Frequent Miler on the Air - Aloha from Hawaii, 5/24 dilemma, and #40KFaraway news

Episode Date: August 24, 2019

Today we discuss Hawaii, if a Citi card is worth a 5/24 slot thanks to Turkish, and what surprised Greg when he read my post about Stephen winning the #40KFaraway challenge.

Aloha! Welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. Today, Nick and I are coming to you from Hawaii, but we're in on different islands today. Anyway, I am Greg Davis Keene, also known as The Frequent Miler, and I'm with Nick Reyes, also known as the senior author at Frequent Miler. So we're here in the islands for you today, and it's great to be coming to you from the islands for sure. I mean, it looks like both of us have got a little bit of the aloha spirit going on. So where have you been? What have you been up to, Greg? Yeah, I'm so disappointed. I wore this hat all week long just so that we could both and have these hats on. Um, and now you're, you're not wearing your hat, but we are both wearing our, um, Hawaiian shirts. Right. So we've got, we've got that going for us. We're in the spirit. Yeah. And so I've been

on the island of Kauai, which is the best island, by the way. Now, there are great... I'm not going to argue with you on that. That's a true claim. I think you could legitimately argue that Maui is the best island

in January and February when the whales are practically so thick that they're like in your bathtub and everywhere, you know. But just about any other time, Kauai is just so unbelievably beautiful. Everywhere we go, you know, just driving down any random street it's picture perfect it's the type of view that anywhere else in the world like people would drive out of their way to see that view and we're just driving it on our way to get somewhere else and the whole island is ridiculous it's amazing yeah yeah so you know we uh earlier in the week we drove up up Wamea Canyon to the end of it, which there's beautiful views along the way of the canyon.

But at the very end, go past the big overlook to the next smaller overlook and look down at the valley below in the Nepali coast. It's just so striking. And then there's about a mile long hike from there that it's still different versions of the same view, but you get those views all along. It doesn't get old. And every different angle is a different guess, but how beautiful it is. But then personally, that was slightly eclipsed even. By a few days later, we went to the North Shore and we followed the guidebook to go see the Old

Club Med. It's a resort that existed back, I think it burned down in the 80s and and since then it's just been nothing's there but they let you hike through it and you could go down to a very secluded beach it's really worth doing but but that's not the point the point is at the entrance to the Old Club Med is a little restaurant-like stand that is on the most beautiful piece of land I've ever seen. They have a table that's in the shade, and their whole little piece of land is looking down on the valley of Hanalei and That view of the valley is Yeah, I you know, I can't describe it. It's just it to me. It's like just the perfect view It's just unbelievable you look one way you see

Like green lush fields, it's all by the way, there's green mountains encircling it, well, sort of in a C shape. And then so you look one way, you see these green lush fields. A river meanders through it. To the right, you see the Crescent Beach and Ocean. And of course behind that whole thing, just so stunning. And none of us actually went back. We went back to the North Shore. It's just and we um one of the things we did

today in the north shore is we snorkeled the snorkeling where we went itself wasn't great but it was teeming with sea turtles so swimming with sea turtles everywhere you go is just such a great experience so yeah it is it's amazing to me it's amazing to me that you can get that coming from i'm sorry there was a little delay there i guess i i think i i jumped in too soon but it's amazing to me that you can get that me coming from a small town in the mountains in upstate new york uh when i got to travel a little bit more much in you know or at least in part due to to collecting miles and points just amazed me that within the united states you can get to something so far from what i was used to anyway you know

like you said swimming with the sea turtles and seeing that scenery it's incredible i think the thing that surprised me the first time i came to hawaii the most and still strikes me each time is how much natural beauty there is and how little development really overall, you know, when you drive around the islands, it's a lot different than what I expected. I guess, you know, I had just an image in my mind of Waikiki Beach that I saw on Wheel of Fortune when I was a kid, you know, the skyscraper kind of hotels and that kind of thing, which certainly Waikiki Beach is cool. That's where I've been the last couple of days or the last day here anyway. But there's so much more in Hawaii that's not like that. That's just open, scenic beauty. And

it's incredible to get a chance to go and see that. So I'm jealous just hearing the story, hearing you describe it, even without being able to picture it. That to me is what it's all about if you come to Hawaii. So I totally agree that you've got to get to Kauai. If you haven't been there yet, and you're listening to this right now, you need to take advantage of the fact that you can get there for 7,500 miles in economy class with Turkish miles and smiles or 12,500 in business. Because you just can't beat that kind of value. But I don't think you flew United to get here. I did. I flew my first Turkish miles and smiles itinerary.

But you didn't fly Turkish to get there, did you? I did not. So it's kind of interesting we both used foreign airline miles to get here on domestic airlines right right so you reunited i did and used the the ultimate sweet spot spot of all time um with uh transferring your city points to uh turk, I transferred points to Virgin Atlantic. All transferable currencies, except maybe Capital One? I can't remember. Yeah, not Capital One, correct. They don't have it yet. But all the other big ones will transfer one-to-one to Virgin Atlantic. And Delta One live flat seats were available nonstop from Detroit to Honolulu.

And Delta wanted a lot of miles if we're going to use Delta miles, right? That's no surprise. With Virgin Atlantic, it seemed like a good deal at the time that we paid only 75K round trip. And I think there was probably a transfer bonus going, if I remember correctly, at that time. I think there was like a 30% transfer bonus going when all that availability popped. I don't know when you booked it. Yeah, there probably was. There have been good transfer bonuses from both Amex and Citi at various times.

I think one or the other was when the types became available. I was actually booked in Delta One out of Detroit from that same deal. I ended up canceling it because I looked at it and I had three seats in Delta One on that deal, which was 37,500 miles one way in Delta lie flat seats, which sounded like a great deal, like you said, because I know I did it during a 30% transfer bonus. So it cost me like, I don't know, 27,000 membership rewards points or something like that in order to book those. I thought that was fantastic. But then this Turkish thing came along and I said, well, three of us can fly for 22,500 miles altogether. Or I keep this reservation that was 112,500 miles. It's like a 90,000 mile difference for three passengers.

So I canceled it. I canceled my Virgin Atlantic award on Delta because I thought, I can't justify spending another 90,000 on this particular trip. So I canceled it. But of course, my wife wasn't particularly happy when I told her, no, we're going to fly United Economy class instead of those flatbeds. She wasn't particularly thrilled. But then I did try to use my Amex airline fee credits in order to pay for Economy Plus on United. And I had some sort of an error, but United was able to help me out with it. So I did end up getting to sit in Economy Plus, a little bit of extra leg room.

I'm not sure exactly why. I wasn't able to pay for it online and phone agents seem to have some trouble with it. So I'm not sure if somehow United is blocking access to buy up to Economy Plus if you booked with Turkish Miles and Smiles or if it was just an error in my case and it should work. But I thought that would be a particularly good use of the credit anyway, because we were going to be flying and I did want a little bit of extra leg room. It was worth it to me. So, but anyway, so, so we did get here different ways, but both again, using foreign transfer partners,

which tend to be really valuable. So the city thank you points, I think are really valuable now because like I said, you can get here to Hawaii for 7,500 points one way in economy class, 12.5 if you find business. So that's a terrific value. You look at a card like the thank you premier, which I think still we have a link for the offer on that 60,000 points after 4k spend in three months, I think. And I look at that and I say, that that looks really valuable that's four round trip tickets anywhere in the united states in fact on the plane on the way here they were of course advertising the airline credit card and saying that if you signed up for the united credit card you could get enough miles for one round trip

ticket to hawaii and i thought where you sign up for the Thank You Premier and you get enough for four round-trip tickets? You didn't stand up for much. Fly the whole family, guys. Don't bother with this United offer. How many people would be blog readers now if you'd stood up and explained it to the whole planet? If only they would have given me the mic on the planet. I don't either, but I tried. At any rate, I look at that and I say, that's a great sweet spot. Obviously, there's no debating about that. Some people have been a little unhappy, perhaps that that we shared it saying that, oh, we're going to kill it now. Right. And we talked about this weeks ago on the podcast here about how we didn't feel like that would be the case with this particular one. And I still don't feel that way. And one of the reasons why I wasn't particularly concerned about killing it is because United is going to change to variable pricing in November. So we don't know what saver availability is going to look like anymore. I think it's likely, and I think you've said the same, that saver availability will become much

harder to come by. There won't be a clear definition of what it is. So it's going to be harder to run your searches and find that availability. So I think, I think in November, United is likely to effectively kind of kill this for Turkish. And so that's been my perspective on it. Book it now while you can, you know, get in while the getting's good. So then my question becomes, if that's the perspective, then does it make it worth it to run out and get a card that earns thank you points like the, like the thank you premier or another card, the prestige or something like that, that earns thank you points? And is it so worth it that someone who's under 524 should burn a 524 slot getting a city card instead of making sure they fill up all their 524 slots with chase cards? What do you think yeah uh well so i think if that someone if that someone is for example

your sister who could help them um or or it's someone who's uh right not afraid to be like extremely persistent uh so i think the following conditions have to be true, right? One, you know that you're going to be wanting to book these in the near term, even if the flights are not for another 11 months or whatever. You need to want to book them in the near term. You need to be willing or have someone who can help you with the challenges with booking. And as you know, there's a lot of challenges you've written about that. We've talked about it before.

I don't know that we have to rehash it except to say, I think it's worth saying that at the minimum, you're likely to have to call Turkish multiple times for your one booking. If you get lucky, you might not, but you probably will. So given all that, if you're that persistent or you have someone in the hall to help you, that persistent for you, then I think so. I think it's worth it because that's a really big win. I mean, you're talking about, as you said, getting a number of flights to Hawaii for the same one.

Or Alaska or Montana or wherever it is you want to go, right? I mean, we use Hawaii as the example because it's a fantastic value. And Greg's on Kauai and I'm here in Oahu. Obviously, we like Hawaii. So to me, that's an incredible value. And coming from the East Coast or the eastern part of the United States like we both do, it's just so far that it seems amazing. But at the same time, I mean, it's a great deal, 15K round trip for any sort of expensive flight. Even if it's a short flight that would have cost you $600 or $800 and you can book it for 15,000 points round trip. I mean, that's just a huge win. So for people. trip I mean that's just a huge win so for me so even short flights like so ooh Chicago is a really short flight just 10k away Turkish right you know it

almost to use Turkish for that sent pay the same 7.5 K to fly all the way to Hawaii or to Alaska, but on cheaper than most other alternatives. Now, maybe I could do a little better without Bianca. I haven't looked at that lately, but not much better. Right?

Right. Not much better. Even if you could, I think that, you know think the best that we've seen was 3,500 each way, and that's not common. So with Avianca, I think generally speaking, you might see 6,500 each way. So maybe you'll beat it by 1,000

on a short flight like that. But there are plenty of opportunities within the continental US where 7,500 miles each way is a great value. In fact, I'm going to be flying in just a couple of weeks up to do our FM, excuse me, an FM2Go event in the Bay Area. And I'm going to be flying from Los Angeles to the Bay Area.

And one-way tickets, I think, or actually not from Los Angeles, from another city in Southern California. At any rate, one-way tickets were like 300 bucks. So 7,500 points one way, boom. I mean, that's just easy and at a great value so so I look at it and I say yeah Greg brought up my my sister my sister-in-law actually who uh who's looking at trying to expand and earn some more points and she asked me what card should I

get next and she's at like 324 and I thought she's got two slots left for Chase and no she has a Southwest cards is all she has from Chase so far so I thought well geez she's got to get a Sapphire reserve or preferred and probably well maybe an ink if she is comfortable doing a business card and ink business preferred or or perhaps the ink cash or she needs some sort of a business card if she's interested in that. If not, then it's going to have to be a Sapphire and a Freedom with her last two slots. Except now this Turkish thing is really intriguing. I know that she and her husband would like to go to Alaska next year. And I say, well, you're not going to get there better than 7,500 miles each way.

And one assignment bonus is going to take care of that. So for me, it's been tough to advise her. I'm sorry, you broke up there for a second. Don't forget, what was that? I forget she should look at the post on must-have chase card. Right. And see if she does this, which ones will she not be able to get? And just because I consider it a must, that doesn't mean it's a must-have for her or in her opinion.

So I think that's worth doing before you jump and burn another slot. Right. Yeah, true, true. Good point. So you've got to put some thought into it. Tough decisions when you get, of course, close to that five 24, which for those who are relatively new to the game, five 24 chase just won't let you open a new card. If you've opened five or more credit cards with any bank in the last 24 months. So it does make it generally advantageous to sign up for chase cards, to apply for Chase cards early on in the process. So that's where the debate comes from there. But speaking of different cards and points and miles, so I wrote

a post this week about the 40K challenge, which is coming up here in just a little bit over a month now. We're going to be kicking off this 40K challenge where Greg and I and Steven Pepper, who also writes for us, the three of us are going to be traveling somewhere far, far away. We're going to be using 40,000 points and 400 US dollars, if you haven't read about it, to get as far away as we can and see who is the winner. And the blog readers are going to decide who that winner is. So I wrote this week about how I think Stephen Pepper should win this thing

because he has access to what I think is the best transfer partner out of all of the transfer partners that the three of us have access to what I think is the best transfer partner out of all of the transfer partners that the three of us have access to. That's ANA Mileage Club, because they have some great sweet spots for this, particularly for economy class travel, in particular, also sweet spots that are good for business class travel. By the way, if you read the post and look at the different spots that I talked about in economy class, the business class prices on those same sections were also quite good. But I wrote this week about how he could fly, my goodness, like almost 40,000 miles, I think, altogether or something like that,

if he were to just utilize a cash booking to get himself to Africa and use ANA's round trip Africa to somewhere in Europe and back and a bunch of stops and Star Alliance carriers and very low fuel surcharges, he could really fly quite a bit and see a great number of countries. I said that that could potentially beat Greg's plan to use the United Excursionist Park with his Chase Ultimate Rewards plan. So I'm curious what you think, Greg. I mean, are you worried? Are you nervous that Stephen has booked some crazy trip with ANA? Are you intimidated? Do you think he's got a great shot at winning this?

What do you think? No, I thought it was a great post. And yeah, I do think that if he knew about these sweet spots and took advantage of them, he's definitely a real threat. But that wasn't my main reaction to your post. My main reaction was, oh my God, look at how many things Nick wrote about in this post that I seriously considered doing as part of the challenge. And so obviously I'm not talking about spending a and a miles, but particular particular flights um and routes so so um

it it started me thinking are we going to run into each other each other on this trip if we end up on the same flight if you've noticed routes that I noticed, we might have, you know, there's a chance among the three of us that we're some of the same. Now, the timing might not work out. I don't know. But how cool and how demoralizing will it be if my last leg and you or Stephen are like, oh, yeah, I'm heading out now for the other side of the world. And then I'll be like, yeah. Anyway, that was my reaction to that post. That's funny. I mean, it's a very real possibility.

That actually crossed my mind early on because I thought, well, we're all looking at award availability, right? And we're all kind of stuck with the same availability as far as which airlines have available seats on the dates that we have to travel. And, of course, we're working with miles from the major three alliances. So I thought about it early on, too. What if two of us end up on the same flight at some point? But it could happen. Funny though, that the routes that I was picking were things you had been looking at.

So maybe they will. Although I will say that the example dates I used in the post were not dates during the 40K challenge. So the availability that I showed wasn't necessarily the availability on the same dates that we're flying. It was close though.

It was within a couple of weeks because we're kicking this off on October 2nd as we announced in DC. So just another five, six weeks here and we're going to be kicking this off and seeing who gets as far away as possible. I don't know. Are you feeling good about your chances? Are you nervous? Do you think that some of these sweet spots that we've revealed have got you kind of rethinking your plans? Have you changed anything or considered it? No, I mean, I can't change plans now because of, you know, change fees. Right.

And so I'm stuck in there. I feel good about, I feel really good about parts of it. There were a couple big goals I had that if all goes well, I'll succeed at. Well, I wrote about how I had already made some mistakes. Of course. That's difficult. There were a number of things. I'm sure this is true for you too. A number of things that I had hoped to do i just couldn't do all of the things and make it all

happen yeah yeah definitely i can definitely relate to that because the more things i found the more i was like oh i do this and i do that and if i weren't constrained by 40 000 miles and 400 there are a lot more things that i would have probably added on because i was like oh wow this is a really cool sweet spot too or This would be a really neat thing to do that I wouldn't normally get a chance to do. So definitely I had a lot of that. There's more than once that I said, I wish I could do this twice because there's another trip that I would love to be able to plan the same kind of way. And I don't think that I'll ever, I shouldn't say ever. I don't think in my personal travel anyway, that I will put together a trip that's quite as fast paced as this, because I don't know what

your plans are, but I'm going to be visiting quite a few different places for just a short period of time each, which is not typically the way to travel, especially with a baby these days. So I think I'm kind of excited about that. I think it's going to be a lot of fun and really interesting and maybe out of the comfort zone a little. It might make it a little more challenging, though, too. And so I don't imagine that I'll repeat this kind of trip necessarily unless we run some sort of a challenge again. But I've definitely felt like I would kind of enjoy that because there are so many different possibilities. There's three or four trips that I'm like, wow, I wish I could do that trip. But yeah. Yeah. The other, the other piece of it that was hard, um, in my case, I'm wondering if this is true for you, um, is I think we all have personal deadlines due to, we have to be back. And my, um, was a bigger constraint than I expected.

Yeah. Yeah. So my intention is to meet up with my wife over a week after it starts. So it's slightly over a week. Right. And I thought, oh, that's tons of time things I wanted to do I couldn't do because flying 40,000 miles if you a frickin long time to do especially if they're not all gonna be back-to-back flights and it wouldn't be

an interesting trip anyway but so I felt like that was actually slightly more constraining than the 40 K plus $400. How about you? It's true. No. Yeah, it certainly is. In my case, the, the firm deadline that of course I have to finish this thing is that Greg and I are going to be speaking at the Chicago seminars.

That's the weekend of October 18th to the 21st. I think think could be off by a day or two, one way or the other. That's something you can look up on Flyer Talk, Chicago seminars, 2019. Both of us are going to be speaking there. So I have to be able to be in Chicago in time for that. And so of course, we're kicking this off in the second. So that seems pretty easy, but the farther away you get, the harder it is just to find the availability and the right flights and things to get back as quick as you want. And I think for me, actually, not necessarily the time constraint, but as someone who's a relatively new parent, my son's not quite two years old yet. There was a part of me that started

to think, you know, I'm going to be like two full days of travel away. And, you know, of course, parents always think those worst case scenario kind of things. What if something happens and I need to be there? And my goodness, I'm like two days away. And I'm sure that's the kind of thing that business travelers deal with when they have to travel internationally all the time, but not something that I've had to deal with yet as a new parent. So I think that was something for me and also for my wife when that light bulb went off that, you know, we're going to be way far apart here for a while. That was something to me that was a little bit uncomfortable.

But again, I think it's probably just one of those discomforts that it's going to be good to get out of the comfort zone a little bit on that. I'm sure everything's going to be fine. So that was definitely part of a challenge. And then also for us figuring out what my wife is going to do during that time, because she said, oh, my goodness, it's just I'm going to be here at home for a couple of weeks. And we've both worked from home for years now. So we're used to both being there and both being there to help out with things with our son. So she's going to definitely have a bit of an adjustment there for a little bit.

So but again, I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait for it to start. I'm really excited to see what you guys have put together. I'm particularly excited to see what Steven's put together. Not because I'm not excited about what Greg has, but I have some ideas from the posts that Greg's written about what I think he's going to do. I'm curious to see if it matches up with what actually happens, but I really feel like I have almost no idea what Steven Pepper is going to do. Do you agree? Not. Yeah.

Same exact thing. I have some idea with you. Absolutely no idea with Steven at all. He could be doing something like what you wrote, but more likely something completely different. Neither of us have thought about it all. And that'll be fascinating. Yeah. I can't wait to.

So, yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. and that'll be fascinating yeah i can't wait to um so yeah good stuff yeah so yeah so then there was let's see the other thing that we were going to discuss today was the sorry just going back through my notes here that we had one other topic that we're going to discuss today but maybe that was the other major topic yeah i think we i think we did hit them all didn't right okay yep there we go all right so just referring back to the notes every now and then especially it's late here in hawaii so we're doing this for saturday morning for you folks on on the east coast and i guess also on the west coast of the united states but of course we're across the ocean so a little late at night for us for once here uh doing this frequent miler on the air so just had to check back and see there, but yeah.

Okay. Well, that looks pretty good. So you're, you're heading back to the United States or the United to the mainland of the U S here pretty quickly here pretty soon. Right. I'm heading back tomorrow,

sadly. So, yeah, but you're not, you're, you're off. I am. I am off to somewhere else.

Yes. Well, I hope so. Anyway, I'm off to, to French Polynesia tomorrow and then uh to the St. Regis Bora Bora ultimately to stay in one of those rooms that were bookable for a short time for 48,000 Marriott points a night when you booked five nights so

very excited to to check that out and report back on how that is and also compare it to the Conrad Bora Bora where I'll also spend a couple of days. So I'm excited about that trip, although I'm a little nervous. I talked maybe it was last week or the week before about how American Airlines kind of lost my ticket somehow and broke it and then eventually saved it and put it back together. That was something we discussed last weekend, which seemed well and good until I went to check in online. Wasn't sure I could do that with a lap infant. Often you can't, but it oddly gave me an error saying that the lap infant didn't have a ticket number. So that was just before we went to do this. So I don't really know exactly what's going to happen with that. I did get charged. I

have a ticket number, but the system doesn't show one. So I'm going to try and show up a little early at the airport tomorrow because I'm already kind of a little concerned that. Yeah, exactly. So we'll see. Hopefully, hopefully I'm heading to French Polynesia tomorrow. Should work, should work out. So that'll be exciting.

Have a great time. And, um, you can do that thing you do to, to, uh, sign us off. But first I think we should both,

uh, give everyone an aloha. Good. That's right. That's right. Aloha, everybody. Aloha. Hello. Thanks guys right. Aloha, everybody. Aloha.

Hello. Thanks, guys. So if you're just tuning in, if you just joined us, I see a few of you are out there watching. If you just joined us, then you want to see and you want to see the rest of the video here. You can go back, of course. You can catch this also. It'll be uploaded to our YouTube channel,

the FrequentMiler YouTube channel. And if you'd rather download it and give it a listen, maybe on the morning commute or that sort of thing, or on all your favorite podcast formats, you can find the links to download it as a podcast in our week in review post

that'll post up on Saturday morning, August 24th. That'll have the links to download it for Apple, Google, or all your favorite different podcast places. So check that out tomorrow and keep your eye on the blog

for the coming weeks here. I want to thank you guys very much for being here with us today. Thank you very much, Greg, for sharing a little bit of time with us. And we'll see you guys from another location next weekend, wherever we end up being. Thank you, Nick. Hopefully everywhere you intend to be. Bye everyone. Take care. Bye-bye.