Frequent Miler on the Air - Earning 300K miles, a great new sweet spot, dirt cheap miles, and more

Episode Date: September 14, 2019

Plans for how to earn hundreds of thousands of miles, a hot sweet spot to come, the miles we'd buy speculatively, and more.

episode of Frequent Miler on the Air. I am Greg, the Frequent Miler, and I'm here with Nicholas Reyes, my right-hand man. That's me. That's him. So Nick has been, as most viewers and listeners know, has been traveling quite a bit. We last ran into him in Bora Bora, and recently, some of us saw him in California. And he's been very slowly moving east. Not even close to his home town yet. So where are you now?

Well, today I'm in beautiful South Lake Tahoe, California. So the southern kind of tip of Lake Tahoe, right near the state line with Nevada. Really beautiful place here. So I ended up going with an Airbnb, even though there are a couple of Marriott properties. I didn't really want to spend the 50,000 points a night. I knew we would be outside doing things outdoors all day. It was gorgeous. We took the lift up to the top of Heavenly Mountain today. Beautiful view. And they have a really cool roller coaster at the top. It's like a manual roller coaster where you push the levers on the sides forward to just kind of like let it go, let it rip. And then you pull them back for brakes to slow down. So you get a little

individual roller coaster car. So that was a lot of fun. It sounds like an alpine slide to me. They don't call it that there? Or is it different from that? I guess I don't know what an alpine slide is. This is on like a roller coaster track. So it looks like a roller coaster. Oh, like an actual like elevated track? Yeah, so it's at the top of the mountain. You have to take the lift up to like

9,000 feet or something and then it goes up from there. So it takes you up like a roller coaster does and then around you don't go upside down, but you go around on what looks like a traditional roller coaster track okay all right so that does sound different yeah the alpine slides that i know are are uh usually tracks that are um just laid down a mountain so you go up to the top and you get in a little car like thing that you control yourself the brakes and you pull back for the brake and forward to let it go freely. And you just careen down the mountain around curves and everything.

I see. Similar idea. This had like corkscrews and stuff like that, though, too. Well, not corkscrews. I guess that'd be sideways. This had a little spinny parts. We're clearly experts in this area. Well, one thing I realized that I think I did wrong or at least didn't do right was I paid with my city prestige card because in the past you get two points per dollar for entertainment. Right. Right. But I think that ended, didn't it?

I think so. Probably September 1st. Yeah. I think so. I realized that after I paid for it. You're out about 30 points or so. Yeah, I think so. I realized that after I paid for it. You're out about 30 points or so. Oh, I know. Can't leave him on the table.

I think he'll be all right. Probably. We'll find a way to pick those back up at Simon, I guess, on my next stop. There you go. But speaking of picking up a lot of points, you wrote some posts this week about people who are new to the game, who are just kind of getting started out with credit cards and miles and points and how they might be able to earn a ton of points, right? I mean, can you walk us through that? posts like this many many times over the years and and i i kept giving up every time because uh my posts would would be extremely complicated and scattered because they would say things like well if you're in this situation then do this but if you're in this situation do that and oh wait if you don't fly southwest and do this other thing and so uh situational this game right it's completely

situational yeah and and that's why you, people like to actually come to us or others who know these things and actually ask, well, what card should I get? But anyway, the so what I finally did is I said, all right, let me just, you know, take an example person, basically imagine a person just starting out, what should they do? And I mainly focused on, there are certain opportunities that once you start signing up for credit cards, you're not going to be able to have those opportunities again if you don't take advantage of them now. And so I try to focus on those first more than trying to grab the biggest signup bonuses right away because some of the bigger signup, uh, signup bonuses, um, you could still get later. Uh, but the, you know, for certain cards, you have to get them now before you have too many and won't be eligible again. So I focused on that. So I have one post on for

the single individual who won't sign up for business cards, don't have a business and doesn't want to treat their, you know, aspiring authorship or whatever as a business. And then I wrote a post on the. Which totally is a business, right? I mean, if you are a great American novel, I mean, that that's a business, right? I mean, if you are a great American novel, I mean, that's a business, right? Exactly. Exactly. I mean, that's why I said, I mean, almost everybody probably really does have a business even if they don't realize it. But at the same time, I know lots of people who understand that, but still don't feel comfortable signing up for business cards and that's fine. So here's a plan to get you started. And then I did another one for an individual with a business. And here's a plan to get you started.

And then I wrapped up with a couple. So two people doing this together, one with a business, one without. Now, I could, of course, do two more, a couple both without businesses and a couple with businesses. But I think I'm going to stop there for now. And we'll see how that goes. And sign up offers and situations change all the time. So I picture revisiting this every, you know, maybe every three months or so. Right. Because the landscape changes, the offers change. And so a card that may not have been appealing before might suddenly become hugely appealing or of course obviously there are new cards introduced so it does change but it's great to have a resource i think like

this to point your friends who are new to the game to also because i have friends and family members sometimes who ask me about this stuff and like you were explaining before it can be difficult to create an exact plan if somebody doesn't have any kind of roadmap in mind. And I felt like these posts really laid out a roadmap nicely in a way that I could point someone who's new to read those and then say, okay, read those, then we can talk more about it. Because that at least gives them a baseline of, this is a decent plan, and then we can kind of tweak it and fine tune it to fit their needs. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's what I hope people will do. I hope they'll realize, you know, I think for some people they could just follow it as is, but I think

for most people, a little bit of tweaking probably does make sense. Did it surprise you how many miles and points people would get to within a year or, you know Or have you been doing this long enough that you just thought, well, yeah, that sounds about right? What did you think about that? Honestly, it sounded about right to me. I might have guessed actually a little bit more, but I wanted to stick with certain parameters

about how much I was guessing they could spend each month and so on. So, yeah. It's still a lot of points. It is. It's a lot of points. I mean, really, you look at those numbers of points and you think you could more or less get just about anywhere in the world you want and back in a pretty comfortable trip just following one of those roadmaps for a year,

which I think is one of the things that makes this hobby pretty amazing. It's pretty low hanging fruit to get something that's decently meaningful in the end. So it really is. So I thought those were great resources. Yeah. And a lot of the points that you'd be earning would be ultimate rewards points, which we know might not be as valuable as city points as we thought before, but they're extremely valuable for a lot of things. And so it's a good solid plan. And almost no matter what you need to do with what your goals are, you could probably figure out a good way to

use those points to get there. Right. And with a couple playing in two-player mode for the people out there who are paired up in one way or another, it just seems like the possibilities are pretty vast, especially with the number of chase cards out there and the ones you included, I thought. Also, I was really glad to see the Capital One Venture Card included in the plans for the first year, because I think the Venture Card just doesn't get enough attention. Honestly, I've been using it for my Everywhere Else card quite a bit, and I'm pretty encouraged with the changes they've made. And I definitely think that for someone who's new, you're going to want to go after that relatively early because Capital One's pretty notorious

for being difficult to gain approval with after you've been opening cards for a long time. I'm just lucky that I had that venture card from back in the beginning and I never got rid of it. So I was glad to see that that made its way in. Right. Yeah, exactly. And it's not only good to have in as a beginner card because it's harder to get later, but also because it's truly probably one of the easiest cards to get good value from.

You're getting the two, quote, miles per dollar, which we think of as points. But the truth is that so people used to using their credit card to pay for travel can keep doing that and then erase those travel charges with the points. So as you know, and so that's a really simple way of getting value from the card. And then when you get more advanced, you can transfer points to partners and potentially get even more value. So... Right. It's a great gateway drug, so to speak, to the hobby. And also good because there are a lot of things that you run into when you travel that aren't things you can pay for with airline miles or with hotel points. There are plenty of other things, cruises and ferries and buses and trains and things like that, that you may be able to use your venture points for. Right. Exactly. So let's switch gears a little bit. So yeah, so I wrote those. You wrote a couple posts about Bora Bora, and one of them was about the Conrad Bora Bora, the Conrad comma. So in that post, you talked about

the fact that you got special treatment at the Conrad, not because you're a blogger, but because your son is named after the Conrad chain. Do you want to tell that story briefly? And then I have a question for you about that. All right. So the short version of the story is that my wife and I had stayed at some great Conrad properties over the years before we had our son, and we'd collected the stuffed animals. A lot of them give you a little stuffed animals. So we had those up on a shelf somewhere collecting dust. And when we found out we were having a baby, we eventually found out we were having a boy. By mistake, the ultrasound tech just slipped up and told us. So we knew it was going to be a boy and we had to come up with a name.

And man, we couldn't agree on anything. She kept suggesting names. I kept suggesting names. We couldn't find anything we agreed on. So one day I was just joking. And I said, well, you know, if we name him Conrad, we'll have a personalized set of stuffed animals up there on the shelf for him. He'll be born right into his own set of stuffed animals. And, you know, we laughed about it and continued to joke. And, you know, I just kept referring to him as Conrad before he was born to the point where it just kind of became natural.

And at least a few times my wife looked at me and she's like, are we really going to name him Conrad? And I was like, well, I don't know, but we don't have anything else to refer to him as right now. So it just continued. And then eventually when he was born, we just couldn't imagine naming him anything else. So he got the name Conrad. So it is after the Conrads because we have the stuffed animals. And so going to the Conrad Bora Bora, I sent him an email and told him that story kind of relayed the fact that he was named after the chain because we've had lots of great stays there. And they went above and beyond and really gave us a really cool welcome for him. And everybody knew his name. Everybody said hi to him.

Everywhere we went, people knew it was Conrad. So it was kind of funny because it was, A, my first time being primarily known as Conrad's dad instead of as me, and B, because we definitely felt like we got special treatment, and it definitely felt like it had nothing to do with us. It was just everybody knew he was... So just to save you and your wife time for the next kid, if you have another kid, its name is obviously going to be St. Regis. Well, you know, Regis doesn't sound bad, does it? Regis Reyes? I mean, that's got a nice ring to it, doesn't it? I mean, it sounds a little regal, you know, Reyes. I think the second child will have some bragging rights, too. It's got to at least be a middle name, right? I think Regis fits in there.

There you go. We do have a little turtle that says I think Regis fits in there. So there you go. We do have a little turtle that says St. Regis now because the butler gave us that over at the St. Regis. So I guess that could be a brother. We'll see. I guess it depends whether we have a boy or a girl. So let me ask you something. I really don't know the answer to this. You originally, when you started writing about your son on this blog, you, you, you wrote about him, you called him baby Ray. Um, you weren't trying to keep some anonymity for him. Um, but you changed your mind. Um, I think you said something about you. You didn't feel like you could tell the story of the review properly, but there has to be more to it. What,

what, what was your thought process? How did you, why did you decide that one blog post is worth throwing your son to the wall? Throwing his email into the wall. Well, you know, first of all, I'm, I'm proud of my son. And, and so people knowing his name to me is not necessarily a bad thing. But I guess just out of an abundance of caution, I felt like it made sense to keep him anonymous, kind of following the lead of other bloggers, to be honest. There are plenty of other parent bloggers out there. And I've noticed that most of them kept their children's names to themselves. So I kind of followed the lead there. But my wife and I talked about it quite a bit. And we really felt like in this case, it definitely made a huge

difference in the experience we had at the hotel. And I thought it was a good example that shows, A, how a hotel can really go above and beyond what you expect. And I think that that's one of the things I've come to enjoy out of using miles and points that we stay at some really nice places where they do sometimes surprise you with something like that. And, and B, I felt like I knew I was going to be pretty complimentary about the St. Regis in comparison to the Conrad.

And I didn't mean to knock on the Conrad a, they gave us a fantastic welcome and B the property is a great place, but I felt like it was going to come across unfair if I didn't show how well they had done. And additionally, on top of that, I thought it was kind of funny because readers do sometimes wonder, do we get special treatment because of who we are? And truthfully, I wouldn't know if the property is Google who I am and found that out ahead of time. But I thought this one was kind of funny because we definitely got the special treatment, but I really don't think it had anything to do with me. So, no, we talked about it.

My wife and I talked about it quite a bit, whether or not we should do it. And I think we said, well, what are the reasons not to? And we just didn't feel like they outweighed the reasons to go ahead and do it for this post. I don't really anticipate writing about him and using his name much in the future. I'll probably go back to Baby Ray or Ray just because I feel like it's not pertinent to the story most of the time, his name. But in this case, I thought it really was. I thought it was something, a story that was worth telling, that was fun, that made a difference to us. And I mentioned that thing that the housekeeping team made for him in the shape of an eagle, Ray, like a pillow. Super cool. Yeah, it was. was it was really cool and it was really nicely presented my wife teared up a

little bit to be honest because it was really cute and it was you know something that they had made rather than just something they had found in the gift shop so that was kind of a cool memory a cool piece of it for us so i thought that was something worth telling people about. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree. I was just curious about that. Yeah. So, so, um, I guess moving on from that, so we've had a couple of interesting deals this week. Uh, uh, and, uh, well, actually not a deal. This one is a new sweet spot. It'll become a pretty good deal. Yeah, incredible deal. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that? Well, Royal Air Morocco announced that they're going to start flying to Beijing in 2020. So they're going to fly from Casablanca in Morocco to Beijing. And that's a pretty big deal for a couple of reasons. Number one, it'll be their longest flight

and number two, the nice thing about it is that Royal Air Maroc, well, you know what, let's give three things. Number two, Royal Air Maroc is expected to, or maybe they already announced that they're joining One World next year. So theoretically that'll open up another flight you can book with American Airlines miles or maybe Asia miles or some other one world carrier could potentially create a sweet spot there. But actually, come to think of it, I have to check it. I don't know. Do you know where American Airlines classifies Morocco? Is that classified as Africa or Middle East?

Do you know? I don't know off the top of my head now. Ah, that'll actually be interesting. I'm going to have to look that up because there is a sweet spot from the Middle East to Asia One with American Airlines miles. First class is 50,000 miles. And I think business class is 40,000. So you can fly, I know, for example,

from Egypt to Tokyo on Etihad in first class for 50K or in business for 40. So I wonder if that actually might end up being an even sweeter spot if Morocco happens to be, it's kind of a stretch, but- You're getting off track. Anyway, we are getting off track. You're right.

So why is it a big deal? Because of course you can book Royal Air Morocco flights with Etihad gas miles and Etihad gas charges 44,000 miles. One way in business class for any itinerary of 2000 miles well 2001 miles or more so that means so of course so so that means you can go all the way from the u.s to beijing via morocco right all right in business class for 44 000 miles and and is is the US, what's their furthest west airport? Do you know? To my knowledge, they're all East Coast. So they fly to New York City, Miami, DC, and Boston.

Those are the four gateways that I know of for sure. I'm not sure if they've added anything else. So I think it's all East Coast cities. And you would have to book your positioning flight separately because Etihad Guest maintains a separate chart for every partner. So when you're booking an award on Royal Air Maroc, you can't add a segment on American Airlines or anything like that, even though American is also an Etihad partner. So it'll just be Royal Air Morocco flights, but still incredible value, 44,000 miles one way in business class all the way to Asia. And they supposedly do allow a stopover, so you should be able to book it with a stopover in Morocco on the way. Right, right. And then you could use your Hyatt points to get that Hyatt in Morocco that has a premium

suite that has like three bedrooms and a butler for, I don't remember, 34,000 points or something like that. It wasn't very much. It was pretty low. Do you remember where that was in Morocco? I think it was... No. I thought it was in Casablanca.

I'm not up on my... Maybe. Yeah. I think it was. Maybe Blanca. I'm not up on my. Oh, yeah, maybe. Yeah, I think it was. Maybe it's not. But at any rate, yeah, I mean, that'd be a great opportunity to take advantage of that premium Hyatt suite suite spot that Greg wrote about. And the nice thing about it being an Etihad guest suite spot is Etihad has so many transfer part. Well, I should say Etihad is a transfer partner of so many different programs. Right, right. I should say Etihad is a transfer partner of so many different programs.

Right, right. So you don't have to have Etihad points already in order to do this. You just need your city points or your Capital One or Amex. Is that right? Yep, that's right. And so you start with any of those points, transfer to Etihad. Well, after you make sure that the word is bookable. Of course. And then you can book the flight using Etihad's mileage program,

even though you're going to be flying Royal Air Maroc. Right. And you'll have to call Etihad guests to do that. You can't do it online. We have a sweet spot post about flying to three different regions in business class for 44,000 miles. I'll include a link to that when I

write the week in review post tomorrow morning, Saturday morning, where we'll post this video. I'll include a link to that sweet spot as well. But yeah, I mean, that's a huge deal because they're transfer partners with so many people. So really easy to put together the miles for an award. You do have to call, but you can check for availability online. You'll need to sign up for a Safar Flyer account, I think is what it's called, at the Royal Air Maroc website. That's their frequent flyer program. Even though you're not using Royal Air Maroc miles, you have to sign up for an account and look for award availability. And if you see it, don't pay attention to their prices for the award availability because you're going to pay the Etihad guest price. You're just looking to make sure there are available seats.

And if there are, you can call up Etihad guest and you should be able to book them. And again, that's 44K in business. I believe economy class is 22K, which is also a great deal if you like stretching the value of your points even further. But at 4444K, I mean, we're talking $11K in restaurant and grocery store or US supermarket spend on the Amex Gold Card. That's a pretty nice sweet spot for earning enough miles for business class all the way to China. It sure is. And so speaking of great deals, though, a couple of days ago, or was it just yesterday? It was just yesterday. Avianca Life Miles had a deal for booking hotels through their portal or something. Is that right? That's right. And now I was busy like this whole time that this was going

on and didn't have a chance to jump on this. But you posted that it was possible to kind of indirectly, I think, buy miles for less than one cent each. Now, personally, given a chance to buy life miles for less than one cent each, I'm a buyer even without a plan. What about you? Did you jump on this? I'm surprised to hear that. A buyer without a plan. Without a plan. Yeah. Yeah. So why? Why would you be a buyer without a... Before we talk about whether or not I did it and why, why would you buy life miles under a cent each, even if you don't have a plan to use them? What are some of the things you'd have in mind? Why would you want them? Well, so Lufthansa First Class, for example, they have lower award prices to Europe than United does.

And that's significant because they're the two Star Alliance partners of Lufthansa that don't charge fuel surcharges. So Lufthansa, with almost any other airline miles that you use to book them, it's going to charge very, very high fuel surcharges. lifemiles um you can uh you can fly to europe for um i don't remember off the top of my head but let's say 80 some k one way uh first class so not business class first class first um no fuel surcharges uh and then if you tack on a economy flight at the end going beyond where you actually want to go you can actually make it a lot cheaper now i don't know if you want to mess around with lifthansa doing drop segments and all that but it certainly is possible to do um and as you know i i'd say if i can cut in sorry i'd say i'd almost rather do it in the opposite direction then you get to use the lifthansa

first class terminal in Frankfurt and get yourself a little ducky or something that people talk about. I've never flown Lufthansa first class, so I don't know. But then it also would be really easy to tack on a long United segment within the United States to drop that price, right? Oh, that's true. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure it'd be real easy. So that's when it gets into having to call or email LifeMiles to get them to string together the award you want, because the online tool is not very good at getting you the award you want if there's any complexity to it at all. So, um, and, and just a hint tip, because we're, we're on the topic of, of using life miles to book Lufthansa. One tip is, um, they'll show more award space. If you on the first screen, say you want to, to search just Lufthansa. If you search for, uh, smart, smart search, uh, it's not going to show you all the, all the same options. So that's a little tip there.

Which is a great tip. Greg mentioned that to me separately not that long ago. And I said, oh, I didn't even realize that that would improve the search results by narrowing it down to the airline you're looking for. So that's a great tip in my opinion. So yeah, I didn't buy these. I can see why you would buy them. And buying them for first class is certainly a good use for them. I also find them really useful for short, expensive, regional-type flights within the United States. Because if you're flying within one region, it's 7,500 miles and $15 now.

They've reduced the fees on the booking fee. So $15 for the booking fee within the United States, at least on the itineraries I've tried. And then sometimes it prices out even less. Like there are some that I think price as low as 3,500 miles. Just last week, I was flying from San Luis Obispo in California to San Francisco. Cash tickets at the time were like 300 bucks one way, but it was 6,500 life miles and $15. So if you're buying them for a penny each, that's not a bad deal. Now, of course, if it was much more expensive than that, I guess I'd drive from San Luis Obispo to San Francisco.

But the point is that you can certainly save some money sometimes. And sorry about the noise there. One thing I like about using LifeMiles is that that price is constant, whether it's a direct flight or with a connection. I fly out of Albany, New York quite a bit, so I always have to connect. But still going up and down most of the East Coast, I can connect and still pay 7,500 miles and 15 bucks, no close in booking fees. So yeah, I agree. I think it probably is worth buying them. On the flip side, I look at it and I say, well, I'm able to generate membership rewards points at a pretty decent price right now. So I don't get super excited about opportunities to buy miles all the time. In this case, I almost feel like I should have. I didn't. I dragged my feet a bunch.

I kept trying to find hotels that worked. And really, the key with this deal was, and it has been this way each time this has come around. Life Miles has run this promo a few times. Of course, it was one day only this week. I'm sure it'll come back again at some point this fall. And it'll be one day, like eight hours. So you got to be signed up for our emails and ready to jump on it when it happens. But the key to finding them is you have to sort them by mileage payout. And the ones that offer the best deal are always super overpriced or at least almost always super overpriced for the hotel. So you gotta really look at it as though you're buying the miles and getting a free hotel stay. Like I know one of the options that a reader sent us

was for like a roadway in for like $500 for a night at a roadway in. I have to imagine you could have found that roadway in cheaper somewhere else. But when you kick in 60,000 life miles with it, then suddenly it might be worth 514. Right. So I actually get why you didn't have any hotel stays that you needed where it would be worth it to sort of, like you said, get the night for free because you're getting so many miles that it's like a full rebate. Yeah. In my case, the places where I knew I needed hotels in the coming weeks and months, it just didn't work out to be enough of a payout. It was a much smaller rebate than what I wanted. So believe me, though, I kept running searches

and looking at different things. And I still even kind of regret the fact that I didn't book any of them. And I didn't book them last time either. The next time this comes around, though, I probably have to because it's just too good of a deal to pass up when you're able to get the miles and the hotel stay. And I think it's a particularly good deal if you need a hotel room in an expensive city where you are going to have to spend a bunch of money anyway. Like, for example, I'm in Reno right now, I mean, in Tahoe right now, South Lake Tahoe. And so if I wanted to spend $1,000 on my hotel for two nights, then I could come out with a decent-ish chunk of miles. But I also had plenty of cheap Airbnb options here. If I was

looking at New York City for a weekend or San Francisco or something where it's going to cost me that much no matter where I stay kind of a thing, then I would have been probably faster to book it. So I didn't this time, but I'm going to watch out for it again, keep an eye on my email. And I suggest that readers do the same because I think LifeMiles are worth it. Now, one question people often ask me is, am I worried about LifeMiles collapsing, going out of business, the miles becoming worthless? And I've answered that a number of times myself, but I haven't asked you. So what do you think? Is it okay to buy LifeMiles? Is it too risky? Are you worried they're going to collapse? You do you think? Is it okay to buy LifeMiles? Is it too risky? Are you worried they're going to collapse? You said you think you'd be a buyer at one cent or under one cent, but is that a concern? Well, I don't think of myself as an expert in this,

but my understanding is that the Avianca entities that were in financial trouble were not the same thing as what the Avianca Life Miles program is. So I don't really think that the fact that we saw Avianca in the news as having problems is really anything to do with whether or not the program we're talking about is really is really going to, um, stay in business or not. That doesn't mean they're not in financial trouble, but it just doesn't tell us really anything one way or another. And so I, I don't have any reason to worry about them. I guess I should put it that way. And more or less than any other currency you collect. Exactly. Exactly. But, but it is a good point. You don't want to hoard too many miles just for the sake of it if you don't think you're going to use them uh because they could collapse but even more likely uh the uh sweet spots might go away they might devalue might raise award prices across the board things like that um so so that's that's good now did you think about trying to find a place during your 40K to far away adventure where you could not only have a

night stay, but earn enough miles from that stay to go even further than you had originally planned. I sure did think about it. I definitely did. The problem is that the opportunities to earn enough miles to do anything with require you to overpay for the hotel stay and our budget is pretty tight. So if we had a bigger budget, then that definitely would have been no doubt part of my strategy. And I think should have then also been a part of your strategy and Steven's as well, because certainly I think that could be useful. You're killing two birds with one stone, but my budget for hotel is like you know fifteen dollars a night kind of a thing and oh big spender that's way more maybe i'll go to 20 way more so how are you getting stays for even less

who knows now we'll find out soon now so i i yeah i couldn't make it work for that but i certainly did think about it because uh that would be helpful a few extra miles wouldn't hurt anybody so yeah exactly so hey uh last week i introduced a new uh sort of pop quiz to to our to our talks the idea that that we would have a pop quiz so we're gonna take turns right so i'll give you a pop quiz do you have one for me now it's now i have a pop quiz so we're gonna take turns right so i'll give you a pop quiz do you have one for me now it's now i have a pop quiz for greg now this is one that i didn't research i did off the top of my head so to speak earlier but hopefully hopefully it'll work out so my pop quiz is this i'm thinking of three low-cost carriers that can be booked with traditional airline miles. Now, I'm not talking

about using Chase Sapphire Reserve points to book something at one and a half cents, but I know of at least three airlines where you can use a traditional airline mileage currency to book a low-cost carrier. Can you name two of the three? Two of the three low-cost carriers or two of the three traditional airline programs? Yeah, they can be booked with traditional airline programs. And then, of course, you'd have to tell me which airline program. So I guess you need both halves of that question, right? Can you think of even one low-cost carrier that can be booked with traditional well so i mean well darn when i looked into the emirates

program you could book there were at least two different uh low-cost carriers that you could book right from that right from them those are not the ones i was thinking of do you know who they are okay that's the problem is i'm i'm having a hard time remembering who they are. So one is that one that's based in Australia. I don't know if you remember who they are. Jetstar. That's it. And the other one I think is European, but it's not one of the – so it's not one of the ones you normally talk about. So I'll mention while he thinks.

I'll mention that Jetstar can also be booked with another airline, Smiles. Not Jet Emirates. Well, okay. So let's think about where Jetstar is located and who owns them. Okay, so Qantas? Qantas. You can use Qantas Smiles to book Jetstar flights. That's right.

You can book those right through Qantas at Qantas. You can use Qantas miles to book Jetstar flights. That's right. You can book those right through Qantas at Qantas.com, I believe. So that's one of the three low cost carriers I was thinking of. I knew you could book those. And Qantas, of course, is a transfer partner with, let's see, Capital One and City Thank You Points, right?

Yeah, that sounds right. Jumping on week one here? Week two so so just help me out here is are any of the low-cost carriers u.s based no not not that i i mean i don't know of a way to book spirit flights with traditional airline miles or frontier oh yeah well yeah i mean although frontier does have a mileage program. Yeah. I mean, JetBlue you can book with Emirates. But I don't think of JetBlue as a low-cost

carrier. I don't either. So, I don't know. I think you've stumped me. So, two European low-cost carriers. Level, which is owned by the Iberia Group, and you can book that right on the Iberia Group website. I didn't know they were a low-cost carrier in my defense. So I knew you could book Level, but I had no idea what they were.

Well, that's fine. Maybe that's worse. I feel like Level is a good match anyway. Because they fly from the U.S., I don't usually think of low-cost carriers as being you know airlines that fly across oceans although Jetstar certainly is they do fly to Honolulu and lots of places in Asia at any rate so uh level and then Voiling. Voiling is a an airline based in Spain I believe and you can book that with British Airways Avios or Iberia Avios if you book with British Airways Avios I believe the value is fixed at a little over half of a half a pound, whatever that comes out to be. And not very much. It's poor value.

But you can also book them with Iberia Avios. And with Iberia Avios, I believe it's one of the few, if not only, instances where you can use miles to cover the entire cost, including taxes, which whether or not that comes in handy for you is kind of up in the air. But it does have, I believe, a distance-based chart with Iberia. So there might be times when peak travel periods where that could potentially come in handy because, of course, Iberia, obvious, or Transnets are partnered with Chase and Amex. And not Capital One yet, Chase and Amex. So, and not Capital One yet, Chase and Amex. So you got opportunities to earn those.

So if you're looking to build yourself a little trip to Europe, whaling flies lots of places in Europe. Now, if you can book the flights for like 10 euros one way, you're not going to bother you. Right, it's going to be really hard to save. So here's something that I've been really curious about with these low-cost carriers is how the heck is like word availability a thing? So is it price-based?

Is it just it's always available if there's a seat available? Is there a class of service that we don't know exists, but it actually is there? And as long as you have that low class of service available, then it's, you know, I just have no idea. Yeah, I honestly don't know either. I know it's not just whenever there's a seat available, just based on searches I've done, but I don't know what the method to the madness is. And that's something probably nobody has written about. So maybe that's an idea. Because it's always such a bad deal, at least in all the times I've looked at it. Most of the time, yes.

But there are probably instances, again, at peak travel times where it might come in handy. Or if you're just trying to use points and you want to decrease cash outlay as much as humanly possible. That's a way to do it. It's not my style. I'd rather get much more value out of my points. But always good to have that little nugget of knowledge just in case it comes in handy. Also, I would say something handy to keep in mind so that when you're comparing award prices with cash prices, you're considering that kind of thing too. So you're not overpaying for your economy class awards. One of the things the 40K challenge has certainly taught me

is that sometimes it's just better to book with cash or with cash back rather than using points because sometimes those point rates for economy class are just too high to justify compared to the cash prices. So there's another situation where it might come in handy to book something like, you know, a Jetstar flight or a level flight using miles, even though it's not an ideal use of miles, better than using traditional airline miles. So that's my nugget of wisdom for today's pop quiz. Absolutely true. Okay, great. So the 40k to far away, that's actually coming up fairly soon. We're about three weeks out or something like that. And next week, I am flying off to Alaska to practice. Oh, nice.

A little practice run, huh? I'm going to do a little practice run. I'm going to write up about what my plans are for Monday, I think. This is news to me. What am I doing? What is Greg doing? I'm on a trip to Alaska. about what my plans are for Monday, I think. So you'll have to find out. This is news to me. What am I doing? What is Greg doing? On his trip to Alaska.

That's a pretty big spontaneous trip. Yeah. I mean, it's not quite totally spontaneous, but it's, yeah, it's new to me talking about it. But this will be a good way for, I'm going to test out my packing. I did a video. If you look at, uh, the frequent miler insiders group, uh, or the frequent miler Facebook page, you'll see

the video I created showing, um, everything I'm keeping in my backpack. And so I'm going to test that out, uh, next week and see if it really works. And, and I I'll, I'll probably learn from that experience and, and, uh, realize, you know, now I really need, you know, X, Y, or Z. So we'll see how that goes. I'll learn from that experience, too. Maybe you will. And that's okay. I'm okay with us, you know, all doing better from each other's preparations.

I think that's all. And now that you mention it, I have a trip to the Adirondacks next weekend over the weekend. And I hadn't even thought about packing for it. But now that you're doing this, I'm going to have to run a practice run too, I think, and pack up a bag like I'm doing the 40k challenge. Because really, I mean, we're in crunch time here. We got like, what, three weeks left or so before we kick off? Yeah. It's seriously close. I'm starting to sweat some of the details that haven't been... You're not the only one. long day yesterday of sweating details really yeah yeah yeah i spent a lot of the day yesterday uh sweating some of those finer details that are not yet worked out that my wife has been like well if you figured this out and that out i was

like no no i got time and then i realized no i don't really have that much time so we got to start getting those together and practicing things like packing the bag i In fact, I talked at FM2Go in San Francisco about how I planned to bring my Tumi backpack, which I bought used. We've talked about lots of deals on Tumi before, but I was too cheap to buy one of the ones I posted about. Greg, on the other hand, has gotten suckered into buying a few of the deals, I think.

But I bought mine used. And so I thought I was going to bring my Tumi backpack on this trip, and I packed up for San Francisco for the FM to go event. And I was like bursting at the seams just for the weekend. So I need to retool on that. I don't know what I'm going to bring. Well, you need to bring less as we answer.

Or a slightly larger bag. I don't know. Possibly. I guess we'll figure it out. A slightly larger bag is a way to do it. Sure. Sure. A few days Possibly. I guess we'll figure it out. Slightly larger bag is a way to do it. Sure. Sure. Few days to go. Few days to figure that out. So I look forward to hearing about it this week. Then I look forward to reading about what you're doing and your success or failure with your packing for the trip to Alaska. How long are you going to be in Alaska? Uh, Tuesday, the, the, the flights are Tuesday through Thursday. Um, but it's really two days in Alaska. Um, it works out too, cause I get there late Monday and, uh, leave actually, uh, late Wednesday night. And so I'm going to practice a red eye as well.

Oh, wow. This is getting all over. Greg is taking this seriously. You know, I said it happened to go and I'll say it here on the air now. I didn't realize how competitive Greg would be. And I knew he's a competitive guy. I didn't realize he'd be competitive enough to fly to Alaska and back just for a practice run. It's not really the purpose of the trip. I didn't think so. All right.

Just making sure. All right. Well, this has been a great talk. Why don't you tell us where we should go to watch this and listen to this and so on? Absolutely. Well, if you're just joining in, thanks for joining the broadcast today. You can always rewind this to the back and Facebook and watch it again. Also, check us out at thefrequentmiler.com. That's T-H-E frequentmiler.com, thefrequentmiler.com. Then you can check out the week in review post tomorrow morning because we'll also post this video on our YouTube channel, as well as all your favorite podcast formats. So check for links to those different podcast formats if you'd like to download and listen during your morning commute or that sort of thing throughout the week. That'll be in our week in review post. Again, that'll publish Saturday

morning, September 14th. Check us out each week at thefrequentmiler.com. Check out our Facebook page, Frequent Miler Facebook page, and the Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group, where you can connect with other people who can answer your questions and help you out as you navigate award travel. And then find us on Twitter at Frequent Miler or my Twitter at Nick at FM. Thank you guys very much for listening in. We love having you out there. We'll respond to any comments you leave. And if you have questions, let us know. Thank you guys. Take care and we'll see you guys next Friday. Best of luck, Greg. Thank you. Thanks a lot. And good night, everybody.

Thanks. Good night.