineraries. I don’t recall exactly what it was, but I remember the return flight was quite expensive, so I ended up transferring points from Chase over to United to book my flight directly with them.

Booking my Trip to Hawaii

The next time I decided to use Chase Travel℠ to book my flights was for planning my trip to Hawaii this upcoming January. When I was doing my itinerary search, I saw that the most viable points option was booking with United Airlines for 50,000 points round trip. While this isn’t particularly a bad deal, booking directly through United wasn’t the best option for me because I had something else to consider: my Dad had an Alaska Airlines Companion Fare discount he needed to redeem before it expired.

Long story short, the Alaska Airlines Companion Fare allows a companion passenger to accompany a full-paying passenger for only an additional $99 + any applicable taxes and fees. This was perfect for my family’s situation, since round-trip flights from the East Coast to Hawaii cost around $600.

My parents ended up booking themselves a multi-city itinerary with the companion fare discount, only costing $932 for two people to fly from Boston (BOS) to Honolulu (HNL), Honolulu (HNL) to Maui (OGG), and then from Maui (OGG) back to Boston (BOS). We were able to save nearly $600 with the companion fare, which was an amazing deal.

However, that left me with a problem: I needed to book my flight, and I needed to fly on the same itinerary as my parents. I only had Chase points at my disposal, and while I could’ve transferred 50,000 points over to United to get to Hawaii, it would mean that I wouldn’t be flying with my parents.

Chase Travel℠ was able to present me with a solution to this problem. Since I wanted to save money on my flights, I could use my Chase points to book directly through the travel portal and accompany my parents on the same exact itinerary with Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines.

Additionally, even though I’d be booking my flight with my Chase points, my reservation would be treated as a cash booking by Alaska Airlines’ system since Chase Travel℠ is a third-party booking platform. This means that I’d be eligible to receive loyalty reward points for my flight.

By booking my flight this way, not only was I able to save hundreds of dollars by redeeming my Chase points, I’d also be able to about 10,000 Atmos™ Rewards points after the completion of my flights. This is an amazing deal since you can book short-haul flights, no matter the cash price, starting at just 4,500 Atmos points.

Booking my Trip to Vietnam

The third and most recent time I’ve used Chase Travel℠ was to book my family’s trip to Vietnam. Since flights from the U.S. to Asia can be quite expensive, we wanted to save money by using points. However, when I was looking at point redemption options for Chase, the only viable options for booking directly with an airline were a 55,000-point itinerary (one-way) with two stops.

Since two stops isn’t optimal, we looked at cash options as well. We noticed that we could book a round-trip, one-stop itinerary with Cathay Pacific for $882, and were immediately drawn to it.

Since one of my family members had another $50 Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card travel credit they needed to redeem, we were able to book the itinerary for roughly 66,000 points, which was a perfect deal compared to redeeming nearly 100,000 points to book a two-stop itinerary directly with an airline.

Final Remarks

While I usually prefer booking flights directly with airlines for easier itinerary management, I’ve learned that the Chase Travel℠ portal can be a surprisingly powerful tool, especially when paired with limited-time promotions.

When Chase handed out a one-time $50 Chase Travel credit earlier this year, I used it to book a short weekend flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The process was smooth, intuitive, and backed by responsive Chase support, something I wouldn’t have expected from a third-party booking service.

That experience changed how I think about travel portals. I used to avoid them entirely, but I’ve found Chase Travel℠ strikes a strong balance between redemption value and peace of mind. Whether it was my Hawaii trip, Vietnam flights, or that quick LA getaway, Chase’s system consistently made the booking experience straightforward and rewarding.

If you’re strategic about when to book through Chase Travel℠, like when you have a promo credit or want to redeem points for cash fares, you can stretch your rewards even further. It’s not just about saving money; it’s about using your points intelligently and trusting the platform that helps you do so.