Frequent Miler on the Air - Best ways to get to Hawaii | Ep260 | 6-22-24

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

(00:00) Intro: There are a multitude of ways to fly to Hawaii using miles and points (and even many ways to get a deal on cash tickets). On this week's show, we discuss ways to fly to Hawaii from around the US from as few as 10K or 13.5K points each way. (01:06) New FM intro (03:22) Card Talk: Sonesta World Mastercard https://frequentmiler.com/sonesta/  -Card Details -What are points worth? (16:00) What crazy thing . . . did Marriott and Starbucks do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/link-marriott-starbucks-accounts-to-occasionally-earn-double-stars-minimal-bonus-points/ (19:51) Mattress running the numbers: Wyndham Rewards Hotel Pass https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-rewards-selling-30-night-hotel-pass/ (27:48) Award Talk (27:55) New Reasonable Redemption Value for Hotel Points https://frequentmiler.com/what-are-hyatt-points-worth/ (30:29) Aeroplan promotion with Miles4Migrants) https://frequentmiler.com/earn-7500-aeroplan-points-with-a-100-miles4migrants-donation/ (34:19) 15% transfer bonus from Citi to Cathay Pacific Asia Miles https://frequentmiler.com/citi-thankyou-offering-15-transfer-bonus-to-cathay-pacific-asia-miles/ (27:03) Enterprise Rent-A-Car Status Match https://frequentmiler.com/enterprise-status-match-giving-status-through-february-2026-match-from-hotel-airline-car-rental-programs/ (30:29) Amex referral bonuses now as high as 45,000 points for targeted cardholders https://frequentmiler.com/amex-referral-bonuses-now-as-high-as-45000-points-per-referral-up-to-100k-per-year-per-card/ (42:44) Main Event: Best Ways to fly to Hawaii https://frequentmiler.com/best-ways-to-fly-to-hawaii-from-the-us-mainland/ (43:04) Cash deals (43:30) Delta companion certificates (44:55) Alaska Companion Fare (46:13) Southwest Companion Pass (47:32) Vacation packages (49:15) Award deals: Economy (49:24) United flights via Turkish Miles & Smiles for 10K each way (50:48) Finnair Avios for American Airlines (15K) or Alaska Airlines (13.5K) (52:52) Alaska Mileage Plan for Alaska from 15K (53:35) Singapore Krisflyer for central/Western US to Hawaii (13-14K) (54:33) Using Alaska miles to fly AA for 17.5K from Dallas and west coast (55:32) Use United to fly United from 11.1K from the west coast (56:42) Aeroplan for 12.5K from the west coast to Hawaii on United (58:00) Qatar Avios for 13K one way from the west coast (59:00) Flying Blue for Delta from 18K (59:16) Virgin Atlantic for Hawaiian Airlines for 20K each way from the west coast (1:00:16) JetBlue for Hawaiian Airlines for 20K each way from the west coast (1:00:48) American Airlines miles for AA from 20K each way (1:01:39) Southwest Airlines when cash fares are cheap (1:02:00) "First class" flights to Hawaii with miles (1:02:57) Turkish miles for United: 15K miles each way (1:05:35) Finnair Avios for American Airlines" 38K miles each way (1:07:00) Alaska Miles for Alaska from 40K miles each way (1:07:21) Hawaiian miles to fly Hawaiian: 40K one way or upgrade from 25K. Possibly more availability with status or as a cardholder. (1:09:25) Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Hawaiian: 40K one way from the west coast (1:09:48) Alaska Mileage Plan for American Airlines: 35K one-way from as far east as Dallas (1:10:10) Air Canada Aeroplan for United for 25K from the west coast (1:10:50) Qatar Airways Avios for American or Alaska for 38,750 Avios from the west coast (1:11:50) Example for how to find award availability (1:19:33) Question of the Week: Is reselling a good low-energy way to generate points? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event, Frequent Miler on the Air, starts now. Today's main event, best ways to fly to Hawaii. For some reason I've got Hawaii on my mind. I'm not really sure why and I'm kind of eager to go back. So it's been fun collecting up all of the great ways to fly to Hawaii for our main event today so we can dream about our next trip there. I mean, my mind is always somewhat on Hawaii. I'm always kind of looking at award availability to Hawaii, even when I have no intention to go anytime soon. So it'll be exciting to talk about that today. But before we do, don't forget that you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So if you're looking to skip ahead to a

specific segment or to return to one later on, you can always find those show notes in the description wherever you're watching. And speaking of wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to leave us a comment, leave us some feedback, give us a rating, give us a thumbs up if you're watching on YouTube, subscribe, enable notifications. We appreciate all of those things. Now it's time to drag out this week's giant mailbag. In today's giant mailbag, we've got Nikki2009 via Apple Podcast Reviews. Nikki gives us five stars and the subject line is the hands down best podcast and blog for points and miles. And she goes on to say, I can't say enough good things about Frequent Miler.

I found this podcast two years ago, and it's changed my life. I went on my honeymoon to Australia and New Zealand just six months into the points and miles world and didn't pay for a flight or hotel for two straight weeks of travel. I've flown business class to and from Tokyo on points and earned globalist status with Hyatt. This team is incredible and the best place for all your points and miles information. Wow. Thank you, Nicky. I appreciate that. That's awesome. By the way, six months and you spent two weeks in Australia. So six months into the game, you

spent two weeks in Australia flying and staying all on points. That's amazing. That's fantastic. Well done. Yeah, great job, Nicky. And thanks for leaving that review. We love every comment and review we get is great to read and hear from. And, you know, it's really true because this is this stuff and kind of avoid some of the big mistakes that, you know, banks want you to make, for example, because most of our points come from banks who are trying to get us to sign up for credit cards. And it's easy to make a mistake,

like not pay your credit card bill in full and then end up owing them a lot more in charges, in fees and interest than you're getting in terms of points and whatnot. But if you're careful, you really can make dreams come true with this game. And so I love it. It's a lot of fun to play, a lot of fun to play. And we're glad that you're playing it out there, Nikki. So thank you for playing along with us. Well done again. All right, let's talk about this week's card talk. This week's card talk, we have an interesting one up, the Sinesta World MasterCard. Sinesta, like what is Sinesta, Greg? Sinesta is a hotel chain that previously didn't have a lot of properties, but back in 2021, they bought a bunch of properties. And so they increased their footprint tremendously. They bought a number of previously Marriott properties,

a bunch of IHG properties. And I think all of, there was a chain called Red Lion. I think they bought all of those. So they've grown quite a bit. And we decided to talk about them today because there's currently a best ever welcome bonus for their credit card. So right now you can get up to 125,000 points after only $2,000 spend on the card. And so that sounds big and exciting, but people who haven't heard about Sonesta might wonder, well, what the heck good is that for me? They have some properties, their own properties, like originally in the Caribbean and Central America and stuff.

But some of the ones that they acquired in 2021 that are of interest, I'm just going to name a few to give you an idea of what kind of properties these points might unlock for you. There's the Royal Sonesta Kauai Resort, which formerly was the Kauai Marriott Resort. And so if you've got your mind on Hawaii like we do, that's an option right there. In Chicago, a couple of the Kemptons have changed to Royal Sinesta properties. There's what was the Kempton Hotel Allegro and also what was the Kempton Hotel Palomar are now both Royal Sinesta Hotels. Similarly, the Kempton Palomar in Washington, D.C. changed over to the Royal Sinesta Washington, D.C. DuPont Circle.

So those are just a handful. There's a lot more. But I just wanted to give some ideas of some that people might be likely to be interested in. Yeah, I mean, the Kempton hotels have long been popular. So if you're a fan of Kempton, then you've got a number of options that have now become Sonestas and, you know, bigger places like the Kauai Marriott Resort that, you know, probably large resorts that maybe you've visited in the past using Marriott Rewards Points. Maybe you liked it. I haven't been to that specific one, but I imagine that there are some readers who have. And so you may be interested to know that,

yeah, now if you have Sonesta points, then you could potentially book that. So we got to talk about the card then. Is it worth it? What are the details? What do we need to know about the card? Well, first, there's no annual fee the first year, $0 introductory annual fee for the first year. Then it's $75 a year, no foreign transaction fees. You'll earn three points per dollar at Sinesta properties, two points per dollar on airfare, car rental, and dining, one X everywhere else. So pretty ho-hum on the earning side because three X Sinesta is at best because you can find plenty of cards with transferable points that offer three points per dollar on travel or on hotel spend at least. And the two X airfare, car rental, and dining, again, there find plenty of cards with transferable points that offer three points per dollar on travel or on hotel spend at least. And the two X airfare car rental and dining again,

there's plenty of cards that are in two or better on those those categories that have more flexible points. So I wouldn't really probably consider using this for ongoing spend. Although if you do, you do get 30,000 bonus points each year with $7,500 in card member spend per year. So that might change the calculus a little bit because that's like an extra four points per dollar if you do exactly $7,500 in spend. So then all of a sudden it might be perhaps more interesting to use this card for various things. You get automatic gold tier status, which Sonesta at some point here completely redid

their elite program. So now gold tier status comes with more points when you're spending at one of their properties, welcome gift, most importantly, probably continental breakfast, but apparently that's not everywhere. Is that only some places that you get continental breakfast? The terms are unclear. It just, just says not all locations. Oh, that's, that Oh, that's great. Well, so in the past, I do remember previously

the free breakfast benefit at the elite level was only available at sort of their higher tier properties, not the lower ones, probably because the lower ones just include free breakfast. Oh, yeah. Okay. properties, not the lower ones, probably because the lower ones just include free breakfast. And so, you know, so it may just be like a lawyer type thing to say, you know, hey, this isn't really a benefit at all properties, but I don't know whether this is a lawyer type thing or a Marriott type thing where breakfast really is variable, depending on where you go. Sick uh yeah well done there uh well

so yeah when you say all of that it seems to make sense to me that like like i don't know red lion i've never stayed at a red lion but in my mind maybe because it's red i associate it with red roof in and motel six and like that level of property which i don't even know if they have breakfast at those properties i'm not sure i haven't stayed at one in so long. So maybe they just don't even have it. You're wondering whether they have free breakfast at properties that have red in their name in order to find out whether the red line properties offer free breakfast. Is that what's going on here? Maybe some of their brands don't have any food at all. I stayed at a Candlewood Sweets at some point

for the first time in a long time. And I was like, what? There's no breakfast. It's not HG. What do you mean there's no breakfast? But it's a, you know, it's a long-term stay brand. So they just don't have breakfast. So my guess is that,

so my memory of the Red Lion properties is that most of them are pretty darn low tier properties. I don't know much about them, but let's say that's true. I don't know much about them. But let's say that's true. I don't know whether they offer free breakfast or not. But my guess is if they don't, you probably wouldn't want breakfast there anyway. So you won't be too upset that you don't get breakfast. All right.

Well, so since probably most people are not going to use their points for the red lion, and we say that, and that's really unfair because I have no idea what a red lion is like. So maybe there are some nice red lions, but, but, but assuming you're going to use your points for something else, what are they worth? I mean, what, what are these going to get you? What is 125,000 points worth, Greg? Yeah. When, when you go to redeem your points, the, each hotel seems to have a fixed award price. They don't publish an award chart anymore. But for example, when I look at particular hotels, I might see that this one is 22,500 points per night. And so the value of the points varies based on what is the cash rate at the time that you're booking. And I think, Nick, you said you observed by looking at a few properties anywhere from what,

0.75 to what? To about 1.4, just over 1.4. Because I guess that's true with most brands, most hotel points, it depends on what the cash rates are as to what the value is. And so at higher demand times, the value per point is much higher. I found some places in the Caribbean that were expensive during certain periods of the winter time that where you were getting closer to 1.4, even a little bit over 1.4 cents per point. But other places, yeah, it was three quarters of a cent per point. And it really did range. I got everywhere kind of in between too, like 0.9, 1.1. So I don't have a great handle on what

points are worth, but they can be worth more than a cent per point in at least some cases. Right, right. But we like to use conservative numbers. And a number that I found just by clicking around the website is that there was there's a promotion for some kind of prize thing. And in there, they declared that points are worth eight-tenths of a cent each, so 0.8 cents per point. So if we go with that, what they have on their website is the value of points. Then the 125,000 point welcome bonus is like worth a thousand dollars. And, you know, as Nick was saying, you could use it towards much more than that, but I think that's a fair estimate or, you know, a reasonable redemption value,

if you will, for 125,000 points. And it also means that if you spend towards the, yeah, yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, that's very good for... For $2,000 spend. For a very low spend requirement, that's quite a lot of value. Nice return on $2,000 spent. Actually, when you put it that way, especially, yeah. And if you spend each year, you know, the $7,500 to get the 30K bonus, that 30K bonus

at 0.8 is worth $240. So that's a decent return on that spend. And that's not counting the points you earn from that spend as well. Right, right. So if I did the math right, that's like an additional 3.2% back at that value towards the nestest days, keep in mind. But that's not bad because then even if you're only earning one point per dollar and we say the points are worth eight tenths of a cent, that's about a 4% return on that $7,500 spend, which is decent for everywhere else type spend. And, you know, maybe then, maybe then it would be worth using it as at a Sinesta and stacking that on top of the three X that you earn from, you know, from the card at a Sinesta property. So, so moral of the

story is don't take a siesta on Sinesta. Are you going to sign up for this card, Nick? No, I'm not. Probably not. I have enough hotel cards and hotel points. I don't need another hotel card in my pocket right now. I probably have enough free night certificates and points to not need to worry about points for some obscure chain that I've never bothered to be excited about in the past. If I had, you know, A, if I didn't have a lot of hotel points already, and B, I were planning a trip somewhere where Sonesta has a footprint. A few readers pointed out on previous posts that Sonesta has a really good footprint in the Caribbean and in some places

where other chains don't. And so if I were doing that, if I'm planning a trip to St. Martin, it looks like there's a really nice place in St. Martin that's a synasta. Then maybe I would for that specific purpose, but I'm not. So no, I'm probably not going to run out and sign up for it. What about you? For the sake of science, Greg, you should probably get this card and stay at some synastas. Yeah. I mean, so if it was just for me, you know, if I wasn't in the position I am as a blogger, podcaster, et cetera, et cetera, I wouldn't get it exactly as you. It's like, if I had my eye on Sinestra property and had that in mind, sure. I mean, this is a very good deal for that. But I think for the sake of science, I've become a bit of a credit card collector where I like to have all the ones that are useful to talk about in this hobby,

and this one's up there as an interesting card. It's not interesting enough if I wasn't a publisher of this content, but interesting enough as a publisher to want to have it, want to be able to experience it and write about it and talk about it. So I think either my wife or I will get it. You know, I think maybe worth a mention here is that most of the properties are 30,000 points or less per night. There's a couple that are 40 or 50,000, but the majority of properties appear to be 30,000 points per night or less. So one person signing up for this card, you're probably getting four nights at most Sonesta properties. So if you're in two-player mode and both signing up for it, that's eight nights. You can get more than a week with four thousand dollars spend that's from that angle of it not a bad deal if you have again if this

nesta property lines up with your needs i could totally see somebody like nikki who was you know six months away from planning a honeymoon that said you know in six months she collected all the points and miles for two weeks of travel well i mean this would be a pretty easy way to pick up perhaps a week you know a trip with very little spend compared to other cards you know to get that much time right right for sure so yeah so interesting interesting interesting anyway there you go all right let's talk about something crazy next what crazy thing did marriott and star do? Marriott and Starbucks, Greg, what are they up to this week? What's crazy about that? Oh, boy.

They came out with a big splash promotion where they're now partnering up so you can link your Marriott account with your Starbucks account. That sounds awesome. And earn, I can't quite say big numbers of points. You can earn a trickle. You can earn a tiny trickle of points. So first of all, you'll get double stars on Starbucks purchases. That sounds good, right?

Yeah, I like Starbucks. I drink a lot of coffee, Greg. That sounds perfect. Might as well get double Starbucks stars, but it's only while you're staying at Marriott Properties. Okay. All right. How about the other side?

Can you earn Marriott points? Yes. You can earn 100 bonus Marriott points when making three Starbucks purchases during Marriott Bonvoy weeks, which... So I guess they're going to have these special weeks where instead of earning no stars, which is the default, or sorry,

instead of earning no Marriott points at Starbucks, there'll be these weeks where if you happen to spend three times at Starbucks. Three times. Three times in the same week. During that week. Special week. You get 100, not one, not two, not 10, 100 Marriott Bonvoy points.

And we all know how far 100 Bonvoy points will go. So based on our reasonable redemption value, if I'm doing the math right here, I think it's a little bit less than a dollar worth of points here. We're talking about. Right, Greg? Yeah. You go three times during the same week and it happens to be a special week. You're going to get less than a buck from Marriott. Right, right, right.

So woohoo. I love Stephen. Our Stephen Pepper is the one who wrote up this deal in quotes. And I love he got a little punchy in part of it. He wrote, we received an almost 1500 word press release to celebrate this partnership. That's a latte words for a partnership that's not very grand. I want to filter out the non-important stuff. And so I guess the filter. I missed that. I was trying to bold the parts where he did puns.

I missed the filter part. I wanted to filter out the non-important stuff as sharing that would be grounds for dismissal. Loved it. Threw in latte, threw in grande, threw in filter, threw in grounds. Loved it. It was great.

Great Starbucks puns there. Well done. Well done, Steven. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty. I mean, in fairness, what's a coffee cost? Three, four, five, six bucks, depending on which one you get. So, like, how much of a rebate would we really realistically expect to get in terms of Marriott points? But what a ridiculous promotion. Yeah. If from no other standpoint, but the one that like,

if you're staying in Marriott a lot, then presumably you've got elite status and you're having coffee at the hotel. Right. I mean, like, I guess maybe you'll get another cup of coffee. I get a few cups of coffee throughout the day, But I was like, what is this? Who thought that this would be? I don't know. I guess they know that their customers are frequenting each other. And I guess it gives them an opportunity to collect some data across the thing. But wow, talk about not excitingly rewarding. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's enough of our promotional roast for now. Right. Right. Right. So let's move forward. Let's get out of that and let's go to mattress running the numbers for a more exciting hotel promotion than a hundred Marriott Bonvoy points. We'll mattress run the numbers with the Wyndham rewards, ultimate hotel pass.

Wyndham rewards is out with a really creative promotion that I'm excited about, even though there's almost no chance of probably getting this. But nonetheless, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring. So tell us about it. What do we got going on from Wyndham? Yeah. So if you know, obviously that's an incredible deal because if you only use, you know, five of those nights, that's less than $100 per night. Now, the limitation is that those 30 nights of hotel stays must be redeemed over the next three months, which specifically you have to stay by the end of September. So October 1st is the last possible checkout date for these 30 nights. You will get a dedicated pass concierge to assist with all reservations, modifications, and cancellations. You can use pass nights to book an extra room for accompanying

guests. So for example, you could get two rooms at a property and use two of your 30 nights when you do that. You are limited to just two though. You can't book 30 rooms for one night, which I was disappointed at because I thought, oh, if I get this, I will invite frequent miler on their listeners to come stay at a Wyndham where I've booked 30 rooms. But no, that's not going to happen. You would have been a lot of fun. You can't stay in one property for more than 10 nights. There are limited blackout dates, but they don't explain what those are. Taxes and resort fees are included at most hotels and resorts, so that's great.

There's a few properties you can't use your pass at. Wyndham Concord, Isla Margarita, the H Hotel, the Bank of Montreal Institute for Learning, Echo Suites, Extended Stay by Wyndham Hotels, and Vacasa Vacation Rentals or cottages.com, which the latter two are kind of obvious that you can't use it for those. That all sounds awesome. I want one. It does. It does. So, okay.

So, Nick, what do you need to do to get one of these? Well, all you need to do is be chosen to purchase one. So there are going to be 25 of these passes available for purchase. So 25 lucky people will be able to purchase these. But what I think is kind of interesting is the way that they're doing that. So when I saw that, I was like, oh, this is gonna be one of those things where everybody just got to click and, you know, everybody's gonna say, oh, it's a scam. I was clicking right away and it didn't work because of course, only 25 for however many

people are clicking. However, that's not how they're doing it. How they're doing it now is that you pre-register right now. Wyndhamrewards.com slash hotel pass. So if you want to buy one of these when they become available, you pre-register now between now and I think July 3rd, if I remember correctly. And then on July 8th, 25 potential pass holders who pre-registered are going to be randomly selected that they have their opportunity to claim and purchase a pass. And they're going to have 48 hours to claim the pass. If they don't, then a new name will get pulled. So this is kind of interesting because you register now, you have to take the initiative to go and register now,

and then maybe you get lucky and you get pulled. And if you do, it's not a click, click, click, you've got 48 hours to log in and buy your pass. So I think that's actually kind of a cool way to do this. I don't know. What do you think about that? I mean, I'm excited about it. You know, yes, the chance is probably pretty low of getting it. On the other hand, if we go back about six years or so, when Wyndham did a kind of similar promotion where when they first partnered with cottages.com, they offered a deal where you could book any property for 15,000 points per night. It didn't matter how many bedrooms it had. And it was, if I remember right, I think it was limited to 50 people booking

it. 40, I think. I think it was 40. It was a small number anyway. And so at first we just figured, oh, it's going to be all gone in seconds. So we didn't bother. But then we heard from, I think it was a reader who told us that she was able to book it. And then Nick got on and was able to book one. And then later I got on and was able to book one. And so in that example, I think Wyndham is enough under the radar.

You know, if it was Marriott, forget it, it would have been gone in half a second. But with Wyndham, you know, I guess it was enough under the radar that it was doable. And so maybe this will be like that too. Maybe it won't be, you know, so many people that it's that unlikely to get it. And I do think that there's a good chance that a lot of people who are contacted that win will not actually pull the trigger and buy it within the 48 hours. So you'll have more chances. I would love it for someone, one of our listeners to get this or multiple listeners even. So go to Wyndhamrewards.com forward slash hotel pass, register. Why not? It doesn't hurt to register. And then be sure to write in when you win this

thing. And of course, be sure to write in with your experiences when you actually stay at a bunch of hotels. Wyndham, I mean, they're known for having a lot of mediocre hotels, but they also have some higher end properties around the US, around the world. And so it's worth checking into what they've got because there's some exciting stuff. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to definitely register me. I'm going to register my wife. I'm going to see if there's a restriction as to how old you have to be. I'll register my kids if I can. I didn't even catch that. You do going to see if there's a restriction as to how old you have to be. I'll register my kids if I can. I didn't even catch that. You do have to be 18 or older.

Ah, bummer. So not the kids. But yeah, I mean, it seems like... I particularly like that you can book two rooms too. So if you've got a bigger family, then you can book enough rooms to be able to accommodate hopefully the people in your family or bring somebody else with you to do a trip for a few days. I think that was a great idea that differentiates this. And to be clear, we're not like there's no affiliate thing here. We're not like we're not telling you to go do this because we aren't anything off of this at all. We're just excited about it because it looks like fun. I think it's a little different than the cottages.com thing in terms of the odds of getting it because that cottages.com thing that Greg was referencing,

you had to not only be paying attention, but have Wyndham points, which at the time there was no Wyndham or business card. You know, there was, there was a Wyndham card, but it was very, very niche. So I think not very many people that read about it even had Wyndham points and there was no way to transfer them back then. Now there are ways to transfer them. So I think that, you know, that increased the odds on that old promo some. So I don't know, this'll still probably not be great odds, but maybe not astronomically low. Like you said, certainly not like if Marriott ran it. So I'm going to register and give it a shot

and cross my fingers and hope. And even though I don't have a ton of availability during the potential booking window, I'll move things around and make it work if I'm able to buy one of these. So we'll think. Same here. I think it would be really fun to just be like searching all over,

trying to find the best ways to use it within your constrained schedule. And, you know, so right. Right. It would be a lot of fun. It'd be a lot. And then writing about how to get to those places to be,

it would be fun to be able to, to give us a shot. So we'll see, we'll see what happens. We'll, we'll hope for the best. Okay. So that's our, our mattress running the numbers. Let's talk about this week's award talk because

we have quite a few different things to talk about in award talk before we even get to the main event. So starting out, we've got a new reasonable redemption value for world of Hyatt points. What's that, Greg? How much are world of Hyatt points worth? Yeah. So with each of the hotel programs, each of the main ones, what we have been doing for years now is looking at what's the median value you get for your points within hotels in a selection of markets within the United States. The reason we do United States is because we know from past data points that most people redeem their points within the US. So what we're trying to do with these reasonable redemption values is identify the value you're likely to get when using your points if you're not trying too hard to optimize. So we like that medium value. The last time we did this with Hyatt was a couple years ago. Hotel prices were very inflated at the time. It was before Hyatt had made a few changes with moving properties up categories and things. So we expected the reasonable redemption value,

which was 2.1 cents per point at the time, we expected that to go down. And in fact, when we redid the data, it did go down, it went down to 1.7. So that's not to say that your points are suddenly worth less. It's just that the amount that we are showing on our website and using our calculations now is less. And the good news is that the 80th percentile, meaning if you are looking for good value, the 80th percentile is 2.1. So you could still certainly get 2.1 or better value with Hyatt points. But if you're not trying very hard, we're looking at around 1.7 as the value you're more likely to get. Yep. Yep. And that's based on doing a bunch of different searches. And Greg laid out a whole methodology for this that involves searching in a bunch of different cities and different times of the year, different days of the week, et cetera.

So quite a bit of data between Greg and Tim got collected and put into that to come up with the new reasonable redemption value. So, of course, we can't search every property every day all year long, but that's as scientific a number as you're probably likely to get. There you go. Next up, Aeroplan is out with a really interesting promotion with the charity Miles for Migrants, which let me just say for a second, Miles for Migrants is a charity where they actually use airline miles to help people who are often fleeing difficult circumstances to get out of a war-torn country, for example. And the cool thing is, I think you've seen this too, that they actually use miles wisely. Like they don't just use them for and get poor value, but they use miles wisely and get really good value for booking flights for people. And so the normal way to donate to them is by donating your unused miles. And they have deals with all these different

airlines where they can, that makes it easy for them to accept, you know, your Delta miles, your United miles, whatever. If you have extra miles that you're not using or about to expire, you could donate to them. But this Aeroplan deal is a little different. This is for donating cash to Miles for Migrants. And Aeroplan will give you miles when you do that. And so for every $100 you donate, they'll give you 7,500 miles, which is kind of remarkable because even if you didn't care about this charity at all, that's buying miles for 1.33 cents each. Which, you know, I mean, yes during during aeroplan uh point sales which there's one going on right now you can get it for miles for a tiny bit less than that but

that's still like a good sale price for aeroplan miles very solid price um so i i think it's a great opportunity to do good and buy miles cheaply. There is a maximum of 75,000 miles you can earn this way. So $1,000 in donations will get you the max 75,000 miles. Yeah, this is fantastic. You know, I had heard you talk about miles for migrants before, and I had seen other bloggers write about it. But to be honest, I had ignored the coverage and not taken a close look at it until I saw them present at the travel summit in Toronto. And I was really impressed, really impressed for a lot of different reasons. But one of the reasons

was that even though I know people had said that they use miles, well, I don't know if I fully believed it. I think that probably some part of me was still skeptical about that. But my goodness, they went through the cents per point that they get with each of the different programs that they use and talked about the techniques they use to book things and whatnot, and that they're working with people in general who've been approved for asylum somewhere, but just need to be able to get there and don't have the money to buy a cash ticket. So Miles for Migrants is working on getting those people from where they are to where they already have their paperwork and everything lined up. So, you know, it is,

I think, a really good charity that's doing excellent work, it seems. And I'm impressed with their attention to detail in terms of how well they use miles. But of course, they still have to pay taxes and fees on those flights and all sorts of other things. I'm sure they have plenty of operating costs. So it makes sense that they're providing an opportunity here to donate cash as well. And I commend Aeroplan for working with them to incentivize that. That's awesome. And of course, if you wanted to be really generous, you could also donate the miles that you get because they will use those Aeroplan miles and use them well. So Aeroplan, I know, is one of the airlines that works particularly closely with them and that they find great value in using the miles because of course, Aeroplan's got like 41

different partners. So they're particularly useful miles for miles to migrants as well. So yeah, that's great. I love this. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Next up, Citi is out with a 15% transfer bonus to Cathay Pacific Asia Miles through July 20th. They devalued a bit over this last year. So awards have become a little bit more expensive. But if you find some availability, they, in some cases, are not a bad option. So with a 15% transfer bonus, like Greg said. Yeah, yeah. So a couple things that you might want to have on your radar to do with Cathay Asia Miles. One is to fly Cathay itself. They have better award availability for their own members. You can if you're flying really far. So their award chart's not particularly generous,

but there's a maximum distance to it. And so if you fly past that distance, the price doesn't go up. And if you add on lower cabins for that longer distance, you can actually reduce the price. So for example, if you fly first class from Chicago to Hong Kong, I don't know what the current pricing is for that, but you can actually lower the price by going onward from there in, let's say, economy to somewhere far away like South Africa. And then that would lower that price for that first class flight from Chicago. So that's just an example of one thing. Another thing, sometimes, and it doesn't seem to be every time, Asia Miles has cheaper award fees for flying British Airways. And so they have decent award pricing from East Coast-ish cities to London on British Airways. And you'll often find that the taxes and fees you'll pay

through Asia Miles is a lot less than you'd pay through other programs flying British Airways. Yep. Yep. That's certainly a sweet spot for using your Cathay Asia miles. I was the one that came to mind. I said, oh, well, the 15% bonus that could be attractive anyway. So sure. So maybe worth a look. Use your award search tools to make sure you can find some availability and double check that at the, you know, Cathay Pacific Asia miles site before you transfer, because I

don't always see availability there that I expect should be there. And I don't know whether you can book it over the phone or not. So, you know, you have to do some legwork. You have to be willing to work for it. Like Greg said at the beginning, a lot of these things do require a little bit of time and effort. So you may have to put some in if you're going to try and take advantage of that one. All right. In terms of something that doesn't require much time or legwork, enterprise is offering a status match, right? And that's valid through February of 2026. So you can match status and get it for almost two years here, a year and a half anyway, with enterprise. That sounds like it could be good, maybe.

Yeah. I mean, enterprise elite status doesn't give you a lot, but it's always better to have status than not if you're going to book through these companies. And their status match website basically says they'll match from a large number of hotel or airline elite statuses. And so chances are you've got something. You've got, maybe you've got IHG Platinum or you've got Marriott Gold or Hilton Gold or whatever. You can get some level of status from enterprise. They don't explicitly say what they'll match you to. But if you look in the comments of our blog post about this, you'll see people reporting what they got from their various statuses. So it's a good place to check what you're likely to get

if you do this. On the other hand, there's very little work involved in doing it and just seeing what you get. I mean, some status is going to be better than none if you are going to be booking through Enterprise. Yep. There you go. There you have it. And last but not least from Award Talk, Amex referral bonuses are now reaching new heights as high as 45,000 points per referral on some cards. Not all cardholders have been targeted for this.

Some cardholders have been targeted to earn 45,000 membership rewards points for each approved referral. Keep in mind, you can only earn up to 100,000 points from each of your Amex cards per year in referrals. So that means basically two referrals with this will almost essentially almost max you out. I'll get you the 90,000 of the 100,000. So but still only two referrals, almost maxing that out. That's insane. 45,000 points. Yeah. No, I mean, that's great. Most people aren't maxing out their referrals because, you know, they don't have that many friends that they want to make ex-friends by trying to push credit cards on them. And so, you know, being able to get 45,000 points is fantastic. And remember that with Amex, you can refer someone to just about any, not any, but almost any Amex card and still get a 45,000 point referral. The person who's interested in signing up for an Amex card doesn't need to get an Amex gold card. They could use your referral link to get almost any Amex card that they're interested in. They would get the normal welcome bonus for

whatever it is they sign up for. And you, if they get approved, will get the 45,000 points. So that's a fantastic deal. Also worth mentioning that even if they are not eligible for the welcome bonus on the card that they, they open, as long as they open it and get approved, you still get your 45,000 points. So let's say you're playing in a two player household and player two has had the, I don't know, the Amex everyday card before that has no annual fee, uh, then you could refer. And so they're not eligible for the welcome bonus. You could still refer them and they could still open that card that has no annual fee. then you could refer. And so they're not eligible for the welcome bonus. You could still refer them and they could still open that card that has no annual fee. So it's not going to

cost them anything but perhaps a slot, a 524 slot. And you'll get your 45,000 points. Better yet, maybe refer them for a business card, a Blue Business Plus that has no annual fee. Or I think the business green often has a waived annual fee in the first year. I don't know whether that's true right now or not. You have to take a look and see. But essentially, my point here is that you could end up with 45,000 points that don't really cost the person opening the card anything. So if you're playing in a two-player household, that could be a great way to pick up some easy points.

Yeah, that's a really, really good point. And good points. Yeah. Business green might be an interesting way to go as well because sometimes a business green cardholder will get targeted for a nice upgrade offer to the business gold, for example. My son just took advantage of one of those. And so if the person who gets the business green has already had the business gold, it could be a way to get, even if they're interested in getting the business gold again, for themselves to get a welcome, well, an upgrade bonus later on.

But it's dependent on Hammocks sending you that offer. Right, right, right. So a lot of ifs and buts and whatnot. But if you've been targeted for the 45,000 points, the key point here for you is that there are certainly ways to take advantage of that. And I would recommend finding a way to refer someone because 45,000 points for a single referral

is a pretty amazing haul. I mean, that's better than the welcome offer on numerous Amex cards, right? I mean, the everyday preferred, the business plus, that's a higher welcome offer than you're going to get on tons of business. Green card doesn't offer that high frequently. The Amex green card doesn't have an offer that you see. You can be doubling or more tripling, quadrupling what you would get for one of those, you know, sort of lower end Amex cards with this referral bonus if you're targeted. Yeah. And you'd be able to fly to Hawaii in first class, at least in one direction,

with fewer than those 45,000 points. If you find availability. If you find availability. And if you use one of the programs we're going to talk about during today's main event. So I think it's time for the main event, Craig. Main event time. Best ways to fly to Hawaii. All right. So we have a number of ways that we're going to talk about are dependent on airlines releasing award space. And that is not a common thing for them to do between the mainland and Hawaii.

So let's start off with cash options. And I'm going to kick this off by talking about something that's fairly new uh in in not long ago delta and amex revamped the delta credit cards and so now the delta platinum card and the Delta Reserve card, both of which annually upon renewal of the card will give you a Delta Companion Certificate, they changed up those Companion Certificates. So any Companion Certificate you get, deposit your account as of, I think it was February 2024 or later, has the ability to book companion tickets further out. It used to be only domestic, like continental US flights, but now you can go as far as Hawaii in one direction, you could go to the Caribbean, you could go to Central America. So you could go fly much further

with these companion shirts. And so you could fly all the way from, you know, Northeast US to Hawaii and add your companion for free with one of these companion certificates. So that's a fantastic deal. That is, that's a great deal. So that could be a way to save a bunch of money on a cash ticket. And, you know, you have to do the math and decide, okay, well, you know, is that a better deal than booking an award? Even if you find award availability, it might be the case that a companion certificate is a better deal than using your points. So it's worth at least looking, certainly if you've got Delta companion certificates. Similarly, if you're an Alaska Airlines visa card holder or the business card holder, and you have an Alaska companion fare, same thing. You'll have to take a look and

see, well, will that work out to be better, because you can book a companion for just the taxes and fees. And so or $99, rather, plus the taxes and fees. So that could work out to be a better deal. Now, if you're kind of like an old Alaska cardholder, that's an automatic card benefit. But if you opened your card since I think January 18 of 2023, I could be wrong on the date there, somewhere around there, then you have to do $6,000 spend per year in order to get that Companion Fare code. But at any rate, if you have an Alaska Airlines Companion Fare, then it's worth checking the price of flying Alaska. But you do have to fly in Alaska,

that Companion Fare can't be used for partner flights. So you'll have to find a good price on Alaska. Yeah. And the Alaska one is limited to economy cabin. The Delta one, it depends where you got your companion cert. If you got it from the Delta Platinum card, then you're limited to flying main cabin economy. If you got it from the Delta Reserve card, you could buy a first-class ticket or an economy ticket

and add your companion for free. Very good. Plus taxes and fees. Plus taxes and fees. Yeah. Very good. Next up, the Southwest Companion Pass. That's always a favorite.

And since they started flying to Hawaii, they have allowed the Companion Pass to be used on flights to Hawaii, just like anywhere else they fly. So Southwest Companion Pass, of course, remember, if you earn 135,000 Rapid Rewards points in a single calendar year, you can bring a companion with you for just the taxes and fees, just the usually $5.60 each way domestically. And that is true whether you buy your ticket with cash or you buy your ticket with points, doesn't matter. Either way, you can add your companion for just the taxes. And it doesn't matter when you add your companion, as long as there's an available seat for sale you could have bought your ticket six months ago and the day before the flight you could add your companion if there's availability so the southwest companion pass can be very appealing for flights to hawaii again it's just going to depend on the cash fares but that's another companion ticket that's worth a look if you have access to it, because remember, the credit card welcome bonus points count towards

the companion pass. So historically, the best time to try to earn that is after October 1st and complete the spend in early January. So you earn a companion pass that's good for almost two full years. Although right now, I think still maybe the welcome offers on the Southwest cards are increased. And so it might be an appealing time to go after it for some folks now also. But anyway, that's another one to consider. Yep. And finally, under cash options, vacation packages. So you'll see the ability to buy vacation packages both through airlines websites like Delta Vacations and so on, and also through, you know, Expediaedia travel and wherever and this is hit

or miss but it is sometimes the case that vacation packages that the whole package including the airfare and hotel or and rental car can cost less than it would cost you to buy the airfare for everyone involved by itself. And I've had that happen personally, where I've booked vacation packages in the past for my family of three without hotel, but with rental car. And the whole price was significantly less than if we had just bought airfare by itself and didn't have a rental car. So that could be a great way of saving money as well. Yep. And finally, I guess, let me mention, if you're not very familiar with Google flights, another thing to keep in mind and

take a look at is, you know, if you go to Google flights to look at cash prices, you put in your home airport or whichever airports you're willing to fly from, because remember, you can search from multiple airports just by putting in a comma and selecting more airports. And then you could search just to Hawaii, you don't have to pick a single Hawaiian airport because sometimes you'll find that, you know, maybe the flight is cheaper to, if you're going to go all the way to Maui, than if you just stay in Honolulu

or you go to Luhue or Hilo or wherever it might be. And it probably doesn't make a huge difference to you, especially if you're going to visit more than one island or you can buy cheap inter-island flights, especially with Southwest these days. So it might be worth taking a look at flights to other Hawaiian islands because there sometimes can be a significant difference in price. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Let's jump into award pricing now. Let's start with economy awards. How

cheap does it get flying from the US to Hawaii in economy class? Well, the cheapest deal for flying in economy class is going to be booking through Turkish Miles and Smiles and flying on United. So you can fly United for 10,000 miles each way in economy class from anywhere in the continental United, anywhere in the U.S. to Hawaii is going to cost you 10,000 miles one way. So you can be flying from New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Chicago or Dallas or Grand Rapids. I don't know if United really serves Grand Rapids, so I'm not sure. But presumably anyway, if you can find Sabre award availability that United makes available to partners, which as Greg mentioned earlier, is going to be a barrier for a lot of

these, but a particular barrier for this one, because United has gotten really stenchy with how much space they make available to partners. But if you can find flights that are available to United's partners, then you can book for 10,000 miles and $5.60 each way through Turkish miles and smiles for those United flights. about other than just having to find United Word space is also that Turkish can be difficult to work with. So if you could get a good deal elsewhere, you might have less trouble, but lots of people have booked these many times without problems. So your mileage may vary there. Another great option that's brand new is using Finnair Avios. So you may remember that Avios are the currency that are used by quite a few different airline programs, British Airways, Iberia, Qatar, Aer Lingus, and now Finnair as well. And you can move them around. So if you have Avios in any one program, you can move them to Finnair if you need to. Finnair has a word chart where you could fly from anywhere in the US with Alaska on an Alaska flight or flights for 13,500 miles in economy, or an American Airlines flight for 15,000 avios in economy.

Those are really cheap. One downside at the moment, the Finnair website does not show American Airlines or Alaska flights when you search online, so you would have to book these through calling Finnair. But still, that seems like a potentially great deal, especially from the East Coast at 13,500 miles one way on Alaska, out of New York or Boston. I think Alaska serves Boston too, and certainly DC. I mean, that seems like a fantastic deal, particularly when you consider that there are frequently transfer bonuses to Avios. So we frequently see 25% transfer bonuses to Avios and sometimes even more. I think we've seen up to 40% maybe during the pandemic. Maybe we saw 50 at some point.

So with the right transfer bonus, this is basically as good as the Turkish United thing, but probably easier, less stressful and particularly easier to get things fixed. If something goes wrong, I would bet. I don't have direct experience. I can't confirm that dealing with Finnair is easier than dealing with Turkish.

But I had a few obvious on the fact that it's probably easier to get Finnair to reissue a ticket if a flight gets changed or something. So that would make this appealing to me. If I were planning another trip to Hawaii, I think I'll definitely be looking to see if I can find Alaska award space. Absolutely. Another great one. Alaska also redid their award charts not that long ago. Alaska itself, their price for flying from the mainland to Hawaii is $15,000 starting at $15,000 miles. And so Alaska, because on their own flights will charge kind of whatever they want to, just like American and Delta and United do. But theoretically, anyway, you could find them

starting at 15,000 miles one way. Theoretically, there you go. All right. So that's from anywhere in the US. But what about from like the central US west for people that live kind of in the middle of the country or westward? What are the best options for those folks? So if you have Singapore, Chris Flyer Miles, they have a partnership with Alaska, and you can fly economy from certain airports, sort of central and west coast for anywhere from 13,000 to 14,000 Singapore miles one way. Yeah, So that's basically about the same, more or less as Finnair, although fewer transfer bonuses and hard expiration policy on Singapore miles mean that I probably wouldn't be transferring to Singapore to make that booking. But if you already have Singapore

miles, well, then, then it would be a good use. I think that's the key. If you already have them, then that's, that's a way to use them use them but yeah i would definitely prefer to use uh you know finnair avios over over singapore if i had to choose one or the other good all right and then of course you also have alaska or aa would be i think 17.5 i think uh from the central to the west or from using alaska miles yeah using alaska miles uh you can fly American Airlines for 17,500 miles one way from the West Coast, but also as far east as Dallas. So they go further than just the West Coast as far as that goes for $17,500. So that's not bad, not bad at all. Yeah, yeah.

All right, good. What about the West Coasters? So those of you who live on the West Coast, you're spoiled with lots of different options for booking flights to Hawaii, including one being that we do sometimes see really good airfare sales from the West Coast. So sometimes it'll make more sense to just buy a ticket. But if prices are high and awards are available, let's talk about some of the best options. So you'd use United Mileage Plus to fly in.

United starts at 11,100 miles from the West Coast. Now, I see you put that in the notes, Greg. Is that real? Is that fake news? I've never seen that. Is that in there somewhere? Yeah, I use Seat Side Aero to find the cheapest flights, and that came up. Now, there were like two or maybe three dates from L.A. that had that price.

I mean, United's going to charge whatever they want to charge. And so do they happen to be running a special right now? Maybe. I don't know. But I did at least see such a thing existed at one point in time. I'm kind of teasing there because truth be told, I did book a Hawaii to Orlando for 12.5 through United a couple of years ago. I ended up having to cancel that, but they had like special pricing to Orlando of all, I don't know why that was it for 12.5 from Hawaii. But anyway, so yeah,

I mean, you kind of never know. It's the box of chocolates. Never know what you're going to get with United. Yeah. And the same can be said for American Airlines and Delta as well. They could theoretically have prices that low because they're not going to tell you in advance because they don't have award charts for their own flights. Aeroplan, if you happen to find United awards from the West Coast to Hawaii, it starts at 12,500 miles to do that. Now, for somebody who is maybe newer to this, you might say, well, why would I book for 12.5 if United's charging 11.1? And the answer to that is that those aren't necessarily correlated. The US programs, United and Delta and American, will charge whatever it is they want to charge on any particular day.

But sometimes they'll make those flights available to partners. Even though they're charging a ton of miles, you could potentially book the same flight for just 12.5 through Aeroplan if it happens to be one that United makes available to them. It's not only the cheapest flights that they make available to partners. That's a really good point. And then, of course, you might have Aeroplan Miles and not have United Miles. I mean, maybe you donated to Miles for Migrants and got some Aeroplan Miles.

And so that would be a good use. You'd only have to donate about $150, I think, to end up or maybe a little more than that, but less than $200 to have enough miles to book that. That's pretty good. Now you could get to Hawaii. You wouldn't be able enough miles to book that. That's pretty good. Now you could get to Hawaii. You wouldn't be able to get back with that. Who wants to get back? You know, who wants to get back?

Exactly. Another program that's great for shorter distance awards, so flying from the West Coast to Hawaii or the other way, is Qatar. Use Qatar Avios to fly either American Airlines or Alaska for 13,000 Avios one way. So you'll save 500 Avios over booking through Finnair and probably, presumably can book that on the Qatar Airways website. So nice little bonus there as well. Yeah, you can. A big difference between booking with Fin bonus there as well. Yeah, you can. A big difference between booking with Finnair is that, yeah, you can book it directly.

But, you know, with Qatar, that 13K price is only from the West Coast. The Finnair price is from anywhere in the US. Yeah. And so far, we're all talking about economy redemptions here. Don't worry, we'll talk about flying up front too. Good luck finding availability. But yeah, so these are all about economy redemptions here don't worry we'll talk about flying up front too good luck finding availability uh but but yeah so these are all the economy redemptions otherwise known as the realistic potential possible awards you might find uh so that's qatar what's next uh so you could use your um flying blue your air france kalem flying blue Flying Blue, your Air France, KLM Flying Blue miles to fly Delta.

And from the West Coast, they have a distance-based awards for Delta. From the West Coast, it starts at 18,000 points one way. There you go. If you want to fly Hawaiian, Hawaiian Airlines, if they have availability for their Saver Awards, it's 20,000 miles one way from the West Coast to Hawaii. It's the same price if you book through Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, also 20,000. So if you find an award that's available on the Hawaiian website for 20,000 miles, it should also be available to Virgin Atlantic for 20,000 miles. Why would that matter then if it's the same price? Well, because sometimes we see generous transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. I think there's a 30%

transfer bonus going on right now from one of the various transferable currencies. So that means your 20K would cost you, I don't know, less than that. So 15K about or so more or less, a little bit more than that, 16K. So nonetheless, you could book for fewer points through Virgin Atlantic if you catch a transfer bonus. Otherwise, Hawaiian 20K one way. Maybe. Okay. Right. Now with Virgin, you're not going to be able to see that award online. You'll have

to call Virgin to book that. One way to make sure it's bookable is to search JetBlue's website, which will show Hawaiian awards. And JetBlue has the same pricing from the West Coast, 20,000 points to fly Hawaiian to Hawaii. So they vary on how much it costs from the East Coast. But all three of them, Hawaiian miles, JetBlue miles, and Virgin miles for flying Hawaiian airlines between the West Coast and Hawaii costs 20,000 points. There you go. All right. And then, of course, American Airlines is variable. So you have it down at starting at 20,000 points, but I think it could be a slot machine. We don't

really know how much American is going to charge any day of the week, right? Yeah. I use Seat Side Area to look over the course of the year, and that was the cheapest I could see was 20,000 points. Yeah. There you go. I was actually surprised by that. I thought I would see some dates less than that, but I didn't. Yeah. Yeah. I would have thought that too, but yeah, but that's a good way to search and get an idea of how much is the lowest right now. Anyway, of course, you never know when they're going to run a flash sale.

So it can be worth keeping an eye on it. I check AA pretty commonly, although now that I'm using PointsPath, I just use the browser where I have PointsPath installed, uh, to Google flights now. And because that will show me the American airlines price. So it's a little bit faster. It's saving me the time of not having to go to the American airlines website, uh, thanks to the points path extension. So I like that. And then finally, Southwest course also variable just depends on the cash cost of a ticket. You get around, I don't know, 1.3 isish cents per point, more or less. It's a little murky with Southwest, but around 1.3-ish cents per point for Southwest flights.

So when cash fares are cheap, that can be a way to fly for a reasonable number of points. Yep. Yep. All right. Let's get in the good stuff. Let's say you want to fly up front on your way to Hawaii. Let me first say that. So when we talk about first class flights, we're generally not, and we're talking about going to Hawaii, we're not usually talking about the that's usually a regional first class, so it's a bigger seat, more legroom, usually not lie flat, but there are lie flat options to Hawaii. Most programs treat these flights to Hawaii, what we call first class, they treat them as business class for the award pricing. So we're going to talk here about what the programs charge for business class flights between mainland US and Hawaii.

Yep. First up, tell us about Turkish, Nick. I mean, the best deal if you want to fly in comfort and style to Hawaii is to book a United flight through Turkish Miles and Smiles because it's just 15,000 miles one way from anywhere in the US to Hawaii or really anywhere in the United States. You'll be flying to Alaska. You'll be flying to Dallas. It doesn't really matter where you're flying. It's 15,000 miles one way in business class on United. If you can find that. Yeah. Good this is this is one of those unicorn awards that

i've i've seen it once in a while i once booked one from from new york on the non-stop new york to honolulu and flatbed seats but uh but i couldn't fly it and had to cancel a trip and so you know that was one time and i haven't i I haven't seen a single seat on the nonstop from Newark to Honolulu. And I don't know how long and looking at a year's worth of availability at a time through seats by I haven't seen one. So good luck. I think it's very unlikely, but maybe close in you get lucky. And certainly from the West Coast, I think there's a better chance that you might find an option on United. And if you do 15,000 miles one way is a really good deal. I mean,

you're not going to get better than that in the front of the end of the plane. No, that's incredible. And United does have a number of routes where they feature live flat seats in first class. So you could have a very comfortable flight if you can magically book this. The one trick I know of, and I don't even know if it still would work, but there was a while where I was monitoring these, setting alerts for seats to open up. And what I saw theoretically be in Hawaii and watch for, you know, and when you need to get back, watch for the flight to open up. A lot of flights are like afternoon flights. So you book it first thing in the morning and hopefully fly it that afternoon.

That's, you know, about as good as you're going to get. That's the kind of flexibility you're going to need. About as good a chance as you're going to get to do this. Yeah, in order to be able to successfully book that on 4-Channel. You'd be very flexible to do that, obviously. Yeah, yeah. All right, so that one is unrealistic for most people, but one of those things that every now and then,

I mean, we all hit a home run now and then, that that will be your home run ball that you'll swing for and hope to hope to connect with one time uh thin air though is a potentially a good deal for flying american airlines up front not nearly as good of a deal as using turkish for united though, right? Right, right. But 38,000 points one way for business class, flying American Airlines. So American Airlines is much more likely to open first-class award space to partners than United for these routes. And I'm not saying that it's likely you'll find it when you want to go, but I'm just saying relatively, there's a lot more award space out there. So this one, yes, it's more than double the price of what Turkish would charge, but it's much more realistic that you might be able to find that.

Yeah. Keep in mind that if you're sort of central or west, then you could potentially book those same American Airlines flights through Alaska for 35,000 miles. So potentially a few less miles, although much harder to get Alaska miles than it is Finnair, obvious. 35,000, isn't that? I thought Alaska charge. Oh, for the West Coast. Yes. Yeah, we're up to 4,000 miles in distance, I think.

Right. So that covers i think dallas as far as dallas to uh to honolulu i looked at so yes yeah i got that lower in the in the notes yep um the uh another thing that that works for anywhere in the u.s uh that alaska flies is to use alaska miles to fly its own metal, uh, first class for 40,000 points. Now the things that stand now, Alaska doesn't have any live flat seating. So you're going to be in regular bucket seating,

but, uh, so first class, not bad. Yep. All right. Next up after that, what's our next one here?

Uh, using Hawaiian miles to fly Hawaiian for, uh, 40,000 points, uh, 000 points uh one way um and uh now they they have like their their saver pricing and and standard or flex pricing so this is their saver so 40k is the least you'll find for uh flying hawaiian first class uh and you'll find it much more often on the west coast to hawaii than you'll find it much more often on the West Coast to Hawaii

than you'll find it on the East Coast. But it's theoretically possible to find 40K from the East Coast as well. There's a couple of interesting things about if you want to fly Hawaiian itself. One is that Hawaiian offers upgrades from economy. So if you buy an economy cash ticket, then it's possible, if there's upgrade award space available, to upgrade to first class for as few as 25,000 Hawaiian miles one way. So that could be a much more realistic way if you want to fly first class in Hawaiian from

East Coast-ish or even central areas to Hawaii. I think the chance of getting that is much higher than getting a SAVR award from the get-go in first class. Another thing that intrigued me is when I was looking this up, there was a note that said that those with Hawaiian Platinum or Gold status or with the Hawaiian Airlines MasterCard, they have access to additional discounted flight awards for travel on Hawaiian Airlines. So maybe if you have status or you have the MasterCard, you might have better luck finding the award space you need. It's unclear whether you also have access to more upgrade award space. Not at all clear from what it wrote there, but maybe. Yeah, yeah. So that's potentially of interest, I think, and one to keep an eye on. If you do find the 40K Saver Award availability, keep in mind that just like we mentioned before, Virgin Atlantic potentially being a good way from the West Coast of the United States anyway. And I know we're talking about anywhere in the U.S. right now.

But since we're talking about the 40K Hawaiian from the West Coast, it's also 40K via Virgin Atlantic, which again, if you catch a transfer bonus, could be 31,000 miles. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about now options for if you're in central US. One option, which we mentioned briefly already, is that if you have Alaska miles, you can fly American Airlines from as far east as Dallas to Hawaii for 35,000 miles one way in first class. Now,

from the West Coast only, you have the programs that have more like distance based pricing where you have some good deals. Aeroplan Flying United starts at 25,000 from the West Coast. Now, that's also dependent just just like Turkish, on United opening award space to their partners in business class.

So good luck there. Maybe you'll have better luck using Qatar Avios to fly either American Airlines or Alaska Airlines for $38,750 avios from the West Coast. And finally, as Nick just mentioned, you could use your Virgin miles to fly Hawaiian for 40,000 miles to Hawaii from the West Coast in first class. And again, with Virgin, you're not gonna see that availability online

through Virgin's website. You'll have to call to book that. Very good. Okay, so you have a to call to book that. Very good. Okay. So you have a few options there. Great. So I think that obviously it's going to be a little difficult to get the business class award availability, but if you do, we've got a number of different options to book it.

That last one, by the way, Qatar, the 38,750, that's a little bit more than what Finnair would charge for the same flights, right? Or the Finnair price is only on American Airlines, not on Alaska, right? That's right. That's right. Finnair has different award charts for each partner, and they charge more in business class for Alaska for some reason. Yeah, that's right. So in Qatar, I think you should be able to book on their website. So that'll be a nice feature there. So how do you find this stuff? Like if you want to be able to find one of these awards, we've talked about how hard it can be, but we didn't tell anybody how to do it. So's say your dates are really flexible and you just want to know, can I ever take advantage of this deal? And so I'm going to talk about using Finnair Avios to find American Airlines award space. What I would do, I'd start with seats.aero. And in order to do what I'm about to describe, you do need to be a pro user.

So you need to pay the fee for the program. I love this tool. It's so useful for this type of thing where you have a lot of flexibility and you just want to see when are these beautiful awards actually available. And I'll tell you what, for flying Hawaii, that's where you really need a tool like that because these awards are so rare. So here's an example of how you could use Seat Side Aero to find American Airlines flights that are available to book with partners like Finnair. I would go in, I would set it to explore Qantas. Why Qantas? Well, because for one, Finnair is not an option. So what I need is another program that, um, partners with American airlines and where,

uh, Seats.Aero is going to show American airlines flights as bookable. So you pick explore Qantas from the menu, and then, um, you, you tell the, the tool to show flights from North America to North America, because Hawaii is considered part of North America for this purpose. You change the date range to full year. So you're looking at all the data available. And then there's a drop down box that says arrive. So you could pick which airports you want to filter to. And so put in HNL, LIH, OGG, and KOA, which are all the airports that American Airlines flies to in Hawaii. And if any of them aren't available, just don't pick it. That means that SeatSideAero didn't see any flights arriving in that airport, and that's fine.

Click on, okay, so now what you have is a table, a table of all these flights that Seats.Aero found. One of the headings says business class. Click on it to sort from the lowest price to the highest in business class. And then you want to, let's say you only want to look at American Airlines flights, you can filter to airlines and filter to American Airlines. And so now you're going to see flights from different parts of the U.S. or from Hawaii itself to Hawaii.

And now what you can do is, well, actually you won't see Hawaii itself in this example because American doesn't fly Hawaii to Hawaii. So what you can now do is search for airports of interest. Ignore what Seats.Aero says is the price because what it shows as the price is going to be the Qantas price, not the Finnair price. But the point is, if it's bookable by Finnair, it should be bookable.

I mean, if it's bookable by Qantas, it should be bookable by Finnair as well, if it's an American Airlines flight. So once you find one that looks good, maybe it's from Dallas, maybe it's from Chicago, whatever, then click the little info icon to the right because that'll cause Cicero to refresh that result and see if it's still there. If it's still there, then theoretically it should be bookable with Finnair Avios. And then at that point, you're going to need to contact them either by calling or maybe their online chat feature might work to do this as well. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. There you have it. I you know, I think the key takeaway there for

anybody new to these tools is that exactly what Greg said that this type of trip is exactly the type of one where an award search tool is indispensable. I mean, it's really, really useful because it's hard to search all of the various programs and all of the various days from all the various airport combinations. And using a tool like Seats.Aero for that, for this specific purpose is going to be really useful, particularly if you've got the flexibility where you're not like, okay, I'm going to go to Hawaii during this specific week, because if that's the situation for you, then it's going to be difficult potentially to find the award availability you want. But if you're more open,

you're retired, you're, you know, mobile, you have the ability to work remotely, etc. Then using a tool like this is going to be, again, super helpful for finding what are my options. So and that was exactly how you go about doing it because it's not necessarily intuitive it's not like you just use seats.io to search american airlines i think it's a really important point that you're going to use it to search quantus because that's another one world partner that should have access to the same space or that rather we should say that finnair will have access to the same space that quantus does so right so yeah there you have it that's how you do it so lots of ways to get to hawaii what's your favorite out of all the options we talked about us to the same space that Qantas does. So, yeah, there you have it. That's how you do it. So, lots of different ways to get to Hawaii.

What's your favorite out of all the options we talked about today? Well, one of my favorites is probably because it's always it's almost always available is the Delta Companion Cert that I can now use my Companion Certs

to fly two of us for essentially half price. And that's a very, that's just a great option, especially for me flying out of Detroit. Delta now has a nonstop between Detroit and Honolulu. So it's just extremely convenient. Most of these others would require at least one stop, if not two, for me to get to Hawaii. So a little less exciting. How about you? Yeah. I mean, I'm going to continue to look for the Turkish thing. I think with United, I'll continue to look for it. But I think the one that stands out to me now is Finnair. I think that the Finnair program has actually quite a few different interesting sweet spots in it now, but flying Alaska for 13.5 from the East Coast

seems pretty appealing to me, especially if I'm able to, I don't know if I would be or not. I don't know what Finnair's rules are in terms of routing rules, but if I could combo it with a long layover, like an overnight layover on the West Coast, that's just a lot easier to manage the trip to Hawaii with a family. So I'm'm gonna be on the lookout for an opportunity to use finnair obvious probably yeah it's you know it's exciting to me uh to see not just finnair but also alaska showed up multiple times yeah as as best options both of them have new award charts. And, you know, Alaska particularly, people were upset about losing some of the sweet spots Alaska used to have. But we at the time, like, analyzed it and said, you know what? Those sweet spots were, like, very rarely useful to most people.

And it looks like the new sweet spots they have will be more widely applicable and more, you know, widely useful. And I think that's proving true as we get more into it. So I think that's really great to see. And don't forget, Alaska allows stopovers on most types of itineraries. And so just like Nick was saying, you should be able to fly to LA or Seattle or somewhere and, and stop over if you want to, and then go onward to Hawaii for the same price. Yep. All right, great. I think that wraps up our main event for today and brings us to this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week came into the giant mailbag and it comes from, let's see, Daniel, Dan, Dan, I'm going to skip ahead a little bit. He enjoys the show, but he says, uh, I was wondering

if you could help me out. I suffer from an annoying mystery illness. That's something like chronic fatigue syndrome. I work a full-time job, but it takes all my energy. So I don't have much gas in the tank when it comes to a side hustle. You've mentioned reselling a few times, and I think this might be the easiest path for me to earn points with business cards. I'm not really comfortable with the risk of buying groups, but I was wondering if you're able to share some ideas of possible products I could buy online and sell through Facebook Marketplace or some other outlet. Profit would be nice, but honestly, I'd be happy with just getting the credit card points and maybe a shopping portal bonus. I'm generally well enough to travel and I love doing it, but I feel like I'm running out of options

for transferable points with personal cards alone. What would you do if you were in my shoes? I picked this question for a number of reasons, but I guess that my first question is, if this is, you know, this is sort of taking Dan's situation into account, having a limited amount of energy, a limited amount of gas in the tank, would you recommend product resale?

And if you would, how would you recommend going about it? Not in general. I mean, that, you know, product resale, it's not, it's not as easy as it sounds, I guess. So because you encounter all kinds of miscellaneous problems from having things you're selling damaged, from stuff that's sent mysteriously not being received, from returns. And you could probably mention many more issues than me, Nick, but I know when I was doing reselling, I didn't like it. I stopped doing it. So that doesn't seem like the number one thing in my book that I would turn to if I were him. I agree.

That was my first instinct was that product resale is maybe the most energy intensive of the various ways to, uh, to earn miles and points. So I would look at that as probably not the right Avenue. If that's the boat that you're in, because especially, especially if you're not going to do a buying groups, I think if you were going to do product resale, then buying groups would be the least energy intensive of the various ways to earn points. I can understand the hesitations. There's reasons to be hesitant about buying groups. Some people love them and do great with them. And other people are not comfortable with the risk there. So I get it if you're not comfortable with the risk. But I would say that I used to do a lot of resale and I mostly stopped it almost entirely because it took up so much time and energy. It was like having another full-time job. So I don't necessarily

think that's the right way. So I think we're both on the same page that I wouldn't probably recommend doing that Facebook marketplace too. Like you're going to meet people and go places and they don't show up. And it's like, there's a lot of hassle involved with that. So what would you recommend then? I mean, for somebody who's interested in earning more points, but without expending a lot of extra energy. I mean, not everybody has the time and energy to put into the hobby. So, A, what would you recommend? And B, what are your thoughts about business cards versus personal cards in that regard? Do you have any thoughts about any of that?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the easiest way by far is to keep earning points from welcome bonuses and um if you if you're running out of of uh like personal cards that where you could get welcome bonuses the obvious solution is to start applying for business cards and uh you don't need a reselling business to do that there's there's any number of things that you may be already doing that you can technically count as your business, you can apply as a sole proprietor, and even if you haven't had any income yet from your'm, uh, you know, I, uh, I, I have a website that, that I'm planning on,

you know, making a lot of money on the website in the future. And so I've been designing it or whatever, that's your business. Um, and you can apply for and, and probably get approved for business cards and keep earning points through new welcome offers. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's going to be your low hanging fruit, your easiest way of earning points from home. The other thing, if you're not comfortable with buying groups, maybe this isn't going to be for you either. But gift card resale is another thing that people do, the buy gift cards on sale and resell them. And that can often all be done online from the computer. So that's another good way to earn some potential pajama points.

And we've talked before about things like paying your taxes with a credit card to meet welcome bonus requirements. There are a number of different things, funding Kiva loans that you can do from home that would be lower energy methods that aren't going to necessarily work for everybody, or aren't going to be necessarily desirable for everybody, but that I would probably pursue sooner than resale unless you're willing to kind of dive into resale with the energy that it is kind of like another job that is somewhat profitable depending on how much time and effort you want to put into it. That would be my thought anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. And when I tip my toes into buying groups, even those, I found a lot of aggravation involved. Not from the groups themselves, but from things like the vendors not shipping, canceling my orders because I'm trying to ship to somewhere other than my home and things like that. The only one I found pretty darn easy and low effort to work with was Aligned Incentives, which is all about buying gift cards electronically. And then you just upload the gift card to their site and they pay you. So that was very, very low effort. Not all the deals. Most deals aren't that great of a deal.

You might be losing up to 3%, which isn't good for that. But in some cases you can do pretty well with something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And in some cases, if you're losing 1% or 2%, you might be earning that much just from the base level earnings of your card. And if you're spending towards a welcome bonus, then obviously you're coming out farther ahead. Yeah. Then 3% or even 4% could be worth it. Yeah, could be worth it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So those are things that I would probably also recommend ahead of a product resale. And that's not to say product resale is bad. I enjoyed it and earned lots of points from it for years. And it was fun. Like I loved going to the movies and like stepping out of the movie and seeing what sold on Amazon while I was sitting there watching a movie and then going home and packing it up and bring it to the post office. But all that stuff, certainly it was time and labor intensive. So best of luck to you, Dan. I hope that helps a

little bit anyway. And if you've enjoyed this show, and you'd like to get more of the stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group where you can ask questions like this and get responses from lots of other people any day you want. So thank you very much for being with us today. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a comment that you'd like to be considered for the Giant Mailbag, you can send that to

Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye, everybody.