Frequent Miler on the Air - AA miles: more valuable and less elusive than they seem | Ep76 | Dec 12 20

Episode Date: December 12, 2020

00:31 Giant Mailbag: A blast from the past about Delta systemwide upgrades 2:39 What crazy thing did Delta do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/delta-boosts-elite-status-boosts-for-2021/ 6:38 Mattress running he numbers: Choice 50K promo update https://frequentmiler.com/get-50k-choice-points-free-night-with-500-all-inclusive-booking/ 10:50 Main Event: American Airlines miles now worth more. So how can you get a bunch of miles? https://frequentmiler.com/american-airlines-ends-international-change-fees-united-plans-to-match/ https://frequentmiler.com/aa-introduces-elite-choice-rewards/ 47:03 Post Roast https://frequentmiler.com/perry-lane-hotel-savannah-luxury-collection-marriott-bottom-line-review/ 54:44 Question of the Week: How do you get a single room for four people in London? Don't forget to like, subscribe, and comment. FrequentMiler.com/Subscribe Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event american airline smiles are worth more than ever but how do you get them i don't know we'll talk about that we've got some ideas yeah but first and foremost we'll talk about why they're worth more than ever and but we won't get into that until our regular segments and first we'll start with the giant mailbag reach in tell me what are the people saying this week right today's giant mailbag is sort of a blast from the past i had forgotten to read some feedback that was kind of important a while ago and so and i can't even find it to be honest um it's somewhere you know all these mailbags keep coming in and piling on top of each other you can't expect me to keep track of this place right but i remember the point of it

which was in a previous episode i talked about about Delta's global upgrade certificates that Diamond members get and how they were now more usable than ever on partners. how excited I was that I'd be able to use them on Virgin Australia because I have a real use case where we'll be my wife and I will likely be going to Australia and if we could buy a coach ticket and upgrade and fly Virgin Australia business class which is known to be very good that'd all be great great what awesome what I didn't mention what I did mention but a reader kindly pointed out is that Virgin Australia has completely restructured and is not flying those routes anymore at all. And so good luck to Greg on that. Right, right, right, right, right. You can upgrade to an extra legroom seat on a domestic flight if you'd like.

Right, right. That's probably about it with Virgin Australia for a while. Just not happening. So had we been more on the ball, that could have been, what crazy thing did Greg do this week? Right, right. I could have just said, forget about post-roast. I'm just going to podcast roast you here.

Right. Yeah, we should do that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'll unfortunately miss my chance there. So, yeah. So for anybody else who is out there who got really excited about the fact that you can now upgrade to Virgin Australia's

intercontinental business class, just remember, it doesn't really exist. So yeah, fair enough, fair enough. All right, well, that was a good piece of feedback to remember and hold on to. So all right, so then what crazy thing did Citi do this week? Or not Citi this week,

but what crazy thing did Delta do this week? Or not Citi this week, but what crazy thing did Delta do this week? Yeah. Okay. So Delta, we got an exciting announcement this morning, which was that Delta and Amex have teamed up to offer bonus MQM earnings in 2021. So you probably remember that the Delta Platinum and Reserve cards earn MQMs, which are Medallion Qualifying Miles, which are basically how you get to Delta Elite status. You earn those with a lot of spend on the Delta cards. Now, when Greg says you probably remember this, he means the figurative you, like you, the listener, because I don't remember this. like greg remember this stuff that's right well nick nick you you remember enough that it happens you might not remember the details but i know you remember that it happens i

do anyway fair enough uh for example twenty five thousand dollar spend on a delta platinum card gets you ten thousand mqms during a. But in 2021, they're going to be boosting the status boost and you're going to get instead of 10,000 MQMs, 12,500. What? Yes. 12,500. An extra 2,500 MQMs. I can't wait to sign up for a Delta credit card. So, you know, I mean, it's not totally crazy. There's nothing really crazy about offering more MQMs for 2021. That's a very normal and reasonable thing to do. What's crazy is they didn't go nearly far enough. What is this? Right, Right. So, I mean, this is a time when people aren't flying. So, you know, if they want people, if they want to have elite members, they've got

to do more than that. And their mind, their elite status is worth less than before because of a positive change they've made to their program where they've made award flights freely cancelable or a lot of award flights depends where you're flying from and to but that was one of the perks I valued the most in high level elite status was free award cancellations and changes now everybody gets that so elite status is worth less and so they're only giving a small bonus so anyway you know what i my takeaway here is the the secondary crazy thing is that delta apparently does not listen to our podcast because if they did they'd know that last week we roasted aa for only giving people 100 miles as their big holiday gift well maybe they did listen maybe they listened and they were like, we'll show you guys. We're going to give you 25 times that towards elite status. All right. An extra 2,500.

They're probably pretty excited. Yeah. Maybe they were. Maybe they were. But sorry to rain on your parade, Delta. It wasn't enough. No, not enough. I think that it's likely, I mean, you've said this, and I think you're totally right. It's likely they're going to reduce elite requirements in 2021. Likely everybody across the board probably is going to end up reducing elite requirements in some way or juicing the way you get to status by giving you more elite qualifying dollars. So also, to be fair, Delta is rolling over the MQMs from this year to next year to apply to next year to,

to apply to next year. So they've already effectively reduced the requirements by counting both this year and next. So they've already done a lot. This is a, this is a, you know, a little sort of P in the, in the bucket to mix my metaphors, but sounds like a totally different metaphor there, Greg. i don't know i don't know where i was going with that but you got the gist i think right maybe i'm not really sure i did but we're gonna quit while we're behind yeah let's let's get let's move on to the next all right so so mattress running the numbers yeah is next so just Numbers. So you have some news from the Choice promo that we've discussed before, right?

Yes. So the Choice promo we discussed a while back in Mattress Running the Numbers. There's a promo going on where if you book an all-inclusive stay at one of their all-inclusive brands, which are basically all in the Caribbean, Mexico and the Caribbean, et cetera,

you book one of those all-inclusives and the rules vary a little bit based on location, but you might need three nights or four nights or five nights, depending on where you pick, and you get 50,000 choice points. You spend $500 on an all-inclusive stay, 500 or more, you get 50,000 points, plus some extra benefits thrown in with your stay,

blah, blah, blah. So if you have any interest in this promo, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Over the Black Friday weekend, they upped it to 70,000. Now it's back down to 50,000. Originally, this promo was scheduled to expire like months and months ago, and they've kept extending, extending, and now they've extended it until you have until February 24th to book this. So you got plenty of time to book it if you want. You can find a stay. There's some stays between like five and 600 bucks because an all-inclusive stay for a few nights, five, 600 bucks, get 50,000 points on top of the all-inclusive stay. Pretty good. We talked about it. We were like lukewarm on it

though. And one of the reasons we were lukewarm on it was because we said, well, the landing page says that you, it has free cancellations, no worry, free, no worry cancellation. So you cancel any time up until about 48 hours, 72 hours before something silly like that. So it says that, but as we talked about on this show, if you click through to book on the booking page, it says there's a $50 cancellation fee, which doesn't make any sense. It's totally contradictory. So we had a reader who reported to us what happened because she did cancel her plan stay. And she let us know that she called in to cancel and they told her that the fee would be $50. And they asked if she was okay with that. And she said, no, I'm not okay with that. The landing page for the promotion says that it's made the right choice there.

Right. Free worry, free cancellation. And yeah, she absolutely did. I'm glad she said that. Because of course, they couldn't help her right away. But somebody called her back a couple of days later and said, oh, yeah, yeah, you can cancel that for free. And she's gotten all of her money back now. So there was no fee that she had to pay. She probably would have paid a $50 fee had she just kind of rolled over and said, okay, yeah, it says $50.

All right. Yeah, you know, if she'd gone away, gone along with it, she would end up paying 50 bucks. But thank goodness she stuck to her guns and said, no, your promo page says no fees. So, so, you know, I guess now that makes me a little bit more positive on the promo. Cause there's like no risk now. Now you can just book it and know you're going to get your money back. You managed to fight for it a little bit, but you can get all your money back. So, you know, why not? There you go. Yeah. So I, if I remember right, I think

that was my main reason that I was not going to go for that deal, uh, was because it was unclear if I get my money back and I thought there was a much better than even chance that I would have to cancel. Um, and so now it's suddenly more attractive. And now I'm thinking, like, I need to set a reminder, you know, in February to book for the following winter, because that, you know, that would be a great time to go to one of these properties. And so I think you still have to stay by December 21st of next year. But they may extend that, though, too. I mean, right, it's certainly not conceivable that'll eventually get extended. But the thing is right now,

the booking calendar isn't open that far in the future yet. So yeah, I mean you would want to set a reminder if you want to stay at the very end of the calendar in December, that you would want to set a reminder to take a look at it in January or February. So. Gotcha. So, so yeah, that's, I, that, that's one that I said I was going to book and I didn't book because I just didn't take the time to figure

it out. And I felt bad about the fact that I hadn't done it, but now got until February, I'm going to set aside some time. I promise, promise everybody I'm going to set aside some time, book this thing and hopefully have some data points and how it works in the end, but be far in the future by the time we do. yeah that my friends then cleans up with that and brings us to the main event main event time so american airlines miles worth more than ever they're they're like gold now in a way should we all be really thankful with that 100 mile gift then i mean they gave us 100 miles and you're telling us that it's worth gold oh boy yeah well all right that's stretching it but the point is so the point is so american airlines i

think it was like last week announced that um all award no it's probably more than one week but anyway it doesn't matter um all award flights international so before they'd done this just for the sort of around north america but now almost all flights originating from north or south america will be freely changeable or cancelable so all award flights and um hold, I'm mixing up my two things. No, scratch that. That's for paid flights originating in North America, South America. For award flights, it's just all of them. And that includes things like web special awards.

You can't change them, but you could cancel them for free and get your miles and any fees back. So I think that makes them way more valuable than ever before. And American has some features of their program that also for a long time has made them valuable, but they haven't had this freely cancelable feature. So things like, you know, they have, um, very decent award prices, especially for like business class on their partners. Um, some routes, they have great, even first-class awards, like, uh, certain routes for Eddie had first, for example, is, uh, uh, a steel with American airlines miles, um, and flying American, you know, their web special awards, they often have great prices on there, but I've been hesitant to book in the past because they weren't changeable.

But now it's like, well, they're still not changeable, but you could just cancel it and read books. So it's effectively changeable for free. So I'm suddenly out of the blue, excited about American Airlines miles, but there's a big but. Unlike all the other miles we care about, unlike most of the other miles we care about, you can't transfer from any of the big transferable points programs. Just Marriott.

Just Marriott. And who wants to earn Marriott points just to transfer them to Americans? And Marriott's like three to one. So it's not a great transfer ratio. So I figured we could talk about some ways of earning American Airline miles, short of, since you can't do it by earning chase points and transferring or anything like that. Right, and you also can't do it by continually signing up for one city card after another, after another, or else American

might shut down your account as a, you know, certainly some listeners are listening along and saying, Oh, you know, forget American after they closed all these accounts. So if you're not aware, they did close a bunch of people's accounts within the last year here and kind of harshly go after those. They felt like we're gaming the city system because, you know, if we were doing this show a year ago, we probably would have said, well, I mean, you can get the bonus on the American Airlines card again and again and again, but that's not the case anymore. Well, let's be a little clearer on that though. I think it is the case if you play by the rules. So there are rules with American Airlines cards.

For the Citibank cards, for example, let's say you can't get it again unless it's been 48 months. And I think if you play by that rule, you should be fine. That's a long time. It is a long time. Four years is a long time. It's a lot different than how some people accumulate it. The problem was people were using these application links and codes that bypassed that rule. And they were using them over and over again. Yeah.

So it's not as easy as it once was. But I guess we ought to start with the easiest ways. And the easiest ways, of of course are credit card bonuses so if you don't have the american airlines credit cards then the easiest you know low-hanging fruit there is uh is going to be the credit cards and so you've got two business cards right city has a business card and barclays has a business card and then two personal cards city has a personal card and barclays has a personal card now the barclays cards often come with a bonus after like first purchase so often you you don't even have to meet a spending requirement. You got to keep your eye on what the current offers are, but very often it's a 50, 60,000 point bonus

with no spending requirement on that side. And then the city side, they're usually pretty easy spending requirements too. You know, you're talking usually 60, 65, 70,000 miles, somewhere in that range and maybe $3,000 spent or something along those lines. Right. And there's actually multiple personal cards, right? From each bank. So there's the executive card on the city side and on the Barclays card, the silver or something. Yeah, but you can't sign up for the silver. Yeah, that one doesn't really help you for earning miles, but I just wanted to point that out. Well, actually that's true. So let's be clear on that. Yeah. On the city side, That one doesn't really help you for earning miles, but I just wanted to point that out. Actually, that's true.

So let's be clear on that. Yeah, on the city side, you've actually got three personal cards you can apply for. There's the mile-up card. You probably wouldn't want to apply for. Yeah, it's free, but you might want to downgrade to it because it earns two miles per dollar at the grocery store. So there's that mile-up card that's fee-free. Then there's the City Advantage Executive card that's like $95 or99 a year or whatever, about a hundred bucks a year for that one. And then there's the executive that includes admirals club access for you and up to 10 authorized users,

I guess $450 a year or whatever. I'd have to double check, but somewhere around there for the annual fees. So, so there's quite a few cards, right? I mean, that's three,

four, you could do pretty well. You could do pretty well signing up few cards, right? I mean, that's three, four, five, at least six you can apply for. You could do pretty well signing up for cards within the rules. So that's a great starting point, and especially if you're in two-player mode. So you and your spouse, for example, each sign up for the same cards. You could get twice as many miles that way. You won't be able to combine your miles, though. That's something to keep in mind.

You're not going to put them together. That's something I'm still hoping we're going to see more programs do. You know, Air Canada added that feature of being able to combine. British Airways has it. Spirit is going to be adding it for credit card holders. That's right. Spirit. Which is clearly going to put the pressure on American Airlines.

So we can hope. I'd love to see that. I mean, like you said, I think it'd be great to see that ability. And I don't know, maybe we will. I mean, I wouldn't have, a year ago, if you asked me if I thought that American and Delta and United were going to eliminate change fees on, like,

both paid and award flights, I would have laughed at you. No way! If they can collect those fees, they're going to continue to collect them. But obviously the world has changed. So who knows, maybe we'll get the ability to pull miles, but right now can't put them together. But there are quite a few bonuses you can earn. And then again, like we said, product changing, keep that in mind too. If you got a prestige card or thank you premier card or something that you're going to close or product change, keep in mind that you're going to close or product

change, keep in mind if you product change that across family brands, you're going to lock yourself out of a bonus on that other brand. Like for example, the thank you points for a couple of years. But if you've decided that that makes sense within your overall plan, you've already figured out how to best take advantage of that., rather than cancel one of those and close it, you might want to product change it to the mile up card, for instance. It doesn't have a worthwhile bonus anyway, but you might want the two miles per dollar at the grocery store. So. All right. So, so you've, so you've done all the credit cards. What else can you do? How can you earn these miles? Great question. Well, there's the shopping portal, of course, that one comes to mind right away. So the American Airlines e-shopping portal, if you look that up, advantage e-shopping is what

it is. You can obviously earn miles by clicking through to shop at various stores. But of course, they also often run bonuses lots of times per year. There'll be bonuses like, you know, you spend a few hundred bucks, you get a bunch of bonus miles. How much that is always varies, but there's usually at least once or twice a year where you can earn like 5,000 bonus miles by spending some money through the shopping portal. Right, and to be clear, you still earn the shopping portal rewards, whatever they're offering, but then you also get this. So that's pretty cool. And keep in mind, you should sign up each person in your household

for an American Airlines Advantage account, get each person involved. And, you know, so if you have multiple people that are eligible for an advantage account, get them all an advantage account. And when there's a bonus like that, if you're going to be spending enough money to hit the threshold a few times and, you know, make sure that each person is shopping through their account so that you can pile up those miles for a future redemption. Right. Right. And, and then you just pull them all together. Right. And then you get to go.

Not quite, but you know, if you're booking those, those web specials, you know, for five, 10, 15,000 miles, you could easily within a year to build up enough for a free award. So actually one of the things that, one of the reasons I used to hate booking flights out of other family members' accounts is sometimes I have some level of elite status with an airline,

and I've preferred to book things out of my, you know, out of the account of whoever has status so that things like award change fees would be less. But now that that part at least doesn't matter. So now there's less downside to booking out of random people's accounts, booking flights as long as they have enough miles. Out of other family members' accounts. Let's not suggest random.

Well, yeah, not random people. But if I wanted to book some flights out of your account, I'm sure you wouldn't mind. Right, right, right. Sure. So, okay, so you get the shopping portal. What else can people do to get more miles? So what about the Simply Miles thing? What's that all about? Yeah, so you can sign up for Simply Miles if you have an American Airlines MasterCard, I think is what's required in order to sign up for Simply Miles. So you just Google Simply Miles,

you can register for the program. And then these are card-linked offers. And the interesting thing here is that I think you have to have an American Airlines MasterCard in order to sign up for Simply Miles. But then once you've signed up for Simply Miles, you can link any MasterCard to Simply Miles.

Any MasterCard. Okay, so then what happens? You signed up for Simply Miles, you can link any MasterCard to Simply Miles. Any MasterCard. Okay. So then what happens? You link it to Simply Miles? Link it to Simply Miles, and then you earn miles when you spend money at the included merchant. So, for example, every now and then there'll be something like spend $250 at Best Buy and get 1,000 bonus miles. And that will stack with shopping portal rewards or any other kinds of promotions you have going on. In fact, just recently that was an offer that I saw in Simply Miles.

And so during Black Friday, for instance, you could have clicked through from a shopping portal, from the American Airlines shopping portal, to earn miles at Best Buy. And used your American Airlines, your city American Airlines Advantage card that you had linked to Simply Miles, pick up bonus miles from Simply Miles, and then also stack that with the 5% online shopping deal that City was offering at that time. Not valid anymore, but you could have stacked all of those things and earned some miles and some money back and the normal earnings on the credit card on top of that. So you could definitely do okay.

Right. So that sounds pretty good. Do you have to register for each of those deals or do they just happen automagically? No, you do have to. pretty good. Do you have to register for each of those deals or do they just happen automatically? No, you do have to. Yes. No, you have to add them to the card. It's not like... So sort of like Amex offers,

you have to add them. You have to hit add. Yeah, exactly. You have to hit add. But the nice thing is when you hit add, I think it'll add to multiple cards that you have in your account. Okay.

I actually have my wife's linked with one of my cards because, hey, it's a master card. You can link it with any master card. So, so every now and then I've, you know, triggered some bonus miles in her accounts with things that I was spending money on. So what if, so, so what if you have the same card linked in both of your accounts and you, and you both add the offer, will you get it twice? I doubt that will work. I doubt that. I haven't actually tried, but I doubt it'll work because those card link programs, typically when you link your card with another program, it unlinks it automatically. They don't like it on more than one. Yeah.

So I don't think, I mean, it depends every now and then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are some that will stack. I mean, Dr. Credit is a pretty good resource on that because there's different back ends. There's like Empire is one of them. And then there's this one and that one that run the back. And so sometimes you can find two different card link programs that run on different backends, and you can stack them, but probably not two of the same company. Right. Now what about, so for a long time, American Airlines, you always get these ads for their dining rewards thingy where it's the same kind of thing. You link your card to that, but you don't have to then register for each promotion. It's just, if you happen to dine at a participating restaurant,

you get extra miles and all the airlines have that kind of thing. I assume that stacks. And I mean, in that you could register for both of those with the same credit card. I would assume so too, but I don't think I've seen any restaurants on the Simply Miles thing. I've seen like pharmacies and, you know, online stores and brick and mortar stores and things like that. That makes sense because it would be overlapping those two, two different ways of earning miles. Okay. In fairness, I haven't actually, you know, tracked the Simply Miles offers meticulously. So it's possible, but I, but I don't think I've seen anything that would potentially stack

like that however there might be other stacking opportunities like I said if you find something else like I don't know if DOSH runs on the same back end or not off the top of my head so maybe you could stack some cash back with it but the dining rewards is a good one to keep in mind too because again keep in mind you sign up for the American Airlines dining program and you don't have to link it to an American Airlines credit card. I mean, I used to have my city prestige card when I had one linked to the dining program of my choice because then I was earning five thank you points per dollar

plus I was earning a few airline miles per dollar. And that's just- Right, that's a really good point. So whatever your go-to card is for dining, you should make sure you link to at least one of those dining programs because every now and then, even if you don't go out of your way is for dining, you should make sure you link to at least one of those dining programs. Because every now and then, you know, even if you don't go out of your way to go to them,

you might just accidentally stumble into one. Accidentally get some miles. And that's always fun. Yeah, it is always fun. You're like, oh, wow, that was a delicious meal. And I got some extra miles I didn't know I was going to get. So right. Or it was a terrible meal.

But the consolation prize is 500 miles or something. Everybody let me put it on my card and they Venmo'd me and I got the miles for it. So now that you're going out to dinner with a whole bunch of strangers these days, but, but if you were. All right. So, so earlier you said that American Airlines miles were worth more than gold. So obviously, obviously you'd want to bank these miles and have them grow. So there's a way through banking, you can earn nicely American Airlines miles to twist things around and get to the next topic. Yes, the next one. So Basque Bank, Basque Bank offers a bank account where you can earn American Airlines miles instead of interest. So you don't earn interest, you earn miles. And I think you do get a 1099 at the end of the year.

They do value the miles at something. So you really are kind of earning interest and paying tax on it just like you normally would. But instead of earning it in the form of cash, you're earning it in the form of miles, which might be worth it to you. They often have run bonuses in terms of when you sign up, you get X number of miles for signing up and X number for funding with a certain amount of money. And then you leave a certain amount of money for a while. You might even get a better bonus.

I'm not aware of any particular bonus happening right now, but they did run a large bonus for a little bit last year. So I wouldn't be surprised to see that come back again at some point. And then, you know, you just leave the money there and you just keep earning the miles. I've had, you know, a balance there since they ran the promotion last year. And I just keep picking up, you know, a few miles every month, which is kind of nice because I don't worry about my miles expiring at all since I'm constantly earning a small amount each month thanks to Bass Bank. So Bass Bank's an option. Right. And that's kind of nice because you can just sort of set it and forget it, right? Like you just put this money in there and some miles start coming. Totally is that way. Yeah. Set it, forget it.

Did we miss any, or do you have any major ways of getting miles off the top of your head? So I don't know if I want to say major, but I think the other thing that you can't ignore is that American does put their miles on sale now and then for like 1.8 ish cents per mile, more or less. And I feel like that is maybe you're with a Discover card earning an effective 3% in the first year, then you're looking at one and a quarter miles, one and a half miles per dollar spent or so, maybe even a little bit more than that, depending on how much you're earning. So you could be taking your cash back and using it to buy miles when they're on sale. And I mean, let's be honest, if there was a card earning 1.25 or one and a half American Airlines miles per dollar, we would be pretty enthusiastic about it probably. So that's not a bad rate of return. So thinking about your cash back in terms of miles you can buy with it or

keeping some of that cash set aside for miles isn't a bad idea. And by the same token, bank account bonuses. Now, again, it's cash. So obviously, you can always use your cash for anything you want. But if you want to use cash that feels like it was found money instead of cash that feels like it came out of your pocket, then bank account bonuses are something else to look at. I mean, I've opened a ton of them this year, and you might be able to get some decent miles that way. All right. So are you saying next time we see a sale like that, all our listeners should go out and buy all the miles they can? Definitely. Clear out your bank account and trade it all in for American Airlines gold. Definitely not.

But, you know, if you set yourself a goal, you say, okay, you know what, this year I'm going to open up checking accounts, and the first $3,000 I earn in checking account bonuses, I'm going to use to buy American Airlines miles for trip ABC in the future. I wouldn't argue against that strategy. It's not a strategy I'm going to pursue, but it's also not necessarily that strategy. Yeah. It's also, I think it's important to also think about it in bigger context. Like, so, you know, you can get chase points, you know, many, many more ways. You get Amex membership rewards points many, many more ways. You get Amex membership rewards points, many, many more ways.

And yes, you can't transfer those to American Airlines, but you could transfer them to lots of other programs, sometimes with the ability to book the same partner flights or the same American Airlines flights, depending on who you transfer to. And so it might not make sense to do that, but- Definitely not.

But, you know- Possibly. It could, it could. And especially if might not make sense to do that, but definitely not, but you know, possibly it could, it could. And especially if you're, you know, I think, especially if you, a, you, you, you know, maybe you're at a American Airlines hub where you're very likely to want to take advantage of those, those web special awards when they come out frequently. So, you know, we frequent, like, I think it was just last week, like a lot of flights, first-class flights to Hawaii were really cheap, something like 40,000 miles round trip or something like that. And, you know, that would be one example. Or if you think you're very likely to use some books from the high value

awards, like fly a cutter or fly Japan airlines, Japan airlines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So those can be super valuable. Yeah, they can. And, and you know, it's not necessarily, you have to do the math. You have to look at the numbers and see what makes more sense because it might not always make sense to buy the miles, but a sweet spot that popped into my mind right away with American Airlines, because it's when I took advantage of at one point is that you can fly out to

had first class from the middle East all the way to Japan for 50,000 American airlines miles one way. And I mean, that's, you're talking about a long, right? Something like 13 hours or somewhere in that ballpark, I think. Yeah, somewhere in that ballpark. And so I took that from Cairo to Abu Dhabi to Japan, to Tokyo, Japan a few years ago. And it was 45,000 miles when I did it. Now it's 50,000 miles.

It went up 5,000 miles is all. So that's a pretty decent redemption. Now, if you were buying those miles at 1.8 cents each, that's almost $2,800 worth of miles. Now, is it worth buying $2,800 worth of miles to fly that? I mean, flying it to add first class is pretty terrific, though at the same time, flights out of Cairo are notoriously cheap. So maybe you could book that.

And for the same amount of cash right now, I don't know. Well, I think that brings up a good point. When deciding whether to buy miles, you know, for the same amount of cash right now. I don't know. Well, I mean, I think that brings up a good point is when, when deciding whether to buy miles, I mean, some of it, you know, would be like, what it, you know, what's my alternative. If my alternative is buying a coach ticket for around the same price as what it would cost me in miles to then be able to book business or first class to me, that's like a big win no

brainer right you know but that's not always the case like like you said flying out of cairo probably not no no probably probably not there but you know you look you got to look around and see because there are different sweet spots in different parts of the world another sweet spot that comes to mind for people who are trying to piece together larger trips as i if i remember correctly i believe from uh from anywhere in in Oceania to Tokyo or to Japan, I think it's Japan and Korea are in the same region. I think it's 40,000 miles in business class one way. So that's even less. And again, that's a fair amount of flying because you may fly via Australia and get yourself quite a bit of flying there. Now, I mean, these are theoretical

things down the road, long way from now, probably by the time we're traveling like that again, but again, could potentially be worth it. What else, what else can you do? So you could buy miles, you got the shopping portal, you got simply miles, you got any other stacks for us? Yeah. I mean, nothing, nothing obvious comes to mind, but let's talk about. Well, you can fly. You don't want to fly American Airlines though. Come on. Yeah, I mean, nothing obvious comes to mind, but let's talk about... Well... You can fly.

Yeah. You don't want to fly American Airlines, though. Come on. You're going to earn miles without flying. That's right. But, you know, I mean, we're kind of joking by the same time. I mean, most programs, including American, have reduced the mileage earning so much on flying that it's just not, ironically, a practical way to earn

a lot of miles. Now, there's some cases where you could fly a partner, like if there's discount business or first class flight, you fly the partner and you, you know, and you credit it to American and earn all kinds of extra miles. But so I don. So I don't know off the top of my head if that applies to American or not. But there might be cases where that makes a lot of sense. What I want to bring up was that there's more than one program that has a great mileage program that you can't transfer from transferable points currencies. And one of those that we've talked about quite a bit is Alaska. So now Alaska miles are gold to me. Yeah, right. So we'll go ahead. What were you gonna say? Yeah, I mean, Alaska miles are gold to me because a like you said, they're not easy to earn and be they're super

valuable because they have some incredible sweet spots that may go away because they're joining One World. We don't know what's going to happen yet. But right now anyway, they have some incredible sweet spots. They allow a free stopover on a one-way ticket. So you get a free stopover each way if you're flying round trip. I mean, that's pretty terrific. And they've been notoriously pretty good about flexibility

on where that stopover may be, et cetera. So that's a very big positive going for Alaska. And then they give you a ton of miles if you happen to fly certain partners and international premium cabins. They give you a ton of miles. If you fly British Airways in business, paid business or first class, you know, it's just like 350, 450, 550% mileage flown in terms of what you'll earn depending on your status with Alaska. And even

if no status, even with no status, you're in a ton of redeemable miles. And the nice thing is you could use, for example, chase points to book a flight through the chase portal that you use your chase points to buy and then earn a boatload of Alaska miles along with your paid business class flight. So it may certainly end up being worth it. So there are some things that I really like about the Alaska program. Right. And, you know, the free stoppers on one way awards, that's no slouch of a benefit that they have. They're probably the most, to me, the most valuable miles that I've never been able to use. So the big Achilles heel in the program for me has been the fact that

you can't combine partners. So, you know, I want to take advantage of the fact that you can fly, uh, you know, Cathay Pacific super cheap. Um. But Cathay doesn't fly from my home airport. And so I need to get there. And so, you know, I'd have to book a separate flight to get to an airline. I mean, get to an airport where I could then use an Alaska award. And once I add that in, you know, depending on the circumstance it it often turns out booking with some other miles is just as good or even better in my experience so anyway um that's alaska today but they've been like snuggling into bed all cozy with american airlines right right so they're

they're starting to uh align their programs various ways, and they are joining One World. And the One World Alliance could mean good things for Alaska Flyers, because the good news would be if they get rid of that problem I was just talking about, that probably once they join One World, they'll probably introduce a One World award chart instead of having separate award charts for every partner. And they'll probably let me book an American Airlines flight from Detroit to Chicago and then Cathay to Hong Kong and onward to South Africa. I'm just making up stuff.

So they don't allow that today. To be clear, they do allow the Chicago to Hong Kong to South Africa. I'm just making up stuff. They don't allow that today. To be clear, they do allow the Chicago to Hong Kong to South Africa on a single award. First class, it's 70,000 miles. I know. It's so cheap. You can stop over in Hong Kong. Stop over in Hong Kong, yeah.

They do allow that part, but they don't allow you to mix it with American. You could mix it with an Alaska flight. Yes. Out of Detroit it with an Alaska flight. Yes, yes. So out of Detroit, that's exactly one. So I could fly to Seattle and then onwards from there. And so then there's a timing issue. So there's one flight a day, and so it gets in at a certain time,

which is right after all the flights I want have left. I'm so spoiled with his Delta hub and his Delta status and his direct flights. Really, I think you're the one spoiled because you live close enough that you could drive to the New York area to fly out of JFK or Newark. That's true. And so you have a bajillion flights available to you. It is true. It is true. So, all right.

But, yes, I mean, we agree that that will be awesome if and when Alaska allows you to combine other One World flights. Because then basically anybody in the United States probably has access to an American Airlines flight just about, to an American Airlines flight from their home airport or one that's close enough to make it worthwhile to connect to whatever One World award it is you want to book. Who knows whether or not the prices are going to be the same that they are today. I mean, I would predict that they won't be quite the same. Hopefully, they'll still be good. So my – and my guess, we talked about this before, is that if you want to have a preview of what their award chart is likely to look like,

look at American Airlines' award chart, and that's probably our best guess of, you know, that'll be roughly in that ballpark. I hope I'm wrong. I hope it's better. But that's not our best guess of, you know, that'll be roughly in that ballpark. I hope I'm wrong. I hope it's better. But that's not necessarily all bad news. If they keep the free stopover, you know, then it will be, you know, a one-up. Then there's still an advantage, right? Sure.

Exactly. Ba-dum-tsh. Right. An advantage with two A's. Alaska can steal that. Right. A 1A advantage of booking with Alaska. There you go.

Right, right. You have one less A, but one more stopover. So yeah, I mean, those are really valuable miles too. And there are fewer ways to earn those. Yeah, yeah. They don't have a bank or a Simply Miles equivalent, I don't think. Not exactly a Simply Miles. They do have a card linked offers program,

but it's, it's pretty limited for in-store offers. It's linked up with their shopping portal. Right. Exactly. So you might spend some money at that bath and beyond and actually, and you know, get a few Alaska miles.

Right. Right. So, so just going down memory lane a little while ago, uh, that, you know, it wasn't that long ago that the best way to get alaska miles was

to book a marriott travel package that actually booking a seven night award along with uh redeeming marriott points for a seven night award plus alaska miles got you more uh better transfer ratio of marriott points to Alaska miles than just transferring from Marriott to Alaska directly. And so, you know, you ended up with this like extra award that you could either use or throw away or actually cancel and get like back then 45,000 points back. But now, now the travel packages have been devalued so much, it's not even a consideration. Yeah, yeah, that's unfortunate. That's too bad.

But, you know, it was nice while it lasted. It was fun while it lasted. There was something else that came to mind when you were saying that, and now it just totally escaped me. So, oh, I was going to say that, well, it used to be that the best way to earn Alaska miles or the easiest way to earn Alaska miles, when you said travel packages, what was going through my mind was Alaska airlines credit cards.

It used to be. Oh yeah. Right. I mean, I remember the first FTU I attended and I saw a speaker mentioned that they had like six. Yeah. Yeah.

Wait, six. Thank you. And it wasn't Greg. It wasn't Greg. It wasn't me. It was a different speaker, but yeah.

So they used to allow you to sign up for a whole bunch. Now you can't, but on the flip side, they've really increased the number of miles. Because back then, at that time when it was, you know, somebody said they had six of them open at that moment in time, it was like 25,000 miles was the bonus on that card. And now they've been like 65,000 miles. So it's kind of like getting three cards at once. So kind of a consolation prize. Right, right. Sort of. So you can get a few000 miles. So it's kind of like getting three cards at one. So kind of a consolation price. Right, right. Sort of. So you can get a few more miles and you can get, of course, the business and

the personal version from Alaska. So there's two different cards there. Hard to build up miles, though, like, you know, when you look at things like ultimate rewards and membership rewards and city thank you points that you can earn at three, four per dollar at scale if you're a manufactured spender are hard to compare with American Airlines and Alaska. You just can't bank up quite as many. So you have to get another player or two involved. Right. But the other thing to think about, if you're earning miles,

you know, from credit card signups, I think, you could sort of think of those as free. But when you're earning them from different types of spend and it means, so if you're earning, like just to give a really obvious example, if you're earning one Alaska mile per dollar, instead of earning two miles per dollar from another program, then the fact that an Alaska award costs, you know, 30% less than the other programs award should not be something to celebrate. You'd be better off going for that other programs, Miles, because you're getting more of them. They're costing you less, basically. Right, right. So the trick is that you have to be able to find ways to earn them at better than one per dollar spent and,

and or use other cards for your spend and find ways like via the shopping portal and via simply miles, all these other techniques that we're talking about to earn your American and Alaska miles, because you should not be putting spend on those cards at one mile per dollar spent. It just doesn't, it takes away, like you said, takes, takes away the advantage single a of the advantage double A program. That's right.

Or Alaska. That's right. All right. Who would have thought we'd be talking about great things about American Airlines on any of our shows? Come on. Nobody. Nobody ever. But kudos to American.

They've been doing a lot of good things to their program lately. They did. And we didn't really mention this at all, but they really did enhance elite status this week too by adding some additional perks for Platinum Pro, which Platinum Pro, you know, I'm not an airline status guy. Anybody who listens to the show regularly knows that I don't really care much about airline status, period. But I will say that even me, as a layperson

that doesn't pay any attention to airline status, knew that everybody said Platinum Pro was pretty ridiculous because it really didn't give you any worthwhile benefits now suddenly it does so not only some benefits good benefits because it gives you the top tier one world status it's going to get you into lounges and other one world airlines so that's awesome system wide upgrades get two of them now i guess you only i think you only get one. You get a single choice benefit, much like Delta does, but the choice is a single system-wide, but there's other choices you can pick.

You could fly halfway to wherever you're going. You just can't return. You can fly outbound, but not return in business class. Well, maybe that makes up for the fact that you can only earn miles for half the trip via credit card. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, also, the way they're doing it is also like Delta. You can pick when you want the choice benefit. You can pick it and then it's valid for a certain amount of time after that. And so, you know, if you want to, you might be able to wait till as long as possible to pick one and then get the next one from the next elite year, assuming you qualify twice in a row.

It's better than nothing. There you go. So it's a little something for elite players. It's better than nothing. There you go. So it's a little something for elite players. A little something, yeah. A little something. Oh, I mean, shoot. Yeah, I certainly would be happy if I was a Platinum Pro member. I mean, getting a lot more than you had before.

And I wonder what that means, if anything, for the Hyatt partnership in terms of what's going to match over where now because last year they gave executive Plat platinum status to globalist members. I got to feel like with these enhancements, if they're going to give something to globalist members, which is a stretch, it's an if, especially with how easy they've made globalist status. Now I feel like it may be, it's more of a stretch than it was before. Uh, but if they did maybe platinum pro is what you're going to get. Yeah, maybe, maybe, but you know know, the Emerald One World status, that's actually kind of exciting

because it gets you into first-class lounges, not just business class. And that's an unusual aspect to the One World program, to allow that. And you don't have to be flying. You could be even flying coach on a One World airline and get into, you know, Qantas or whoever's first class lounge. And so that's, that's pretty sweet. The one that you can't get into is American

Airlines own, own lounges because of, yeah, just how it works. Complexity there. Yeah. Okay. So, all right. So that, that I think seals the deal there. So American Airlines miles, definitely more valuable than they were before. Alaska miles continue to be really valuable. Both of them hard to accumulate at the scale that you accumulate your transferable currencies, but not impossible. There are some options there that we talked about today. So you have that there.

So then I think that brings us to the post-drost. It does. Post-drost time. Post-drost time. Post-roast time. What have you got for me? Last week you gave me a pass, and some readers and listeners were kind of upset by that. They're like, come on.

Appointed by the pass. Well, so fear not, my dear readers. I won't give him a pass two weeks in a row. I don't know if I'm going to roast. Yeah, I am going to roast. So Greg wrote this week about how he stayed at some Marriott property in Savannah. What was it called? Perry Lane Hotel.

Perry Lane Hotel. I don't even know why I'm giving him some airtime here with their name announced. Yeah. I kept getting mixed up with Penny Lane, you know the beatles song perry lane perry lane so so perry lane sounds like it was about the quality of an old beetle no i'm sorry it sounds like it was it was not anything very special so i was reading your review extremely mediocre right your bottom line review was yeah extremely mediocre that it was you got a marriott basically paid for a Marriott and you got a Marriott and you were somehow disappointed by that. So that's, that's my roast. It was like,

you know what you're getting? You were getting a Marriott. So you paid $208 a night, which you can't expect top tier luxury probably for 208 bucks a night. But then on top of that, you're paying, here's why you're disappointed because you're paying the $32 resort fee or destination fee that Marriott tax on there and the $50 valet parking fee that Marriott tax. So now we're talking like 290 bucks a night on top of the, you know, when you add it all together, plus the tax and whatever else. So the reason you were disappointed is because you booked a Marriott and you got a Marriott. Like I would not be disappointed necessarily if it was 208, but by the time you spent 300 bucks in change on that, yeah, I would be disappointed. You booked a Marriott, right?

All right. Wait, wait, wait. Let me explain. I feel like I need to. And you didn't even book the nicest Marriott around. Everybody seems to agree. It's this other mention on Foresight or whatever i everybody agrees so so so here's the story so when i was when i was searching for for properties there um i you know i was open to anything it wasn't just marriott is looking at but but these two marriott's popped up at very high and the ratings and everything and um i looked closely the the other one, the mansion on the park or something, it looked, you know, the pictures, it looked fantastic. It looked amazing. But the average review score wasn't as good as the other one.

Okay. So that's one thing. So wait, you were listening to TripAdvisor on that, right? Yeah, that was a mistake. That's mistake number one. You didn't ask InfrequentMiler Insiders. I should have. Absolutely.

Definitely should have. TripAdvisor, you're just, you know, you're focusing on the average person who travels once in a great blue moon. You asked in FrequentMiler Insiders and I bet you would have had people

who stayed at both and know I'm inside and out and would have given you a good advice. So that's my first piece of roast. Keep going. So then the next thing is Perry Lane was more expensive and more expensive than a lot of other things around.

So I legitimately thought that it was like a super high-end hotel. And then you go to their website and they talk about having luxury chauffeur service and shoeshine service. And I'm like, well, when did I last get that? That was at the St. i mean not the ritz at the saint regis in new york city which is fantastic um so that's what was in my head and yeah should it have been no obviously not i knew it wasn't a saint regis i knew it wasn't a ritz um but it's called the luxury collection it is they threw you with the name they did some good branding there yeah they did they did yeah that's unfortunate you know lesson learned lesson learned you know and i think

actually now i'm sure some readers will correct me and so we'll hear about it on feedback next week but i feel like i've pretty consistently heard lackluster reviews of properties that are in the luxury collection i don't know if they're like selling it too high with luxury collection being the, the, the brand imaging there. But I feel like I've gotten that kind of vibe from a number of reviews about luxury collection properties. Every time I look at one, I'm always like, Ooh, luxury. And then I, I, you know, I read a little bit more about it. I'm like, Oh,

it's kind of average and they just didn't want to call it a Marriott. So I'm sure that there are some exceptions there. I'm sure that there are. And I would have, I probably also would have been thrown, but it's kind of funny that, that you ended up getting thrown on that one and it didn't work out. But,

but I think the takeaway there is not to be too, you know, drawn in by the trip advisor reviews, which is something that I have often done too in the past, looking at trip advisor reviews. But, you know, I think it's Becky at SiteDoing that I've seen speaking a couple of times now and kind of

downplay TripAdvisor in general. And I don't necessarily know that she has something against TripAdvisor, but more so has said something like, you know, if you're looking for a restaurant in your city, do you look at TripAdvisor to find a place to eat? You know, you probably go to Yelp or you go to Reddit or wherever else. And so, you know, with hotels nowadays, I am definitely more and more inclined to ask in groups that are frequented by frequent travelers, because I feel like the reviews that you read from the general public are not always congruent with your expectations as a frequent traveler if you're a freelance person. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it could be that the ones with the best reviews are just actually better at getting people to write them

good reviews, however they do it, you know? I don't know, but cause it is quite a mystery to me that this hotel is ranked fourth in, you know, user ratings on TripAdvisor. There's no way it's, it's the fourth best. Yeah. I've run into that plenty of times too i mean i'm roasting greg but i've run into that over and over again too i've looked at like trip advisor always seems to be the first thing i look at and i'm like oh it's got good trip advisor reviews it must be great and then i've definitely been fooled by that more than once right all right so now it's my turn now i told you i told you before the show that i didn't have a post of yours roast. You lied. No, I'm not a liar. I read a whole article written by you about what a great guy I am. And I'm pretty honest. And I honestly don't

have a post roast for you. What I do have is a podcast roast. Oh, podcast roast. What did I do? You gave me this idea at the beginning of the show, by the way. My fault. Last week, when you edited the show, you threw in bonus content. You threw in about an hour of dead space at the end. I figured people are signing up for this Calm app, the meditation thing. I thought maybe you would appreciate a little extra time. I think it was a great idea to give listeners some quiet time, but you didn't do enough to advertise it,

to get credit for all the hard work you put in. It takes a while to sit there and listen to that hour of nothing in order to make sure that you tag right at the end, you know, the closing music. Right. I'm sure that was a lot of work for you. It was. It was. Painstaking.

So there you go. That was a, just a mistake. Right. Right. Nothing, nothing intended. So you were looking at that and you were like, what's up with that? No, that was just, I screwed up. So right.

Right. Put that on that one. All right. So hopefully there won't be blank space at the end of this unless unless we get it sponsored by um one of those meditation apps that would be great so calm talk space whatever you're listening guys we've got blank space waiting for you blank space with your name on it uh so so then that brings us to the question of the week and so the question of the week this week is a question that maybe we've discussed something kind of like this before.

It was a question that came in through our Frequent Miler Insiders group. Now I say maybe we've talked about it before. I don't know if we have on the podcast. I feel like you've indirectly written about this topic before, but I thought it was a good one for us to discuss, even though it got answered in Frequent Miler Insiders as an overall strategy. And because I know you're an expert on London, this one's for you. It comes from Jason. And Jason says, any thoughts on Hyatt or the Lesnans opening any London properties to four people per room for summer of 2021? I thought as much as they're hurting, there might be a chance, but nothing when I searched late July. So obviously, Jason is looking to book a hotel in London and squeeze four people into a

single room. I know you've kind of written within posts before, or maybe even you wrote one post about something saving the day when you had three people looking to stay in a room in London. So what's the solution? How does somebody get that figured out? Because in Europe, that's a pain, isn't it? It really is a pain. And in fact, even with Hyatt, where you can book suites with points or with upgrades and everything like that, a lot of the suites are set to three people max. And so I don't have an easy solution within the chains of dealing with that that we've talked about before how you can try making a booking make sure it's cancelable then contact the hotel and and tell them you know i wouldn't i wouldn't show up wouldn't fly to

london and then show up and be like hey there's four of us is that okay and i also wouldn't sneak around like open the back door and be like hey come and be like right put that sweatshirt up over your head i have no doubt a lot of people actually do that just you know don't tell the hotel there's more than two people but um that that's not how i'd want to approach it and um i mean the other the other thing i think is kind of obvious is is you could just say hotels aren't the best solution let's go with an airbnb or or equivalent and uh you can get a whole apartment for your family which is probably more comfortable anyway so when you reach out and because you've had to do this before right you've had three people and you've had to reach out because a lot of rooms are have a max of two

the standard rooms typically have a max of two right so i mean what do you say how do you approach it do you offer to pay for an upgrade or upgrade? Or what do you actually do to get multiple people in a room? Yeah. Well, I mean, what I've done is I don't have a lot of great examples. It's been a long time now since I've done that. So I think in my case, I was lucky enough that there were just three of us. And so the suites were allowing three. And so I was, I was good to go. Yeah. So you've had some experience with this, right?

To some extent I've just showed up like, like Greg said, you shouldn't do it. I got a baby with me, you know, but a baby's a little different. You know, a lot of people don't, don't count someone under two-ish or three-ish. They don't really count as a full person yet, right? A lot of full person, 90% or something. Yeah, something like that. So, yeah, I've just kind of – well, you know what I've done is I've chatted in the Marriott app,

like on the way to the hotel and mentioned that, hey, you know, I have my infant son with me, blah, blah, blah. So I need a crib or something like that. Not like, can I bring him? Or how much will it be? But rather, I need A or B and let them put the ball on their court. Now, there are times when I've asked, is it possible to upgrade to specific room A, B, or C, whatever it is that I wanted, and how much it would be to upgrade to that when I've wanted a specific room type. And I've been lucky a number of times where they've just done that as a complimentary upgrade.

But, of course, you've got suite upgrade awards if you're a Hyatt globalist. You have suite night awards if you are a Marriott person, except those only start to look for availability five days in advance, so they're not a huge help. But you can use your Hyatt points to book premium suites. The other thing to keep in mind is that Hyatt has the family rate. So if you're looking to use cash, they have a family rate where you can book a second room for half the cost of the first room. I don't know, there's some rate exclusions there and whatnot.

But if you just get onto Frequent Mylar and you type Hyatt family rate in the search box, you'll find a post that we did a couple years ago about that. So that's a possibility. And if room rates are really low, it might be more attractive than awards because I think all the Hyatts in London last I knew were like 20, 25,000 points or more.

And I don't know if room rates next year are going to support that and make that worthwhile over using cash. I have no idea. I haven't looked at room rates in London in a while, but room rates in a lot of places have been fairly cheap. So maybe you'd be better off looking cash. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. I haven't looked at room rates in London in a while, but room rates in a lot of places have been fairly cheap. So, you know, maybe you'd be better off looking cash. Yeah.

Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. So I think we have a treat for people regarding the goodbye song today, which is some bonus content. It's going to be, it's going to be sung by Nick to the tune of Penny Lane. Let's go.

If you'd like to subscribe to our email list. Hey, that's pretty good. it's as much as you get guys i like that i like that good job good job for more all right so you want to do that but you deliver you deliver thank you man i do the best i can i'll be here every week guys all right so so if you want some more not of my singing but more of what we write then you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list, follow us on social media and all that. One thing I wanted to mention, I meant to mention this early on, I'm mentioning it late now, although probably it'll only apply for some people. But if you are listening to this Saturday morning, right, when this publishes, this publishes

Saturday morning, December 10th, or I'm sorry December 12th. If you happen to be listening to it that morning, something to keep in mind, if you want to see us banter again, twice in one day, we're going to be bantering at Frequent Traveler University today, today being Saturday, December 12th, in the afternoon. So if you want to sign up for FTU, you can find a post if you go to frequentmiler.com, and in the search box, type in FTU, you can find a post. If you go to frequentmiler.com and in the search box, type in FTU, you'll find a little post that we did about it. It's going to be an online event and Greg and I are closing it out with more banter. So you can come back and ask us questions live. That's pretty exciting. I can't wait. That is. That is. Okay. So for all the rest of you guys

who are listening to this, too late for that. Again, frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to get on the email list. Thank you very much. And we will see you guys again soon. Thanks everyone. Bye bye.