Frequent Miler on the Air - Easy path to Delta Elite status in 2024 | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep281 | 11-15-24

Episode Date: November 15, 2024

United recently announced an increase in elite requirements for 2025. Will Delta follow suit? Luckily, for this year, there's still time... (02:18) - A reader has a datapoint for us about the Equinox credit saying: "My wife successfully used the equinox credit for a massage. She enrolled in an equinox plus membership that came with a 7 day free trial. She was able to book and complete her massage within the 7 day trial period. The credit posted within 2 days and she canceled the membership." (06:17) - Last year Delta announced a drastic increase in elite requirements in 2024 for the 2025 elite year. After a public outcry, they reduced the requirements so much that in 2024 it is easier than ever to earn Delta elite status. Read more about the easy path to Delta elite status here. (08:05) - Multiple elite levels... (13:44) - Besides paying big $ for flights, how can you get status? (19:02) - Delta Status match, which you can read more about here. (23:03) - In summary, what are the easiest paths... (24:48) - Delta cards may be expensive but offer a lot of value Learn more about the Delta Platinum card here, and the Delta Reserve card here. (31:17) - What's the best way to do a long-haul holiday flight for a family with young children?  See which award search tools are best here.

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 Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, easy path to Delta Elite status in 2024. United recently announced an increase in elite requirements for 2025. Will Delta follow suit with Delta while it's easier than ever right now.

And hopefully, you know, the requirements will stay the same next year, but I wouldn't count on it. And for all we know, we recorded this over a week ago. For all we know that the requirements may have already increased. You may already know about increased Delta requirements for 2025. this over a week ago, probably know that the requirements may have already increased. You may already know about increased Delta requirements for 2025, but even if that's happened in 2024, you still have time to earn status with Delta. And the nice thing is if you earn that status in 2024, remember that'll be good for the 2025 year until status expires sometime in early 2026. I don't know what Delta's calendar is.

End of January. End of January, yeah. So you can still earn status during the rest of 2024 and enjoy it for all of 2025, even if and when they change the requirements for next year. Because when we say for next year, we mean for earning in 2025, we expect they're going to change the requirements. But for earning status now to enjoy in 2025, we know what the requirements are. So we'll talk about how to sort of, I don't want to say game the system, but I want to say game the system and get status pretty easily. But first, of course, let me remind you that you can always find the timestamps in the

show notes. So if you want to jump ahead to something or come back to it later, you can just expand the description box wherever you're watching or listening. Speaking of wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this video or leave us a review or the star or heart or whatever the emoji is, wherever it is that you're following along with the show. We appreciate that very much. All right, Greg, time to drag out this week's giant mailbag. Yeah, giant mailbag time. This this week's mail comes from David. He's writing in about the Equinox credit that Amex Platinum, the consumer Platinum cards offer. You know how Platinum cards offer all kinds of credits. Some are broadly applicable, but many of them are very specific to specific businesses. And that's why we jokingly, but correctly, I think,

refer to the Platinum Cards as coupon books these days. And one of those credits is up to $300 off of Equinox, which is, you know, a exercise... Gym membership. Yeah, it's like a gym membership,

but it's a nationwide chain, Equinox. And a cool thing, we've mentioned this before on the show, I believe, is that some people reported success getting that credit for booking pain at an Equinox and instead getting some pleasure from a massage, it could be a good trick. And so David wrote in basically just sort of reminding us and confirming that this works. And David says, my wife successfully used the Equinox credit for a massage. She enrolled in an Equinox Plus membership that came with a seven-day free trial. She was able to book and complete her massage within the seven-day trial period. The credit posted within two days, and she canceled the membership.

Great tip. Great tip. We've heard from a number of people who've been able to do that successfully. I've wanted to do this. My wife has wanted to do this. We just don't live near one of these places and haven't yet been able to squeeze it into a trip when we've been in an area that has them. But certainly something that's on my mind to put to use at some point, because that's a benefit that we never thought we would use since

we don't live anywhere near one of those, you know, fitness center, place, whatever you want to call it. So, so yeah, great tip. Thank you for confirming that it still works because maybe we'll find a way to make use of it before the end of this year. Because of course that's what, that's a calendar year credit, isn't it? Or is it a membership? I think so. And let me talk a little bit about that, the business about signing up for the free trial, why that's maybe necessary. So when you go to your benefits page for your platinum card online, it shows that you need to register for this credit. But when you click to register for it, basically it's taking you to Equinox to sign up for

a membership. And so it's unclear whether you would earn the credit if you don't sign up for a membership and just sign up for a massage. I'm guessing you would not earn the credit if you don't sign up for a membership and just sign up for a massage. I'm guessing you would not earn the credit that way. And so this is a trick for basically registering successfully by indeed signing up for a membership, but it's a free trial. And so you don't end up having to pay for it, but you do have to pay for that massage with that platinum card and then it should work. So the way I think about it,

I don't have an Equinox in my town either, but you know, if you're spending a weekend in New York city or Chicago, you know, somewhere where they do have one, you know, and you'd like to get a free massage, you have the platinum card anyway, why not do a tiny bit of prep work and get that set up? Yeah. And I do have a trip to New York planned. I want to use some of my in-kind credits that I think are going to end up expiring. So we have a room booked on a weekend. So at a restaurant booked to be able to use in-kind. And so I'm hoping I can pair this with that and make it work. We'll see. We'll see. But thank you, David, for the reminder, for putting it back on my radar, because it had been one of those things that was probably somewhat out of sight, out of mind.

And I appreciate you bringing it back closer to the forefront. So thank you for that. All right. I think that brings us to this week's main event. It does. Main event time. Easy path to Delta Elite status in 2024. As I mentioned in the outset, last year, Delta announced a drastic increase

in elite requirements in 2024 for the 2025 elite year. But then after a public outcry, I mean, it was huge. They reduced requirements so much that now it's easier than ever to earn elite status. Like their intent, their original intent was they didn't want so many elites. And so many people said, oh, forget that, I'm leaving Delta, that they freaked out and said,

oh no, we need to make it easier. And they made it so easy that now it's super easy, at least this year, to earn elite status. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of exciting. I'm someone who doesn't usually fly enough paid flights to have any hope of earning elite status. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of exciting. I'm someone who doesn't usually fly enough paid flights to have any hope of earning elite status, but with Delta, I could kind of probably do it without even setting foot on an airplane, right? You could, absolutely. And we'll talk about how. And as we record this, which is about a week before publication, Delta hasn't yet revealed their elite requirements for next year. For all we know, we're flying around the world somewhere at this moment, but for all we know, maybe they have revealed them and we're betting that the requirements next year will be

higher. We don't know yet as we record this. We can hope that it'll be the same. But anyway, point is, if you're interested in Delta elite status, the time to grab it is now before the end of the year. And as Nick said earlier in the show, the status will last through the end of this year, all of next year, so all of 2025 and through January of 2026. So it's still worth doing, assuming you have Delta flights coming up next year so that you can enjoy that status. So there's different levels of elite status, right? So let's run through the different levels and the requirements. So the sort of first level up is silver medallion status, which requires 5,000 MQDs.

MQDs are medallion qualifying dollars. And so typically, probably what Delta wants you to do is spend $5,000 on Delta flights, right? Because I guess you get one QD per dollar spent. That's the general idea. Of course, you're not going to do that because you listen to this show. You don't need to spend $5,000 on Delta flights in order to get that. But if you get Silver Status, you might, in a dream sequence, get an upgrade. But you'll probably also get one free bag.

Is that probably what it is with silver status? I think you get, I think you get one free bag, but for both you and everyone else on your itinerary. So, you know, everybody in the family gets free bag. It works out pretty well. Next up is gold. So gold status requires 10,000 MQDs, medallion qualifying dollars. And again, we'll talk about how to earn MQDs without actually spending money with Delta. But gold status will give you a few more benefits free same day changes that can be valuable because you can book a cheap flight at a bad time and then maybe same day change to a flight that was really expensive that was at the ideal time. So that's kind of nice. And also you get SkyTeam lounge access on international flights. So that could

certainly be valuable if you're flying economy class and SkyTeam internationally, like I don't know, few of us are doing right now as we record this although i guess you would probably do you need to use your delton number on the reservation in order to get the lounge access because i know different airlines run that differently right like i think yeah i i may just find out during this trip i don't know i don't know off the top of my head and by the way uh we're just pointing out a few benefits of each status level. We're not listing all of them for the show. Just a few that we think are worth mentioning.

True. All right. Platinum is next. 15,000 MQDs. You get free comfort plus upgrades right after ticketing. So instantly, so to speak, right away after ticketing. Hertz President Circle status. Wave change and cancellation fees on all routes.

Platinum choice benefits. So you get to pick something like four regional upgrade certificates or potentially a $400 statement credit for platinum and reserve cardholders. Or you can give silver status to a couple of folks or get some extra MQDs. Those four regional upgrades, I think, are potentially pretty valuable for a lot of people because the region's pretty big for using the regional upgrades, right? Yeah. The regional upgrades are pretty good. They don't often confirm. So you get waitlisted often, but you can see online when you're booking whether it'll confirm immediately. But even if you're waitlisted, they're worth using because what they do is they pop you to the top of the upgrade list. And so you will be above, let's say, top tier diamond members on the upgrade list unless they also used an upgrade certificate. And so it gives you a very good chance of getting an upgrade to first class. As Nick already said, you'd already have an upgrade to Comfort Plus, so you wouldn't worry about that.

I think gifting silver status to two people is also a pretty neat benefit because, I mean, you can, if you have friends or family that would benefit from Delta Elite status, then you're just having this one Elite status means that three people altogether can have Elite status with Delta. Yeah, and the free check bag benefit can really come in handy for folks that typically check bags. I mean, most people probably do. And if they're traveling with a family, having that silver status could certainly be valuable for them. It could save them quite a bit on a round trip flight these days, the way check baggage fees can add up. So yeah, you're right. That is pretty good benefit also. Diamond status is, of course, the top tier at 28,000 MQDs. What an odd number, 28,000 MQDs. Not quite double platinum, but not an even 25K either. It's 28,000 MQDs. And then you get three diamond choice benefits, and those are good, right? I mean, you know more about these diamond choice benefits. Why don't you talk about those? Yeah. I mean, the number one thing I like are the four global upgrade certificates you can choose. And that'll let you buy economy. You could buy the cheapest, except for basic economy, you could buy the cheapest economy flights you can find to fly across the world and upgrade with these certificates. The way they work,

though, is you'll get immediately upgraded to premium select, which is not quite the front of the cabin. It's nice, but it's not lie flat nice. But you get put on the, uh, waiting list for an, an upgrade to Delta one, the lie flat and potentially lie flat suites, depending on which aircraft you're on 24 hours before the flight takes off, you get put on that, on that upgrade lessons. And so depending on the route, you could have a very good chance of, of that. Um, so that's what the global upgrades do. There's also things like you can get a $700 statement credit for cardholders of certain like Delta Reserve or Platinum cards. You could get 2,000 MQDs, Medallion Qualifying Dollars. So basically give yourself a leg up on the next year's status with

that. And another one you could do is gift gold status to two people. So, you know, even better, like we talked about with silver here, you could gift an even better level of status to people. Nice. All right. So that's what you get and what the requirements are for each level. But I don't want to spend $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000 or $28,000 on Delta flights. So how can I do it without spending a fortune flying Delta? card, just by having those cards, you automatically get $2,500 in MQDs per year just by having the card. And what's interesting there is there are four variations on those cards. There's like the platinum, the Delta Platinum consumer card, there's a Delta Platinum business card, then there's the Delta Reserve consumer card and the Delta Reserve business card. It's possible to have all four.

And so you would have 10,000 MQDs if you had all four of those. So that's gold status just by, you wouldn't have to do anything but get those four credit cards, right? Or have those four credit cards. I mean, more realistically, getting two of them gives you silver status,

which is just, I mean, talk about easy, right? And we'll talk more about that a bit later in this show. Another way you could get MQDs is through spend. With a Delta Reserve card, you get one MQD for every $10 you spend. For the Platinum card, you only get one MQD for every $20 you spend. So that's half the earning rate of the Reserve card. So in general, if you're interested in earning elite status from spend, you really want the Delta Reserve card for that purpose. And when we say spend here, we mean credit card spend in general, not Delta spend. So you're earning one MQD per $10 spent anywhere. You'd be buying shoes at Macy's or paying your taxes. So lots of ways you could be earning MQDs on regular spend that has nothing to do with Delta, but has everything to do with Delta because you learn that one MQ extreme example, suppose you had a $100,000 tax bill and you spend it all on the reserve card, you would get 10,000 MQDs from that spend have 12, five altogether. You'd be pretty darn close to getting platinum because platinum only requires 15 K in MQTs. So if you actually are spending a little bit of money on Delta. And if you also had a platinum card,

you'd be there without anything else. Yeah. Yeah. So easy. Okay. Another way you could get them is through promotions. So Delta has frequently this past year done promotions where they have options for booking car rentals and hotels through their website. And they've often done promotions

where you could earn MQDs for that spend on the website. Where I find that particularly interesting is with Delta stays for booking hotels. I find that interesting because the Delta credit cards offer rebates on Delta stays booked where you pay in advance. That doesn't mean they're non-refundable. It just means pay in advance. And prices seem the same as what you find through like Expedia or whatever. In fact, I think it's Expedia in the background. And so that's a good way to sort of double dip. When they're doing that promotion, you book your stay through Delta Stays, get the rebate, also earn the MQDs. But you probably wouldn't get elite credit or hotel points or potentially elite benefits if you're booking through Delta Stays, right? You mean hotel elite benefits if you're booking through Delta stays, right?

You mean hotel elite benefits? Yes, you wouldn't. That's right. That's right. You would just be a regular customer. Just a regular customer. Regular customer. Yes, that is true. That's your trade-off there.

If your focus is on hotel points and elite status, then that's not a great way to book unless you're booking independent hotels where you wouldn't get that anyway. Or hotels where it just doesn't matter to you. Maybe you're not chasing status in that particular program and you're staying at a hotel where breakfast is already included in the rate or something like that. So plenty of reasons why you might decide to do that. Okay. So you get the MQD promotions. What else? So when you reach platinum or diamond status, one of the choice benefits available in each of those

is an MQD accelerator, which basically gives you a certain number of MQDs for next year's status. So if you earned status last year, so if you earned status in 2023 for the 2024 year, in other words, if you already have platinum or diamond status right now, as we're saying this, and you got it last year, then you could pick as one of your choices, the accelerator to apply to this year, supply this year so that it helps you get to the next level of status.

Of course, if you earn platinum or diamond this year, you could also pick that as your choice benefit, but it's going to help you next year get to status. Not it won't help you this year. Okay. So we got several different ways to earn MQDs there. But of course, that's not your only easy route to Delta Elite status. The easy MQDs aren't it, right? Because Delta has been offering a status match. And while this will involve MQDs, if you have elite status

with another major airline, they list things like Air Canada, Alaska, American Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest, United, but there's a lot more too that you can match to Delta. And so if you successfully match, if you have status with another competitor, you can submit for a status match and you get three months of status. So you get like a three month trial run with Delta elite status. And then if you complete the challenge,

then you have status Delta status through January of 2026. And the MQD requirements for this are pretty simple, right? Yeah. So to keep silver status, so when you match, they're going to give you a level of status based on how high your status is with a competing airline. So if you got silver status, you would just need to earn 1,250 MQDs within the three months in order to keep that silver status long-term. With gold status, the target is 2,500 MQDs. And with platinum status, the target is 3,750 MQDs. There's no published option to match to diamond status. I said that that way, because in some cases, if you have like top, top, top tier status in a competing airline,

it's worth reaching out to Delta and just asking, is it possible to match to diamond and see what they say? Because you never know. And when we say top, top, top tier, we're talking about those like invite tiers, I would assume like American Airlines, Concierge Key or United Global Services, those things. Yeah. I mean, although I would even try it with like United one day or Executive Platinum with American. It's worth a shot. Why not? Because Delta Diamond really does, we didn't really go into details about how much better the benefits are with Delta Diamond status versus Platinum, but they are significant. Very good.

So now, quick question on those challenges. So if you do the status match and they match you to gold status, let's say that requires 2,500 MQDs, could you just get one of the Delta credit cards and get the 2,500 MQD head start? Would that count for the match? It will not. So they explicitly disallow that. However, they allow MQDs from credit card spend, from car and hotel promotions, and

any other miscellaneous things to count. So let's say you have the Delta Reserve card which is earning one mqd per ten dollars that means uh to you know keep your silver status that means spending twelve thousand five hundred dollars on the delta reserve card in three months and for a lot of people that's not a problem it's like it's such an easy way to do it you do have to take one delta flight during that that period and earn mqds from that flight um i have in the notes that one paid delta flights required but i'm not actually sure if that's true because delta one interesting thing i didn't mention before you earn mqds when flying award tickets with delta as well. So that is probably a way of getting that, but certainly you could meet the challenge goals, the $2,500 in MQDs for gold stats, let's say by spending, I think,

I don't want to do the math off the top of my head. I forget how many miles you'd have to spend to get that, but it's not a terrible big number. I think maybe 250,000 miles. I don't know. Yeah. I'm not positive. I haven't tracked it. Or is it 25,000? It might just be 25,000. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably 25,000. Anyway, so it's possible. Possible to do. All right. Then let's see. So we talked about everything else that counts there

and needing the Delta flight. So can you sum things up here? If I want easy Delta status, again, how do I get it? Okay, so super easy. Get multiple Delta cards. As we talked earlier, two Delta cards. And when I say Delta cards, I mean platinum or reserve cards. The Delta gold card won't help cards the delta gold card won't help

and the delta blue card won't help but uh if you get two delta platinum or reserve cards you've got silver status if you get four you've got um gold status boom i will mention though it'd be really hard to get four if you don't already have them it'd be really hard to get four delta cards before the end of this year because amex will let you sign up for two cards in a short amount of time but after that i forget what the waiting period something like 90 days before they'll let you get approved for more and so i don't i don't know that it's possible uh before the end of the year to do that um okay so that's that that's the easiest one. And then status match is also really easy

if you have status in one of the competing airlines. So those two both give really, really easy paths to elite status with Delta. Yeah, and it is worth asking, like Greg said, if you've got something that isn't listed, it's worth asking. A couple of years ago, I was able to get them to match

my spirit gold status, actually, which was not listed as a qualifying airline. And they said no. And I wrote back and I was like, really, pretty, please. And they said, hey, yeah, take your gold status card here. And since you asked nicely. Right, right. So you can always ask because there's a human being processing those things. So it's always worth an ask if you do have something that you think might be able to match. So the Delta cards, I mean, the issue when we talk about this being really easy, the thing that I think we've left out of the conversation thus far is that they're not cheap. The Delta, Platinum and Reserve cards are not cheap cards. So it's like, oh, just get two cards and you got status.

But it's a lot of money, though, right? It is. It is. So status is easy, but not cheap if you go the credit card route. Platinum, so the platinum cards, the platinum consumer and business costs $350 a year. And the Delta Reserve cards cost $650 a year. At least those are the prices as we're recording this. However, they each have some really nice perks and rebates that can make them worth it. So, for example, the Platinum cards come with either $150 or $200 back per year in Delta stay credit. I talked about Delta stays earlier, about how you can just book hotels and

you get the, that credit back for some reason, they give slightly more. The reason I said 150 or $200, they give slightly more credit for the business cards than for the personal cards. You also get $10 per month back in resi credits. So that means if you, um, use your credit card at any restaurant that shows up on the resi app, you don't have to reserve the restaurant through the Resi app. You just have to spend money at that restaurant. You get $10 per month back. You also get $10 back per month on rideshare credits, so things like Uber and Lyft. And I'll mention there that if you haven't taken a look at Resi in a while, it might be worth taking another look.

I was really surprised to find a couple of restaurants not far from me that had never been on a platform like that. They'd never been on any of the Rewards Network dining things or any of these other dining. I was surprised. So that's not to say that there were tons. There was like two. But there were two that I definitely didn't expect to be there that we eat at occasionally. So it's worth taking a look if you haven't looked at Resi in a long time, just to see if anything new has popped up. Yeah, for sure. Okay. And then you also get an annual companion ticket. So each year upon renewal, you get a companion ticket that can be worth a lot. I mean, you can fly to Hawaii, you can fly

to Central America, you can fly to the Caribbean. as long as it's a round trip. And as long as certain discount fare classes are available, you can add a companion for free. You do have to pay the taxes and fees for that companion. But anyway, point is, that can be worth a lot right there. You also, all Delta cards, except the Delta Blue card, offer 15 off um awards so so you save your sky miles when you're using them to book to book flights so so that's a platinum card 350 dollars for all that you know the companion ticket alone uh you know could be easily uh worth the annual fee and so uh so not a bad deal for ongoing use. Now, you don't get that companion ticket the first year.

So if you're just looking at this as a one-year play, you have to forget about that particular perk. Well, or at least... Well, but you get the welcome bonus. So the welcome bonus is going to be worth far more than that perk, probably. Also, in the past, it's been possible to wait. Let's say you want to cancel the card after one year. It's impossible to wait until after the companion ticket gets deposited to your account, then cancel the card and you still have the companion ticket in your account. So you don't have to totally discount the value of that ticket. The Delta Reserve card, $650. That's obviously a lot more money. But it gives you Sky Club access when flying Delta.

Starting next year in February, they're going to limit that to 15 visits per year. But that's still, I mean, quite a few visits. And by visits, they actually mean visit days. So you could use the club when you're about to, before boarding a flight, and you could use the club when you're about to, you know, before boarding a flight and you could use the club after landing. And if you have a quick turnaround within 24 hours, you could even use the club the next day. I believe all as one one visit. You also get four Sky Club guest passes. And let me let me quickly say about Sky Clubs.

I don't know how much uh nick you've you time you spent at delta sky clubs but not as much as you not as much as me in general this isn't of course true everywhere but in general they're pretty good they're they're um they tend to have real food you know that you're not talking about eating like cheese and crackers like you might at an American Airlines club. You're talking about real lunch or dinner or breakfast, whatever. And they tend to be pretty comfortable. There is an overcrowding problem at certain airports. So that's an issue. But overall, I've gotten tremendous value from my Sky Club access. So I think that's really good. You also get $200 or $250 towards Delta stays, and you get $20 per month in resi credits, $10 a month ride share. And the annual companion ticket with this one can be used not just for economy, like the Platinum card, but also for first-class round-trip tickets.

So there you go so so it's you know obviously it's a more premium card than the platinum card and uh you can tell by the price tag but you could also tell by the perks yeah i mean there are good perks if you're able to use them you know it all comes down to whether or not you're going to be able to use the perks but if you are going to use most of those 15 visits to Sky Clubs, and you'll make sure that you use the Delta's Day credit, and particularly if you're going to use the companion tickets on either of these cards to even marginally good value, then I think it's actually really easy to come out ahead. I've never gotten a Delta card because I don't tend to fly Delta at all. And I don't tend to get excited about other uses of Delta SkyMiles. But man, I have a hard time denying the value of these cards these days. They definitely look pretty appealing, even to me as somebody who just doesn't ever fly Delta

because it just doesn't work out for our needs. But I still look at it and I say, man, it wouldn't be hard for me to come out ahead on these cards. So certainly if you fly Delta more often than I do, which is probably the case if you're interested in today's main event, then I think it's pretty easy to come out ahead. Yeah, absolutely. I think so. Okay. All right, my friends, that brings us to this week's question of the week.

This week's question of the week is probably more for me than for Greg, but I'll let you weigh in and give your opinion if you have one, Greg. So Taylor. Taylor. Yes, I try. I try. I'm known for my generosity. Taylor writes in and says, my wife and I are planning a trip to visit family in Munich over Christmas 2025.

I want to bring our two young kids who will be two and four at that time. We live in Chicago and have never flown on a long haul flight with them before and wondered what the best way to do it would be. Of course, it would be easiest to book four business class seats for everyone, but I worry that I won't be able to find that many award seats and won't have enough miles to book all four. I also feel like it would be kind of a waste since the two year old will probably spend most of the flight on our laps. Should we book two business class seats and two economy and then have the kids sit on our laps in business during the flight? Would the airline allow that even? Thanks in advance for your help, Taylor. So you can certainly answer that last part, right? So if they booked two economy tickets for the kids and two business

tickets for the adults, are they going to be able to put the kids on their lap in business? No, you wouldn't even be able to do that because you have to book the economy tickets separately and they're not going to let you book two children tickets without the parents. No, no. So the easiest answer for you, Taylor, is get some big, comfortable luggage and just stick your kids in the luggage and check those bags. Stop. They're going to get us in trouble here. Oh, my goodness.

Why are you giving away my secrets? No, I'm just kidding. You're not giving away my secrets. I shouldn't joke about that. Anyway, so, yeah. No, it depends. Definitely don't my secrets. It's not, I shouldn't joke about that. Anyway, so yeah, you know, it depends. Don't, definitely don't do that. Let's be clear.

So a few different thoughts that I have. And if Greg differs on this, feel free to hop in. But my first thought is, I don't know whether or not you'll have the miles, but I know you could have the miles because there's tons of great offers out there, especially these last couple of years. We've just seen amazing new credit card offers. So if you can handle a minimum spend for a new card or two, you're far enough in advance right now. You're talking about more than a year from now. So schedules haven't

opened to book yet. You've got enough time. You could probably earn a welcome bonus or two and have enough miles to fly your family up front. Now, whether or not you want to is another question. But if the miles is a concern, there's plenty of solutions to that. Go to our best offers page, take a look through, and that's a relatively easy problem to solve. And I say relatively, of course, you got to meet the minimum spending requirements, but we also have written about lots of ways to do that. And especially at this time of year, I don't know if you're doing holiday shopping, but you may have estimated tax payments due and things like that. There's plenty of ways to meet the spend, I think, to earn a couple of good welcome bonuses. And really with one or two

of the better ones, you could probably fly your family of four. I mean, two really good offers, maybe three, you could fly around trip up front if you find the availability. Now, finding availability, that's a tougher thing because you're talking about specifically flying during the holidays, notoriously difficult time to find availability, although to Europe, maybe not as much as to other places during the holidays, you know, because it's sort of off season the winter to go to Europe. So I don't know if that's true by searching hard enough and using award search tools. I do tend to eventually find seats.

Now, do I find the nonstop JFK to Frankfurt that I want? I don't know. I don't know if you're going to find exactly what you want. But I think that with some of the award search tools we've written about, we'll link in the show notes to which award search tool is best. So if you get some familiarity with those, then I think it's doable potentially to find business class seats. Now, again, you may need to position, I don't know where you're located. You said you're in Chicago. So maybe you'll have to position in New York or Boston or DC in order to find that availability. But if you're willing to do that,

it might be possible to get business class. Now, is it worth it over flying economy? That's a harder question to answer, because you're right,-year-old is probably not going to spend much of any time in their business class seat that you're going to pay for. And something to know if you don't know, because I didn't know when my kids were that age originally, you can't put a car seat in most lie flat business class seats. So if you were thinking in your mind, you're going to bring a car seat on board for the two-year-old, you can't even do that in the business class seat. They're just going to have to sit there by themselves. And so you have to put some thought into the layout, which one you're going to pick, because if you pick one of those layouts where you can't see each other, like, I don't know if

your two-year-old is like my two-year-old, my younger, so he's not two anymore. But when he was two, he would have flipped out with that, not being able to see anybody that would have scared him. So you got to kind of look and find the the seating layouts that work out best like united polaris for instance has those middle seats that are right next to each other where you could literally be less than an arm's length away and i would want something like that because they're going to have to sit in their seat for takeoff and landing and they can probably sit on your lap throughout the flight depending on the seat belt light and all the rest of that but But, but that said, my opinion, if you're asking an opinion is that it makes it so much easier when you're flying a business class, because

there's so much more space. And you don't have to worry about your kid kicking the seat in front of you, because they can't even reach the seat in front of you properly. So it gives you a lot more space to work with and to be able to get up and move around a little bit when you need to, you're not quite so cramped, and everybody's on top of each other. I find that I don't think we would travel nearly as much as we do if it weren't for the ability to use miles to fly in those comfortable spaces and in seats with more space. So I think it's totally worth it personally. However, you're right. The kid probably isn't going to sit in their own seat very much at all. And you're going to pay for an adult seat probably. But I'm going to say probably because Air France, Flying Blue, don't forget, gives a 25% discount on child

tickets. So you could book your kid. And if you're booking in Air France business class, you're going to save 25% on the child seat. Now, there aren't very many programs that offer that, but Air France is one of the ones that do. Air France KLM, Flying Blue offers a discount on child seats on their own flights. And we also have a full episode where we talked about family travel. And so we'll link to that in the show notes as well, because we talked all about this kind of stuff. But but my personal opinion is, yes, it's, I think it's still worth it when my kids were that age, because they did fall asleep in a seat by themselves, like they wouldn't have an economy class, we would have been all on top of each other, nobody would have slept at all all because everybody would have been constantly hitting each other

and elbowing each other and getting irritated, cramped in, I think. And in business class, you could just recline the seat and they can go to sleep and they're out. And to me, that's that makes it for a much more pleasant journey. So I think it's worth seeking out a couple of welcome bonuses and figuring out how to meet the spending requirement to make that trip more comfortable. You know, if you're if you're interested in that at all, I think it's worth it, personally. Do you think I'm wrong, Greg?

No, I think you're 100% right. Quick question for you, though, Nick. Yeah. You know, some nice business class seats have like a footrest with room underneath for like to slip luggage, like small luggage underneath. Yep. Could a two-year-old fit in there instead? I mean, my younger son might have. I think they would kind of like it, wouldn't they?

Yeah, I mean, that'd kind of be his jam probably. They'll just hang it out in there, curling up a little bit. Yeah, but, you know, and the kids adjust to it. One of the things that I think I mentioned before is we limit the screen time in the days before a flight, and then they like to just sit there and watch the screen for a bit. And then we turn it off and it's time to go to sleep. And it just makes for a much easier experience.

So if you are looking for a comfortable long haul experience, it's way easier to do, I think, that way. So I wish you luck in collecting the miles you need and finding the availability you need. If your schedule is really tight, that might be harder because Christmas time is certainly going to be a little bit tougher. But take a look at different routes. Use those award search tools where you can search multiple airports at once and be willing to fly to New York the day before or Boston the day before or whatever, because you know you're going to have a much more comfortable, easier flight to get to Europe. So best of luck to you,

Taylor. All right. That I think brings us to the best ones are the ones that are the most private. And so it's going to be the most difficult for you to manage your children. If they're in a very private suite of their own, you're not going it'll be easier for you to reach them. If you're in one of those layouts where the it's two by two by two or two by three by two, something like that, where meaning, um, two seats are together before the aisle. And then some number of seats are together before the next aisle. Cause usually these are on, um, double aisle jets. Yeah. That's a really important point that you're right. I alluded to, but I didn't really hammer home. And that's, I think that was a great way to put it because bloggers will often focus on the most luxurious business class being the ones that are the most private and that's absolutely not what you want. So, and they will often look down upon stuff like, like tap air

Portugal, for instance, I feel like a lot of people think, oh, that's not that nice. It's awesome with a family. It's perfect. The seats are right next to each other. Wherever you pick them, if you're flying with your family, with kids, you're literally sitting right next to your child. And that's great. Iberia is the same kind of thing. Their business class products are that way. The reverse herringbone is going to be much harder because you might not be able to see

each other or reach each other. And that's super popular with bloggers, the reverse herringbone style seating. And it's super inconvenient with a family. I really want the seats to just all be straightforward when I'm traveling with the kids. And so I mentioned a couple of tap air Portugal has seats that are going to be good for that. So does Iberia, Swiss business class tends to be laid out that way. A lot air Polish that way, United Polaris. So those are some to look for where you can find those seats that are like literally right next to each other instead of being a super private cocoon,

which is all well and good when you're traveling by yourself, but super inconvenient with kids. Okay. That brings us, I think, to the end of this week's episode. And if you've enjoyed it and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.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 discuss this type of stuff all the time. And if you have a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a giant mailbag or a question you'd like to be considered for a question of the week, you can send that to send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com.

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