Frequent Miler on the Air - Catching up with the Last Minute Travel Challenge | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep 258 | 6-7-24

Episode Date: June 7, 2024

This episode is a little different because Greg and Nick are busy competing with eachother for the Flying by the Seat of our Points Challenge! If unfamiliar, every year we put together a team travel challenge designed to force us to reach challenging and entertaining goals with our points and miles, and showcase what can be done with these tools. It's a fun way to stretch the limits of points and miles and show you all what that actually looks like. For this year's annual challenge, Stephen and I have given Greg, Nick, and Tim surprise destination assignments for a travel challenge testing our team's last-minute travel booking skills. The first "domestic convergence" destination was revealed on Monday night during a live checkin on YouTube where the contestants learned of a domestic location they'd need to reach by Wednesday 6pm local time, when we had another live checkin to reveal another series of surprise destinations. By the time this challenge wraps up, we'll have had 4 live checkins. For this podcast episode you'll watch and listen to a summary of the first two checkins, the Monday night reveal of our domestic launch point, and the Wednesday night reveal of each contestant's individual international assignments. You'll also hear our contestants review the booking decisions they made to meet their first assignment, and you'll hear stephen and i break down our scoring decisions. This recap will bring you up to speed so you can head over to our YouTube and catch the third live checkin which will have just wrapped up by the time this podcast goes live, and will tell our contestans of their final destination assignment.  Check out this link for more! https://frequentmiler.com/2024-annual-challenge/  

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. We're doing things a little bit differently for this Friday podcast because Greg and Nick are busy competing with each other for the Flying by the Seat of Our Points Challenge, which is going on now. They are in the thick of it. If you're not familiar with the challenge, every year the Frequent Miler team does an annual challenge designed to test our points and miles skills, force us to do challenging things, and we publish it all for our viewers to follow along. For this challenge, we are testing our last-minute overbooking skills

with a series of last-minute travel challenges assigned by Stephen and I, who are acting as judges. Greg, Nick, and Tim have been using their knowledge, points, elite standings, upgrade instruments, anything they've got in their toolkits to try to frugally and impressively reach the destinations that Stephen and I have been assigning for them. By the time this challenge wraps up, we'll have had four live check-ins total. For this podcast episode, you'll watch and listen to a summary of the first two check-ins, the Monday night reveal of our domestic launch point,

and the Wednesday night reveal of each contestant's individual international assignments. This recap will bring you up to speed so you can head over to our YouTube channel and catch the third live check-in, which we'll have just wrapped up by the time this podcast goes live. And that will tell our contestants what their final destination assignment is. You'll definitely want to make sure to visit our Instagram to follow along or go to the blog to see each contestant's individual journal posts. And this podcast should help bring you up to speed as well. Enjoy. This is the first live stream for the Frequent Miler 2024 challenge,

Flying by the Se of our points steven and i will not only be telling you where your assignment destinations are day and a half before you need to be there we'll also be judging what you do once you're there and how you got there so the first place we're sending these guys domestic spot where they'll all meet up so you guys will all be flying to the city and we'll be hoping to book an onward flight as soon as possible as a result you'll be hoping to get in and out of this place as soon as possible Los Angeles LA yes but we've gamified um stage one in three different ways we've already booked a hotel for the three of you the first part of the gamification is that it's going to be a race

to see who can get to the hotel first now that's going to be super easy for Tim because he's going to be a race to see who can get to the hotel first. Now, that's going to be super easy for Tim because he's going to be coming from Seattle, whereas Nick's going to be coming from the other side of the country. I like to have things be fair to everyone. And so we've decided to level the playing field. For your flights to LAX, they are, in theory, not allowed to be scheduled to land before 3pm. You guys can all get into lax on a flight schedule

before 3 p.m but if you do then you get a 30 minute penalty so you're not allowed to actually leave the airport until 3 30 p.m so the person who gets to the hotel first will get their own bed their own bedroom all to themselves the other one will have to share with the other contestant so then you can wake each other up with your snoring before your next international flight and so that way um in theory that's an added incentive to be able to get to the hotel first of all and now carrie has information about the um challenge that you'll have while there so we know you may not have much time in this destination but we still have a small challenge for you uh one way or another, even if all you have time for is a quick Uber Eats, you'll have to eat something while you're there. So your challenge is to pick a meal that represents where you think we'll be sending you to next.

You have to pick a country. You can't be broad. So whoever's country pick is the closest will get three points. Two for the second closest and one for the person who is the furthest. Your main challenge for this destination is to pick a meal that represents where you think you're going next for your international separate divergence destination. Can they make it? If anyone is missing, it's because they didn't make it and they will be losing points. You guys all made it. I wasn't sure. That's, you know, I'm proud of this team. We all actually made it all the way to a domestic location.

We each came from different locations, our own homes, and we're told we had to be here in L.A. by 6 p.m. local time or 9 p.m. Eastern time for this live event where we're going to talk about how we got here. We're going to learn from our judges what scores we got for our trips here. And then probably most exciting, we're going to find out where we're going next congrats to greg for getting the king bed thank you um we would like to start off with a quick recap from each of you about uh how you got there and the decisions you made okay um so i found a united award available with turkish miles to fly from det to, at first I found Detroit to LA. And, but then I found that there was a flight from San Francisco to LA that was scheduled to arrive exactly 3pm today. And so I really wanted to be on that flight. So what I did is I flew into San Francisco

last night. So it was all first class for only 15,000 Turkish miles. And I will get back 7,500 of those miles because of a transfer bonus going on. And I used up my city points that were about to expire so all all big wins um flew first class and um then uh today I flew that that uh flight from San Francisco here um actually on cash it was a really cheap flight that was on United as well so scale of one to ten how confident do you feel um that you're getting that coveted three uh since we're doing rank scoring for flights for value and experience. How confident are you feeling? So we're getting two different scores, right?

One for value, one for experience. Yeah. How confident are you in each category? Yeah, not very. So I'm thinking I'm going to come in second in both. All right. Nick, let's go to you next. Give us your summary of how you got here and then how confident you are on both of those

metrics. All right. I used American Airlines miles to book an economy class award from Albany to Philadelphia to Phoenix to Los Angeles. And I picked that award for a few reasons. One, it was only 13,000 miles. So it was a good deal for getting all the way across the country. And two, I have American Airlines elite status, thanks to playing the loyalty point games or like entirely through

shopping portal stuff. And I looked at those specific segments, and there were lots of seats still available in first class on both the segments from Philadelphia to Phoenix and Phoenix to Los Angeles. So I thought there was at least some shot that maybe I would get a free upgrade. And also because of my late status, I was able to select an exit row at the time of booking. So I was able to select exit row aisle seats on all my flights to have plenty of leg room. So that was nice to be able to have that. There was also food and beverage for purchase on my second flight, my long flight from Philadelphia

to Phoenix. And my Aviator Silver card would give me a rebate statement credit for in-flight food and beverage purchase. So I figured this kind of approximates the domestic first class experience for the economy class price. But then, lo and behold, I did get the upgrade on the long haul flight from Philadelphia to Phoenix. So I did fly up front in domestic first for that, which was nice.

And I got in at 318. The plane actually landed at 312, which was almost spot on with our goal time of three o'clock. I was just a little bit behind Greg and had a longer walk to get to the Uber point. So I ended up here quite a bit behind him. But I landed within like 10 minutes of Greg. So I thought there was hope I was going to hustle up and get here, but he beat me here. All right. And how confident are you for experience and value?

Well, so for value, I'm really confident because I flew the longest of the three of us and almost twice as far as Tim had to fly. And my first class leg alone was about two thirds the length of Greg's entire itinerary. So I feel pretty good about only paying 13,000 miles and getting all the way across the country. But how many miles are you getting rebated? That's true. I'm not getting any rebated. So that's, you know, an argument for the frequent miler. But yeah, I don't know. I feel like I didn't do badly in either. So yeah, maybe I'll take a second place in both

because I didn't have to fly United. We're all shooting for second place. You think I'm first or third? That's what I want to know. All right, Tim, we want to know as the person closest to LA, how were you last? Oh, how are you last to get here? Well, so because I'm so close, I knew that there was going to be a bunch of, well, we had to fly all the way across the country type of marks. And I also actually was really, I figured one of them would do domestic first for 15K through Turkish. And I actually thought one of them would, at least one of them

would do live flat. So I'm a little disappointed, but that's okay. It's okay. I'm not the judge. These are the guys that are the judge. Good thing. Given that, I knew that I had to kind of, I felt like I had to gussy up my trip a bunch. And so part of that is I don't have access to any life flats without going way out of the way. And Stephen said that if I went way out of the way and didn't add something that made it value added, that I would be penalized and thrown into the corner, whatever the loser's corner is. Pepper prison. That one. Pepper prison. So I didn't want to go out of the way so there's i really wanted to get um there's a couple

different products but my favorite first class product that isn't a lie flat is um called the e175 it's a little regional jet that has a one two first class so there's one seat on one side and two on the other and i love that single seat on the side super roomy it only has um uh and it has direct aisle access and a window i was hoping to get that and i also wanted to get two different types of transport because again i knew that um greg and greg and nick would be flying lie flat all the way across for 10,000 miles. And I also didn't want it. And I wanted to get it under 15,000 because I knew that one of that figured one of them would at least be at 15,000. And I had to be the cheapest, which I was the shortest.

So what I ended up doing is I use British Airways Avios to book a nonstop flight from Seattle to Santa Barbara that actually is using that product, exact product that I wanted. Before I booked it, I saw that there was four or five open seats. So I figured that as a 100K, I would get complimentary upgrades pretty quickly. So I bought the ticket, changed the frequent flyer numbers that I put my Alaska number on my British reservation using FinAir. Check out the post if you want to hear about that again. And as soon as I added my number, I was upgraded to premium class. And then sure enough, about an hour later, I was upgraded to first class and got to pick the exact seat that I wanted. So I got the exact seat. So I was really excited because that would get me here

just in time to get the Pacific Surfliner train in business class for 2,000 Amtrak points from Santa Barbara to L.A. Right along the coast. Beautiful ride. The problem is Stephen told me I couldn't do it. By the cable joy. Because I actually booked everything before I got the address of the hotel. And once I got the address of the hotel, I realized that I was going to be about an hour away from the hotel in L.A. rush hour and even taking trains here. I would either get here five minutes ahead if everything worked out all right or five minutes later or more.

And Stephen said there was no grace periods. Grace periods are grace. Grace periods are for people in Pepper's prison. And so I ended up renting a car where there is no grace and I was able to find a one way rental using 950 Hertz points. So I didn't spend any cash on the rental and then turned it into a six hour road trip where I went from Santa Barbara to LA, stopped in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, and Malibu. I had five different regional cuisines that were meant to approximate five different cuisine or country guesses about where we're going next. And then I even had time to stop and pick up cold champagne for the guys here.

Cold, cold and everything. We were hoping for warm, but okay. Last year it was warm and I learned my lesson. Yeah, so basically for these live streams that we're doing throughout the challenge, we have a funeral, wedding, job interview, like other important event kind of rule, whereby they have to be available at their destination at that particular time of the live stream um we're basically deeming the live stream as a non-negotiable so if you were trying to get to like a funeral or something like that you wouldn't be scheduling

your flight to be landing like 10 minutes after um when it's actually due to start or something like that so that's basically how we're regarding live streams is that even though they're not as important as that kind of live event they are an important live event so they have to be there in time for that or else they will be penalized we do have some grace though depending on the situation so if you've deliberately booked something that's going to be getting you in late, then you will lose the points for that particular stage for that kind of travel segment. If you are late because you had booked something with a risky connection, so say you only, like you booked an American flight and you only had 30 minutes to connect in Charlotte or something like that, and you missed

the connection, you'll get ping lights some points but because like you could conceivably have made it it wouldn't be quite as bad as something that was deliberately scheduled late and if you're just incredibly unfortunate like there's an some kind of like plane malfunction or something like that and so um it can't depart from the gate um then um then you won't end up necessarily losing anything or um if you do end up necessarily losing anything. Or if you do end up losing any points, it would just be like maybe minus one point or something because it's circumstances outside of your control

that you can't do anything about, basically. It's time to award your points, right? And tell us, tell you our scoring. So this has been ridiculously hard. I bet. Way, way harder. We weren't going to make it easy on you, hard. I bet. Way, way harder. We weren't going to make it easy on you, Stephen. I was at least hoping that there would be some clearly obvious,

like amazing value booking and like the other people would have stuff that was kind of greatly inferior to that to make it at least easier to decide who was the best and then like maybe just have to duke out between the final two however each of you have put together a fantastic itinerary for where you were coming from and taking into account the challenges you had so this scoring um i don't know if you'll all think it's fair but it's the way that it's worked out. Wait, these guys only want to be second. Remember that. So before you say anything else... So in first,

but I guess sort of second place to earn three points is... Can you all give me a drumroll? Wait, for which category is this? Oh, sorry, this is for the value, actually. Oh, yeah, it's for the value. Light value.

So the winner for this stage is Nick. Reasoning behind that is that 13,000 American Airlines miles and no other costs other than, than what 560 for your taxes and fees coming from the other side of the country for the class of service that you ended up getting and being able to leverage your status it felt like that was deserving it was tough though because arguments couldn't be made for the other two guys no no not really not really nobody wants to hear those arguments

three points all right and the two slot number two is gonna be tim so i will explain this a little bit more tim redeemed 11 000 avios and um for that he got um a first class flight he only had to um spend five dollars sixty cents for taxes and fees too and then the car that he booked he booked that using Hertz points. And so there was no cost out of pocket for that. So his only cost out of pocket today was effectively the gas to be able to drive along the California coast

and the food that he had along the way. And he did that. I was very impressed with how foodly he ended up doing that as someone, as I said in the last live stream, that I'm a bit of a cheapskate. So I appreciated how he got to try, what, five or six different foods for something like 25 bucks. So that was good.

Now you know how you can impress us. Yes. All right. I'm seeing a path here, guys. I'm seeing a path. Yeah. So with Greg only getting one point, it was really tough because it also feels like he should own three points. Because if it was purely on the flight alone, being able to book the Turkish sweet spot for 15,000 miles to fly in first class the entire way and get 7,500 back thousand back that is incredible value and that is deserving

of first place if that was all that he spent however because he flew to san francisco he also had um about almost 130 dollars out of pocket for um the flight from san francisco to lax plus he had to redeem a free category one to four Hyatt three night certificate for his hotel overnight in San Francisco now those still weren't bad options because he can use points to offset the cost of the cash flight plus the certificate was going to be expiring in a few months and he didn't have any other plans for that so it was still a good redemption but overall when taking into account the value of how much the others had redeemed and how much he redeemed it just felt like he had spent a bit more and so that's why he ended up

because he did basically yeah so if he had just booked that if he had just booked that direct flight um into lax then i think he would have earned the three points for that um however If he had just booked that direct flight into LAX, then I think he would have earned the three points for that. However, I did appreciate the game day element. Nick would have beat me to the hotel though, right? Right? That's true. He values the king bed.

So now experience. Travel experience. This was another really tricky one. So I was discussing it with Carrie and also discussed it with my wife. And it was interesting because me and Shay had kind of different ideas as to who did the best. And this is a much more subjective kind of thing because it's more based on how we would prefer to travel. Because ultimately, the travel experience in terms of the flights themselves, it wasn't actually too there wasn't too much difference between you all because um greg and tim both flew in first class all of the way nick got first class most of the way and

was also in main cabin or um in an eye in a exit row seat for much of the way and so the actual experience on the flight itself there wasn't too much between them so it's kind of everything else that went into this as to how this was ended up how i ended up scoring it so i'm giving the three points to greg and that may seem a little bit weird but but I'm someone who likes to stress out of travel. If I have to book a positioning flight in an ideal world, I'd be getting there the night before. So I don't have to worry the next day about whether or not I'm going to be getting there and things like that. So being able to get at least most of the way. So if something terrible had happened, there would have been multiple ways he could have gone from San Francisco to L.A. today.

So even though he wasn't actually in L.A., it also meant that he had a good night's rest overnight at the High Regency, got to enjoy the lounge there. He also got to go and do the podcast in person. And overall, his itinerary was the one that I personally would have preferred and it just seemed kind of like the most relaxed kind of the most productive and things like that so that's why he earned the three points spending more is more comfortable and it's kind of funny because normally I would value like lower cost above comfort necessarily, but in this case it would actually be the other way around. And for second place, that is going to be Tim. If we had known that, I don't know if we would have called that a good experience.

Too late. Rick essentially spent called that a good experience. Too late. Rick essentially spent time in a Turkish prison. Tim, so Tim, you earn one bonus point for having a travel day with like a little bit of flair. So we kind of like took it into account a little bit with the whole experience. But being able to rent a Malibu and driving into Malibu, we liked how you did that. And so especially because you were at a bit of a disadvantage coming from Seattle, that did kind of limit how much, how much kind of like creativity and flow.

So yeah, we were pleased with what you did. So that earned a bonus point. We like puns. Yes. and if you're not alone you earn a bonus point too nick oh yes you get one for having kind of the most straightforward itinerary like i said earlier that but looking something that people would be much more likely to book out of the three different options. Because I think if someone had to get somewhere last minute, especially from the other side of the country, yours is the kind of itinerary. We do like fairness over here. I think that covers our bonus points. Yep. So that's one point ahead right now.

Our summaries are now Greg at six points, Nick at five, and Tim at five. But there's still more bonus points that could be had because you guys had a mini challenge. You had to pick a meal that you thought represented the country you think that you will be going to next. Stephen's going to do some calculation here. And while he's doing that, Greg, share what your meal item was and what your official country guest is. All right. Can I give some explanation? Yeah. You're the boss. You can do whatever you want. So I started off. There we go. I actually started off thinking we were definitely going to Asia since we were positioning to the West Coast beforehand. And I was thinking that you might send me to Singapore, but I'm not going to get into why that. But anyway, then I realized that our 2 p.m. Eastern time check-in on Friday would be the middle of the night in Asia.

And I don't think you guys would do that to us. So I started thinking more about like, okay, so it's more likely that it's going to be Europe or Africa or the Middle East where 2 p.m. Eastern time will be 9, 10, maybe 11 p.m. depending on how far East you go. Um, so, so I changed my guests from Singapore to, at first I was thinking Dublin, but I mean like Ireland, but then I thought, well, if I'm going to guess Ireland and I met, and we're right about Europe, but I, I don't want to be that far West because it, you know, so, uh, so then I was thinking, all right. Um, I know you guys are trying to pick

a country we haven't been to. I've never been to Greece. And so, uh, Greece has some advantages, uh, which is if middle East is correct, it's not. It's closer, a lot closer than some other places in Europe. And if if northern Africa is correct, again, it's closer than other places. So anyway, Greece is my answer. And so I got a Greek euro. All right. Tim, what is your official guess? You try. We saw a bunch of stuff that you tried. So what was your official guess? Let me say that my biggest consideration was where

we're at and like Greg, the meeting point, which to your guys' credit, you had to announce it ahead of time. So we knew that it had to be 2 p.m. So today I've already gone through three things. I tried some tacos that were representative of Mexico that would have been a great option. If we were going to go to Mexico, you guys would have made it later. I had empanadas from Argentina. If you guys were sending us to South America, I think we would have had it later. So I think that you guys either positioned us to LA to make it more difficult to fly to Europe as opposed to putting it on the East Coast where there's a bazillion things in it.

And to give Greg and Nick some appreciation for what I go through on a yearly basis, trying to struggle to scratch out business class awards in the West Coast. You manage very well. Or I think you're actually sending us in different directions. That's what I think either way. Now, I think we're probably all going to Europe,

but I'm kind of confused. So I did actually, before I poured a drink before we started, and it's a drink made with russian vodka i think it's water looks like you need evidence oh all right all right and now russia now we joked around about this that russia would be probably the best gameplay choice because it's big. It crosses both things. I would have a little coverage in Asia, Middle East and Europe. But, you know, that feels a little like cheating. And I don't really want to go to it. What I really want it to be is South Asia, Southeast Asia.

The problem is. Can I interrupt just one second? Did we explain that the winner of of this gets is based on how close you are and that's why that's why tim was saying that right yeah yeah yeah because and it's right border because russia borders all these different countries so you'd be closer right so i was thinking well i don't but but that bill's kind of cheating my other thing i got an italian sandwich i don't i don't think you're going to send me to Italy. I've already been there.

But then I realized I opened up this bag of seaweed snacks too. As one does. They're actually from Thailand. So I feel like this is fate. I've never been to Thailand. I really want to go to Thailand. You've never been to Thailand? Wow.

So I'm going gonna go with my heart what time is it not with my head what time is 2 p.m eastern late midnight yeah um he's calculating i tell him you're not going to thailand all right so nick uh okay so i started out thinking asia also mostly actually because i thought that that would be what would appeal to Carrie and Stephen sending us to Asia. And I actually originally thought something like Cambodia or Laos, but those countries require a visa. And I didn't think you'd send us somewhere that requires a visa. So I narrowed it down to Nepal, Malaysia, and Indonesia for a number of reasons. And then we had some controversy the other night over how we were going to determine the distance. When you pick your food, like we're saying here, the person who picks the food that is

closest geographically to the country they're going is going to win this segment here. And so Tim had asked about China, or we talked about Russia, because they border lots of different things. And so there were different solutions to that problem. Okay, so should we measure from the center of the country you pick? Should we measure from the capital city to capital city? And in the end, you guys said that we're going to measure from the closest border with the country that you pick. And that told me that the countries you're sending us to can't possibly border a lot of different places. So I didn't think, I thought that that must mean you're not going to want to, like, if somebody picks China, you're not going to give them all credit for all the different places, right? I figured we're going to like islands or countries that are more separate.

So I had thought Indonesia and I ordered food from Indonesia that's going to be here in a few minutes. But then I realized exactly what Greg is saying. The timing didn't make any sense. It's got to be East. I thought about nairobi kenya but i think award availability there would be tough so in the end i went to cvs and i nailed it you guys are sending me to sweden the land of sweden why did you pick sweden in particular uh oh because i have some of the fish that's a good reason uh have... Because of the fish? That's a good reason. No, so in Europe, that's a good question. I should explain that. In Europe, there aren't very many countries

that I haven't been to. There's some, but there's not a ton of them. And out of the ones that I haven't been to, I looked around, like Albania, for instance, is one I know Kerry likes, and I'd be interested in going. But there's no Hyatts, there's no IHGs, there's no Hiltons in Albania.

And so I went through countries like that, Serbia and Albania and blah, blah, blah. One after another that didn't have any interesting looking award options or any at all that I could find at first glance. And Sweden's got a bunch of different options where I could redeem points to good value. I wrote recently about using Finnair obvious for Nordic hotels. So that's why I'm picking Sweden. Okay. for uh for nordic hotels so uh so that's right i'm picking sweden i think okay so before we announce where you're going there's two very quick things to cover first is that if we had calculated this based on your initial guesses tim would uh sorry nick would have been the furthest

away nick and uh sorry greg and tim would have been closer than him and their guesses were only 13 miles different before. And this is the guesses you didn't publish. They privately gave us guesses ahead of time that were supposed to be their final.

Not that you were only 13 miles away from the country you guessed. The total distance between um the two countries each of you guessed was only a difference of 13 miles and tim would have won the three points for being the closest of all three guys however you've all changed your country since and so the number of points that you'll each earn has all changed as well and then the other thing just before carrie announces where you're going to be going we change things up ever so slightly in that when we've all been discussing this before we said that like we'd be giving you

a city that you'd be flying to next we're not going to be giving you each a city to fly to next that's confusing we're going to be giving you a country country okay so basically that gives you a little bit more flexibility because yeah all of the countries we're giving you the cities in them that you might want to book might have like one or two or three good options or something like that but then it might be that you would have preferred like a better redemption option in a different city or something like that. So we figured we'll give you guys a little bit of flexibility to be able to book the best possible thing to your liking.

And so can I just say now, I'm feeling really good about changing my guest from Singapore. All right. So we're going to start with Greg. Greg, you may not own a Tesla, but you work with a Nick. Your destination is the country where Nikola Tesla is from. It wasn't even this country at the time, but it's what this country is now. Croatia. Correct. That's right. Greg is going to Croatia. Three challenges. One, eat something that either still has eyeballs, still has tentacles, or both.

Your second challenge. There are many ways to enjoy the water in Croatia. Show us one of them. And three, teach us what makes Croatia's black risotto black. Tim, you filled your day with your own personal favorites, but you'll be going to a country that's near and dear to my heart, as it's where we Yoders originate. Sweden!

Sweden. No, it's Finland. Okay, this country is notoriously expensive. Can you eat something authentic for under $20? It's not Norway, so is it Finland? No. Second challenge. Get higher than the hills so you can see if they're really alive

no and three we know you like a nice glass of wine but see if you can find this drink which originated here absent Switzerland Nick we picked a place you've never been before, but Tim has been there very, very recently. So I'm going to guess it's got to be Morocco. Morocco. You got it. And here are your challenges.

Find an authentic Moroccan dish served in a tagine. You might have to help my pronunciation. Two, you impressed your kids by visiting Santa. Can you impress them by doing something that convinces them you're Indiana Jones? Can you do what we failed to do in Macau and find a place to enjoy some live music? Very recently, Nick made a comment saying, I just don't want to go to Europe. And so we changed it. Now we're down to announcing whose guesses

were closest, and therefore they award the mini-challenge. Greg was the closest, followed by Nick, and then lastly Tim. So... Yeah, we'll give Greg three points, Nick two, and Tim one. Alright, so let me... One ahead of you

there, Tim. Got my second place back. Whereas if you'd gone with your original guesses, Tim would have got three points, Greg would have got two, and Nick would have got one. So every single one of you has a different number of points than you would have actually ended up with. CBS ended up being...

CBS was huge. Which I don't like, by the way. So now our new point total, based on that bonus round, is Greg with nine, Nick with seven, and Tim with six. Oh, we got some catching up. Well, I was just going to say, so now these guys, I'm assuming, are going to be trying to do some award booking as soon as possible because it's, what, 7 o'clock where you guys are?

Or about to be 7 o'clock p.m. And so in theory theory there's a chance they might be able to get a last minute flight out tonight over to europe or morocco and so it'll be interesting to see what they end up coming up with all right cool well bye everybody out of the pond can't wait to see you on friday see you on friday everyone. Now that you've listened to both of these recaps, you should be ready to go to our YouTube channel and check out the live check-in that just wrapped up and find out where all our contestants have to meet

for their final international destination. Thanks for catching up and tune in again next week for another normal episode of Frequent Mile Around the Air.