You may not be the family that wakes up to make that 6am or 7am flight. After all, that would entail you waking your family up at the ungodly hour of about 4am to make it to the airport (maybe even earlier for an international flight), ugh!
But sometimes if you want to use miles for a flight, you may need to give a little on your flight times. I make any flight work if I think that the redemption rate is worth it. So what if we are tired and cranky. For me, traveling for free trumps this temporary state. We can always sleep when we get there, or better yet on the plane. On our recent trip to British Columbia, by taking a 6:40 am flight home, I saved about 15,000 Air Canada Aeroplan miles per ticket. The tickets were 25,000 miles each versus 40,000-60,000 each for a flight later in the day.
You may also need to be flexible with your days. By changing your dates by just one day on either end can sometimes make a substantial difference in redemption rates for flights. For our upcoming trip to Hawaii this December, I am pulling my kids out of school for one day because our flights leaving on Friday (a school day) were about 1/3 less Chase Ultimate Rewards points per ticket than they would be had we left Saturday, Sunday or Monday. I realize my kids have not yet hit high school and once they do, I may not be able to be as flexible in terms of them missing school days. To be determined…
My least favorite way to be flexible is by taking a non-direct flight. If the mileage redemption rates are much higher for a direct flight versus a non-direct flight, I will book the non-direct flights, even if there may be a substantial layover. (This does not happen often, usually the layovers are minimal.) If we will have a long layover, I try to ensure we can hit an airport lounge. But even if we can’t, we would still take the non-direct flight and “slum it” at the airport.