FlyAnywhere now supports award flight redemptions

FlyAnywhere is one of HeyMax’s more intriguing features. It’s basically a way of enabling users to encash Max Miles, while retaining some vague veneer of travel-relatedness.

For the past few months, HeyMax has been offering a value of 2 cents per Max Mile for FlyAnywhere, and allowing partial redemptions. I was hopeful these might become permanent features, but unfortunately, the value has now reverted to 1.8 cents per Max Mile, and full redemptions are required once more.

The good news is that FlyAnywhere has added support for award flight redemptions, allowing you to cash out Max Miles even when you’re redeeming airline miles.

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FlyAnywhere now supports award flights

HeyMax users can now use FlyAnywhere to offset the cost of taxes and surcharges on award tickets, a reversal of the previous policy that restricted redemptions to commercial flights only.

For example, if you redeemed a KrisFlyer award ticket on Singapore Airlines between Singapore and London in Business Class, you’d pay S$595.40 in airport and government taxes (thanks, APD). 

Assuming you had a sufficient balance, you could redeem 33,077 Max Miles to cover this (at a rate of 1.8 cents each).

I think this should be obvious, but I’d better state it anyway: there is no need for the award ticket to be redeemed through a programme that partners with HeyMax. You could be redeeming an award ticket with Cayman Airways’ Sir Turtle Rewards for all they care; the only thing that matters is that you have a legitimate flight ticket. 

The usual FlyAnywhere rules still apply:

• Redemptions can be made on behalf of anyone
• Requests can be submitted for any flight booked within the past one month (whether or not it’s already been flown)
• Both budget and full service carriers are supported, with no airline restrictions
• Amounts in foreign currency will be converted into SGD at the current spot rate to calculate the Max Miles deduction

I’ve used FlyAnywhere several times over the past few months to take advantage of the boosted value, and each time my redemptions were processed in mere hours.

Should you use FlyAnywhere for redemption flights or commercial flights?

It honestly doesn’t matter. Because the value per mile is constant at 1.8 cents each, it’s not a question of what is “better”.

Opening up FlyAnywhere to redemption flights simply provides another avenue for cashing out Max Miles, which would previously not be possible for someone who exclusively flies on award tickets (well, I suppose they could have asked their friends or family to send them their tickets…).

FlyAnywhere sets the floor value for Max Miles

Even if you have no interest in using FlyAnywhere, it’s important to be aware of its existence, because it effectively sets the minimum value of a Max Mile.

Since it’s relatively straightforward to cash out Max Miles at 1.8 cents each (remember, FlyAnywhere redemptions don’t even need to be for you), you should not be converting Max Miles to any programmes whose miles/points you value below that threshold.

For example, Hilton Honors points often go on sale at 0.5 US cents per mile, or 0.64 SG cents.  Therefore, there’s really no reason to convert Max Miles to Hilton points at a 1:1 ratio. Likewise, even if KrisFlyer hypothetically became a HeyMax transfer partner one day (well it is, in a way), you shouldn’t make transfers unless you value a KrisFlyer mile at more than 1.8 cents.

Conclusion

HeyMax’s FlyAnywhere feature now supports both commercial and award tickets, providing more opportunities to cash out Max Miles.

On the flip side, the value per Max Mile has reverted to the usual 1.8 cents each, and full redemptions are required once again, limiting the usefulness of FlyAnywhere for cashing out orphan miles.

Hopefully HeyMax gives FlyAnywhere another buff in the near future.