Maximizing Flight Credits

Adam Garrett
Jan 4
3 min read

Updated: Feb 26

Below I'll be going over how to maximize flight credits. It's essentially very similar to the process that you go through to find flights on Google flights, but in this case, it's important to select the carrier associated with the credit, which can be a bit tricky for the "everywhere" view since it only gives you options to select by 3 alliances, with no specific carrier names, & is even trickier if going beyond the main 3 US carriers.

Delta Example from SE VA for $200 Flight Credit on a Desktop or laptop:

Start Out on Google Flights with Unusually Flexible Paramaters

First I'll go to Google flights
Next, I'll keep the selection on round trip, not adjust it from economy, & input the 2 airports that Delta flies out of locally (ORF [Norfolk] & RIC [Richmond]). If I wanted even more options at lower costs, I could add larger nearby airports like RDU (Raleigh), IAD (Dulles near DC), DCA (Reagan near DC), & BWI (Baltimore).
Next, I'll input "Anywhere" or another flexible option in the to field.

If there was a restriction on the flight to be domestic, I'd input instead "United States"

If I wanted to stay on the East Coast, I'd put that:

If I wanted to stay somewhere with plenty of airports that's relatively warm during the winter and on the East Coast within the US and excluding territories like the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, I'd put Florida:

While there's the option to input dates, I'm going to ignore that.
Select "Explore":

I'd get this screen if I selected Florida:

Narrow by the Carrier Where You Have the Credit for Alaskan Air, American Airlines, Delta, United, or Another Carrier within 1 of the Main 3 Alliances.

First, you'll want to scroll over the option to select airlines (or select "All Filters").

Then, select "Airlines":

From there, if you're flying Delta, select "Skyteam":

If you were looking to fly American Airlines or Alaska Airlines, you'd select Oneworld 1st, while if you wanted to fly United, you'd select Star Alliance.

More Oneworld Carriers (i.e. British Airways, Iberia, Japan Airlines, Qatar Airways)

More Skyteam Carriers (i.e. Aeromexico, Air France, ITA, KLM, Korean Air, Virgin Atlantic)

More Star Alliance Carriers (i.e. Air Canada, Avianca, Copa, Lufthansa, Turkish)

Narrow by the Carrier Where You Have the Credit on Non-Alliance Airline

The process would be pretty different here.

You'd select somewhere random at first with your departing location & somewhere that the carrier you are looking to book flies, i.e. NYC for many carriers:

Select dates as well.
Select the airline

To do so, hover over the airline, and an "only" option will pop up on the right of it:

Click "Anywhere" in the departure field:

Make your dates flexible here to also fit the number of days you are looking to be on the trip:

From there you'll see the options:

Option to Select Time Range

It's fairly straightforward.

Here is where you're going to click:

Here are the kinds of options that you can select:

Option to Select Specific Dates

It's also possible to select specific dates if you prefer, which is also fairly straightforward in the same location as selecting a time range.

Select Amount

For an amount to select, you could select an amount equal to the credit amount or slightly above if the credit is sufficient for a round-trip flight. I recommend slightly above.

First, you'll want to scroll over the option to select airlines (or select "All Filters").

Then select price, and scroll to the price you'd like, i.e.:

However, once you zoom in and pan around the map, it's clearly many more options than those that are shown above.

Move Around the Map Due to a System Bug

Note that moving around the map for the exact same search can often reveal additional locations due to a programming bug that seems to recur for years despite the negative implications. For instance, with this search from this vantage point, even if you scroll all the way down on the options visible on the left, the only Northeast possibilities appear to be NYC and Boston: