Frequent Miler on the Air - Fly to 6 continents, earn 1 million miles | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep313 | 7-4-25

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

In today's Frequent Miler on the Air episode, Greg bypasses 5/24, Nick flies a donut plane towards earning status and 350,000 miles, and we run the numbers on Turkish's million mile promo.Giant Mailbag(01:58) - Virgin Atlantic substantially increases fees on award tickets. But one door closes, another opens.Read more about Virgin Atlantic increasing fees on award tickets here.Card News(04:17) - Sapphire Reserve for Business℠ Card approved over 5/24Bonvoyed(09:46) - Chase Ink Business Premier®: Effective October 7th, 2025, you will be eligible to receive referral bonus awards for new Chase Business card customers only.(13:00) - Chase Aeroplan transfers are SLOW(14:43) - American Express is reducing Emirates transfer ratio to 5:4(18:12) - Will Southwest nerf the Companion Pass next?Awards, Points, and More(23:20) - Flying Blue: better saver award availability for Platinum elitesJetBlue Promo Updates(29:20) - Promo reminder: fly to 25 destinations, get 350K + 25 years statusFind our episode about the JetBlue promo here.(30:13) - Nick comments on why he decided to go for it, why he's flying the Dunkin' flight, and the Capital One travel price match experience(40:52) - Greg discusses his initial evaluation and why he decided noMain Event: fly to 6 continents, earn 1 million miles(53:03) - Turkish airlines promo: Fly Across 6 Continents – Earn 1 Million Miles!(55:55) - Eligible flights(1:01:36) - Example itinerary for epic trip(1:06:46) - Are we going for it?Question of the Week(1:16:22) - This listener saved up American Express Membership Rewards points for a round the world trip, but then ANA eliminated their round the world award chart. Are there other ways to book a round-the-world trip?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a boy escape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voicecape.com. On today's frequent mile around the air, we'll discuss how Greg bypassed the chase 524 rule. I'll talk about my plans to fly the donut plane to help me earn status and make my way towards 350,000 miles and we're gonna run the numbers on the Turkish Airlines million mile promotion. Frequent miler on the air starts now. Today's main event fly to six continents earn 1 million So Turkish airlines is out with a copycat promotion that copies off of SAS, getting an even airlines promotion that happened last year where SAS offered a million miles to anyone who flew 15 of their partners during the window of the promotion. Now, Turkish is like, we can offer a million miles as well, but we're gonna be smarter about it

and we're gonna make people fly our own airline, not our partners. Yeah, so I mean, that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? I think part of what amazed us about the SaaS EuroBonus Challenge was that not only was it a huge number of miles, but it was encouraging you to give business to other airlines. So that was a, we thought that was pretty wild at the time. We said if anybody ever offered a

million miles, you would think it'd be to spend money with their airline, which is what Turkish is doing. So in fairness, I mean, that makes sense to me. It's just a little bit different this time. Turkish was probably listening to our podcast. We'll talk more about that later on. And don't forget if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back to it later on or listen to a different segment, all you do is expand the show description and you'll

find the timestamps in the show notes and you'll also find links to more information about the stuff that we've been talking about wherever you're watching or listening. Don't forget to like this. Give it a thumbs up. Leave us a comment. Leave us some feedback. We always appreciate those things and read them. So thank you very much for that.

Now let's drag out this week's giant mail back. Today's giant mail comes in response to a post about Virgin Atlantic. So Virgin Atlantic has substantially increased award fees on their own award bookings. So a while back they had drastically reduced them and now they've increased again but not as bad as they used to be so we're somewhere in the middle of all that. Anyway, John wrote in response to that post, and I thought this was poetic, so I needed to read this. John writes, the points and miles game is a constant paradox. Just when you think you've cracked the code, the rules change. Programs quietly devalue, sweet spots vanish, and once reliable redemptions disappear. Yet at the same time, smarter tools, sharper communities,

and creative workarounds make the game more accessible than ever. One door closes, another opens. Very insightful, John. Very insightful. Because not a week goes by that I don't hear from someone who says, is it even worth it anymore? Is it worth the time and the effort? Has it gotten too complicated? There's no more awards, blah, blah, blah. There's always some doom and gloom somewhere,

and you'll find that in every arena in life, right? Or there's people claiming doom and gloom about everything. But you know, there will always be folks like John who are out there saying, well, instead of focusing on what I can't do, focusing on, okay, well, what can I do? And look at this, all the tools that we have these days and all the huge credit card offers.

You're right. I mean things close doors close all the time, but new ones constantly open and we constantly find ways to kind of play the game smarter, play the game differently, not even necessarily smarter. It's just the game changes over time, I think. And so it just comes down to do you enjoy playing the game and finding those new loopholes or not? And some people don't.

And hey, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, some people watch the NBA these days and say, oh, it's all three pointers. I'm not interested. Other people say, oh, well, it's all three pointers. Look at what they're doing now to change things up. And so it just depends on which side of that you end up in. And, you know, I just enjoy the game. So I think it's fun to play so well done

John keep playing absolutely all right let's talk about card news we got some card news out in fact some card news from you yes uh so both my wife and I applied for the sapphire reserve business card and I have news about that um first, the good news, I was approved. And it's pretty interesting because I'm over 524. So if you're familiar with Chase's 524 rule, where if you've opened five or more cards in the past 24 months, they don't usually approve you for new cards.

But every now and then, especially when they're promoting a card heavily, they often relax that rule because they want more approvals for it. And so I got approved despite that. But it was kind of interesting for me because something happened, which has never happened to me before on a Chase application, which is I got an email saying they needed more information from me. I've had before where they call and leave messages saying something like that, but this one said,

we need more information from you. And here's, you can either click here for the DocuSign letter about it, or go to DocuSign and use this code to pull up the information. I did the latter because I don't like clicking any links and emails that are sent to me. You never know when it's a phishing scam. And it pulled up a thing saying that they needed proof of my business revenue and personal income.

So that was kind of a pain, but I submitted that stuff. And what was nice is, you know, it's not like the old days when they say, the old days meaning like two years ago when banks would say, fax that information to us, you know, as if fax is still a thing. Right, right. Barclay still does. So in that way, this was nice and easy because DocuSign actually has a thing where you just click a paper clip and you upload documents right to it.

And, um, and so anyway, so I did that, um, actually last night, right before we last night as we're recording this, which was right before. We, uh, went live on ask us anything. And this morning I got an email saying I'm improved. So that's awesome. Yeah. Like 12 hours basically, right or less. Yeah, it was really quick.

My wife had a different situation. So my wife applied and she normally gets instantly approved for Chase business cards. In fact, last I looked, she had not this card but a couple of the ink business cards she had in her, like, you're already approved for list in the offers for you section. And she applied, but got a letter saying, we suspect that, that, you know, it, this is a fraudulent application that it wasn't you that submitted this.

So we declined. So it didn't say anything like, use this DocuSign or something to prove you are who you say you are. Instead, it was just like, no, you know, that's declined. So that's one of those things that had it happened to me, I would have called Chase and said, hey, it really was me. Can you you know, reopen this and evaluate it? But my wife's not going to do that. So I think that well, it's going to go down as a as a denial. You can tell her that my mother in law had exactly the same

experience recently applying for the Sapphire preferred card. No experience with cards. She's just like, I want to open some cards. And, you know, she's coming in a lot of the trips with us. She's like, I want to open some cards and you know where she's coming in a lot of the trips with us. She's like I want to open some cards too and you can use some of my points for this and blah blah blah. So so I just helped her with it, but she knows very little about these things. So when we got that letter I was like that's kind

of tough. Cuz she's going to get asked questions on the phone and get nervous and not know what's going on. She has made this kind of call before, but but she insisted no, I want to try this and so I said OK, you know let's do it. She called and all they needed to do is verify that it was her. She verified like her phone number

and date of birth and social security number. Maybe it was like nothing difficult at all and it was like a two and a half minute phone call. Maybe then it was approved and done. So it was very, very quick, very, very easy. So they just want to make sure it wasn't identity theft. That's all.

Did the letter say anything like call us to prove because my wife did not. It just like forget it. Yeah, no, it was very similar. I probably took a picture of it. I'll have to double check. But yeah, it was very similar that we suspect identity theft and declined it.

And so I said, oh, well, we'll have to pull out the reconsideration number and call. And sure enough, it was, so I said, oh well, we'll have to pull out the reconsideration number and call. And sure enough, it was, it was, like I said, it was very easy. So maybe, maybe you can tell her that anyway, pass that along that it did turn out to be very simple for her. So yeah. Anyway, I'm not going to push it because, um,

the $30,000 required spend on the one card that I was approved for. That's plenty. It's already a stretch. Instead with my wife, I'll try again with the, you know, Inc. Business Unlimited or something like that. Especially, my guess is we'll see, you know, heightened offer for probably Inc. Business Preferred actually. I'm predicting they're going to refresh that card, increase the price a little bit. I don't think it'll be increased nearly as much as what we've seen these other cards. Um, and then, uh,

there'll be a big new offer with hopefully a lot less spend than the sephiris or for business card requires. Very good. All right. Excellent. Let's move on to next up. We've got bond void and speaking of chase, chase is really in the running for bond void of the year award, which we said on our ask us anything It seemed like Southwest had that wrapped up like a month or two ago But chase is making a run for it because they have made some negative changes they have I mean and this is Their pursuit of the bond void of the year. I mean it goes it it goes to everything around the whole rollout of the the year. I mean, it goes to everything around the whole rollout of the Sapphire Reserve cards as well as what we're about to discuss. I mean, there have been a lot of negative

things about it. But yes, here's a new negative, which is with the Chase Inc business cards starting October 7th, when you refer someone to open up an ink card, you'll only earn a referral bonus if it's their first ink card. So they have to be new to having ink cards according to the new terms that are on there. That stinks. It stinks that you can't refer someone to it. I mean, okay. So, from a base level, if you're playing in two-player mode, then probably you have referred each other because you've picked up extra points by referring each other as you

open new cards. So it's a bummer in that situation, but I kind of get it. I mean, if the bank thinks you would apply for the card anyway, they don't want to pay out or referral bonus. I guess to your spouse. But I think this also kind of stinks in general because you know, maybe you know somebody legit business owner who has one of the ink cards, but it would be a better fit for them to get the Sapphire preferred business or get the ink preferred or even the ink premier and you explain it to

them and help them realize that. I don't know this is a better fit for you and refer them to it and then you're not going to get a bonus for basically having done the marketing for Chase there. So, uh, so that's nice. So, so I'll say that does seem to be the way it's written, how it'll work, but I actually suspect, and we won't know this for, for quite a while. I suspect it's actually based on having had the exact same card before. So the terms do sort of imply it's in cards in general, but anyway, that's what I suspect. And again, I don't know.

It'll be a long time before anyone figures out whether I'm right about that. Well, yeah, I mean, once it becomes effective, I don't know. I don't know how long it'll be. It might not be that long at all, right? But it takes a while for referrals to come through that. Once it's effective, who gonna who's gonna chance it. Well, well, I mean somebody who doesn't care whether You know who would rather try to get I mean like if I get if I were referring my my wife

Then I guess the worst-case scenario is we don't get the bonus, right? So that's right. We won't so I mentioned there'll be people in that situation that that will give that a shot. But but anyway, yeah, we'll see. I mean, Capital One does that if they have an existing Capital One card under that business or on the consumer side, if they have any existing Capital One card, then you don't get a referral bonus for referring them. So it doesn't seem far fetched to me that that's what Chase is going to do. Not positive. I don't and I don't like it.

But but unfortunately, that seems to be the way things are going, so. Yeah, yeah. Oh well. Next up, we got something about Chase Aeroplan transfers being slow, and you encountered this, right? Not personally, but a couple people have reached out

saying that they've had issues with this lately. So as we're recording this, Chase currently has a 20% transfer bonus from Chase Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan, to Air Canada Aeroplan. And one person reached out saying that he did a transfer and it took four days and that another transfer took 24 hours. We heard from another person that their transfer took 24 hours. So I don't think this is happening to everyone, but this is just something to watch. And if you're in a position of needing to transfer for an award that is hard to get, just something to be mindful of that it might take a while.

And that's, I don't know of any way to prevent that from happening. One thing not to do is don't do a test transfer to see how fast it is and then say, oh, it was quick. And then do the big transfer because Chase sees that as potential fraud. And that will hold up the second transfer if they think there's some kind of fraud going on. Yeah, yeah, in many cases it will.

So that's definitely a good safety tip. Yeah, I feel like we hear reports like this periodically on some of the other transfer partners to every now and then a high at one will take a day or two or something to go through. So this does happen occasionally. It's pretty rare, though, so I wouldn't be overly concerned about it. It's one of those things that you make it on Locky and run into it, but most of the time these things are smooth.

Hopefully this is just an isolated thing and not something that's a bigger aeroplan issue. Right, hopefully. Yep. Next up, we've got the transfer ratio from Amex to Emirates has decreased. So this is unfortunate news. Effective September 16th

Points will now transfer at a five to four ratio So whereas a thousand membership rewards used to get you or at the time we're recording this still gets you a thousand Emirates miles starting on September 16th You're only gonna get 800 Emirates miles for your thousand membership rewards points. The same ratio, I believe is coming into effect with city later this month, right? Yeah. Yeah. On July 27th, city's doing the same thing, which we've reported before. So that that's kind of interesting. And and we're just kind of waiting now to see,

presumably something like this may happen with, you know, Capital One and, and, or Chase. Um, but, uh, I don't know. Chase, like they seem to have a lot of pride in always doing one to one as the base transfer ratio, even when it's bad. Like, so like you have one to one to like, IHG, which is like a terrible transfer ratio, um, but they just have that flat one to one to like IHG, which is like a terrible transfer ratio. Um, but they just have that flat one to one. So, um, I think, I think they might actually be willing to give up Emirates transfers before they'd be willing to change the ratio.

That's my guess. Interesting. What about built? Oh yeah. Uh, no idea. Build also, I mean, I don't think they have any less than, oh no, they do. Of course. They have a court.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they'll, maybe they'll go down too. I mean, if presumably what's happening is it's costing the banks more to make the transfers or Emirates is doing something to promote this themselves, like that, that they want their miles to seem more premium. So they might be incentivizing banks to lower the ratio

or something like that. I'm not sure what's going on under the covers, but it's weird because Emirates miles aren't all that useful for that many things. And so it's just weird. They aren't that useful for all that many things. And so, uh, it's just, well, they aren't that useful for all that many things. And it's, obviously it's a foreign program.

So fewer Americans are aware of it and familiar with it than they are with the major programs. So I can't imagine that there are so many transfers to Emirates from any of the transferable currencies that even if they increase their asking price that like would it would paying more make a financial difference for AMEX? I don't know. There's enough transfers that even if Emirates wanted some ridiculous number for their miles that it would be worth complicating their transfer program. Yeah, like an increase, right? Right. It does seem weird, which which brings me back to like, is it something on Emirates side, because that they want their program to look like this, you know,

ultra premium program, which they've succeeded at as far as like their first class, you know, is so blingy and everything, and it is really nice. And so maybe they're trying to give that impression across the board by making transfers more expensive, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't get it. I don't get it. It's be clear. I like your first class and all. I don't get this. It doesn't make a lot of sense. So so there you go. There you have it. Emirates alright next up. Finally for the Bonvoit section today, we've got Southwest will Southwest nerf

the companion pass. Southwest has surveyed customers recently asking about their reaction to various proposed changes. The biggest of which is the concept that perhaps the Southwest companion pass as we know it will be no more in the survey. There was a suggestion that there would be four or that perhaps the Southwest Companion Pass as we know it will be no more. In the survey there was a suggestion that there would be four or five elite tiers and only the top elite members, so the people who are flying spending the most with Southwest presumably, would get access to an unlimited companion pass with the people one tier below that getting some sort of a limited

companion benefit. No word as to whether credit card spend is going to count towards it. I mean, I guess credit card spend, you can earn tier credits right now, but the amount of spend you'd have to do in a tier credit. I mean, it's something that would be out of reach, I think for most people all of a sudden. So what do you think?

Do you think Southwest will really do this? Will they nerf the companion pass and make it an elite status only benefit? I mean, they, they've shown that they'll, they'll do anything to save money. And so, you know, including the most egregious was, was them like four months before saying, we will never do away with free check bags.

And then, then later, oh yeah, about that. So they've never said companion pass is here forever. So I mean, I'm surprised that they're even asking people what they think about it. I mean, why haven't they already done it? I mean, I'm glad they haven't already done it. The companion pass is like probably if not the best deal in travel, you know, maximizing. I don't know what else is, especially since it's been possible to sign up for, you know, two Southwest cards.

And if you do it strategically, get the companion pass for like two years. And that's like unlimited number of flights where you add a companion for free whether you're booking with miles or with cash. It's just such a ridiculously good deal. So it certainly does not surprise me at all if they're considering limiting it. Yeah, you know, I wouldn't be surprised either because it's been around. It's been so easy to get for so long that I wouldn't be surprised to see a change. I think this is really a short sighted way of looking at it though. I think a change to the companion pass might make more sense like a limited number of uses or something to that effect would be I think maybe a more reasonable way to cap whatever they feel is the cost to them on this. And I say whatever they feel is the cost to them on this.

And I say whatever they feel is the cost, because that's really where I think the short sightedness comes into play. I think that a commenter mentioned that they imagine that the accounting team, the people running the numbers, are looking at the companion pass as they're losing the revenue for that seat every time somebody flies with their companion.

And that would be one way of looking at it, that you're giving away a seat you could have sold to somebody else. But what maybe isn't being accounted for is, how many of those companion pass holders would have chosen Southwest, if not for the companion pass? There's a fair number of times they're gonna lose

that primary passenger. And so yeah, I mean, will they still fill those two seats? Maybe. I'd go even further and say, how many times would that passenger not have flown at all? Uh, right. If it wasn't for the companion, you know, so, so you get the companion pass, you, you now say, Oh, wow, I can fly like anywhere that Southwest flies

pretty cheaply with, with my, you know, significant other or whatever. And, uh, so you're probably planning a lot more like weekend getaways and things than you would have thought to do otherwise. So, right. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think, I think it's, it's probably, you know, a net win for the revenue more than, more than anything else. But well, not even probably because they, I mean, they must, a, they sell more miles to chase because of that, right because their credit cards will be far less appealing if there's no companion pass to earn with them so I think they'll have far fewer people

applying for their credit cards number one number two lots of people illogically I'll say continue to collect lots of southwest points looking at them as having double value and we've talked about why that's the fallacy before but plenty of people aren't particularly good with the numbers and the math and can get tricked into thinking that their points are worth double. And so they continue to collect miles either through the shopping portal or by credit card spend or whatever other ways.

And to be clear, all of those things can be good. I'm not saying you shouldn't collect miles that way. I'm just saying that people will make comparatively poor decisions sometimes in terms of earning that and earn far more miles. That again, increases the revenue for Southwest. I think the companion pass is a fantastic deal. I've said I think it's the best deal in domestic travel plenty of times before. However, it's also a great moneymaker for Southwest. I think it's financially it seems like it makes sense.

I think they're really short sighted if they if they make those changes. It's not just that I'll be disappointed. I just think from a financial standpoint that is going to be a loss for them. I think. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Alright, awards points and more. Let's talk about awards points and more. Flying Blue, better saver, they famously have business class awards to and from Europe and between North America and Europe for starting at 60,000 miles, which can be a great deal, especially when there's a transfer bonus to Flying Blue from one of the bank programs, which they often have those transfer bonuses. And so that gave me a great deal.

And one mile a time discovered that as a platinum member, he was seeing a lot more 60K award availability than when logged in with someone else's account. And so that has been confirmed from other people that it seems to be that you have to have platinum status to see that better, um, board availability, unfortunately, and I'm saying unfortunately, cause it's pretty hard to get to platinum status, whereas like silver is pretty easy. Gold isn't that hard. I mean, it's relatively not that hard.

Anyway, um, so, Anyway, so that's interesting, good to know that there might be some reason if you're trying to decide what program to credit things to. If you think you have a path to platinum, that might be a good choice if you want, if you like to rely on flying blue awards. In the comments of our post about this, Lee wrote in a really interesting finding. I have no way of confirming this, but Lee says I'm platinum and I'm seeing lower point prices on Delta flights. So yeah, right. So, you know, what Lucky was reporting, what one mile time was reporting was

that, uh, he was seeing those saver awards on flying Air France and KLM. He didn't notice or didn't report on flying a partner airline. So Delta would be a partner airline in this case. And that would just be a really weird situation if they're somehow able to make awards on flying on Delta cheaper because you have platinum status and now they can they can choose to charge less. I guess. Well, yeah, they can. It's just it's just unusual.

Like we don't see that very, very unusual. Yeah. But it could be that that's a perk that they're, you know, informally offering to people, to top elites or high level elites, certainly makes me more interested in going after platinum than I would be otherwise. Cause you know, being in a Delta hub, if I could get reasonably priced awards flying Delta, especially Delta one out of, out of here, out of Detroit, that would be really nice.

It's just very, very rare. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I mean, very interesting if that works and if we find that to be more widespread, who knows? So how can you get platinum status? I mean, obviously you could fly a lot and credit a lot of flights to KLM flying blue.

Are there shortcuts? Yeah, I mean, one shortcut that jumps out to me is that if you happen to have built platinum status, which is not as easy as it used to be to get that, then there's an ongoing deal where if you transfer 10,000 points from built to flying blue, you get flying blue gold status. So that gets you a big part of the way. And then there's an incremental requirement

to get to Platinum status. So unlike some programs, if you get matched to a certain level of status, that doesn't help you to get to the next level. Like you got to always start from the beginning. That's different here. Like, so I think it's 300 XP's from Gold gold to platinum, but don't quote me on that. I'm not, I didn't do the research to double check that, but however many XPs you need,

which are flying blues points required to get to elite status. Um, you could then get them from things like flying, obviously, including flying Delta and crediting to the flights to flying blue. Um, you could get the Air France, uh, France credit card and that gives you a whole bunch of XP's right off the bat and you can get more through spend with that card. And Air France also has a deal where when you're buying a ticket, you can choose to also pay for sustainable fuel credits or offsets or something and get earn XP's that way. So there's a number of ways you can get to platinum.

I haven't sort of run the numbers personally to see is it something I'm going to want to do. I want to hear more data points first about the better award availability, especially on Delta, if that's a real thing before I think about it. But my situation is this, I have built platinum status, but only through the end of this year, I'm not planning on trying to re up platinum status going forward, so I need to decide by the end of this year, whether to do that match and then try to get a flying blue platinum. Interesting. Very, very interesting. For those who are listening and kind of curious that the,

at the time we're recording that Air France KLM flying blue card comes to the total of a hundred XP after you meet the spending requirement. Now Greg said you can earn more XP through spend. And I think according to our card page, anyway, it's a big spend bonus where you get 40 XPs after anniversary if you spend 15 K or more during the year. So I don't think there's like an ongoing spend opportunity for XP on that card. I don't think at least not according to our

card page and not according to what I found on the landing page but but I'm sure that there are plenty of other ways to earn XPs. I'll be curious to see what you find because if you find a way to do it, I think people will be really interested in hearing about it. So I kind of hope you find a way and make it work. All right. Let's talk about some jet blue promo updates. So quick reminder of what's going on when we say jet blue promo jet blue is out

with their 25 for 25 promotion, which we talked about last week. We have an entire episode about this, but the short version of the story is if you fly to 25 JetBlue destinations that's 25 airports served by JetBlue then you'll get 350,000 JetBlue True Blue Points and 25 years of JetBlue Mosaic One status. Now of course who knows whether or not JetBlue will be around for 25 years.

You can hear all of our thoughts about that on our episode about this promotion, which hopefully there will be a link to in the show notes and at any rate, let's talk about where we are with this. I guess right? I mean we talked all about it last week.

We got all excited. So what are we doing? Well, yeah, yeah, so I guess I'll go first. So what are we doing? Well, yeah, yeah. So I guess I'll go first. So we I wrote a post about how my family could use 582,000 membership rewards points to earn 1.4 million JetBlue miles. I was actually after we recorded last week's podcast.

I got thinking about it and wrote that up and created a plan. And so so figured with again 582,000 membership rewards points. I laid out a plan to earn 1.4 million miles and we would end up with 25 years of elite status for all of us. But I said in the post we could do this, but we're probably not going to do it because my wife was just not interested in flying around that much and she loves to travel but hates to fly. So she doesn't like to fly somewhere for two days that's not her style at all and I know that so I didn't expect that we

would probably do it but I was excited about the idea and I think she could see that and then she also saw all of the comments from readers who said you should do it you should do it you should do it and thank you because I think you guys made an impression. So eventually she's like, well, tell me what this would look like. And then she's like, I know people want to see you do it. So alright, if you want to do it, I'll do it. And so that came out of kind of out of nowhere. So we're going to go ahead and do it. We're going to try to hit all 25.

I don't know if we'll hit all 25 in August because we have a couple of travel plans later this year. We'll probably hit 20 by the end of August is the hope. We're gonna tweak it though. So the plan that I published is not gonna be exactly what we're gonna do. There were some stops she thought were longer than needed to be and other places to go. And in fact, just this morning at breakfast, she said, well, I was looking at flight connections and I see there's a flight from here to there and I was like, whoa, look at you go. there's a flight from here to there. And I was like, Whoa, look at you go.

Look at you go. Came out, I was, I was blown away. So, so anyway, so we're doing it. She's in on it. She's helping plan. So that's great. But I looked at it and I said, well, you know, there's a way that I could make this

a little bit more comfortable because on Mondays until September 1st, JetBlue is offering these Duncan flights. And again, we talked about this on last week's show where selected flights on most Mondays earn three months of JetBlue Elite status just by flying that particular Duncan plane. So there's like four routes. I think that if you fly on a given Monday, then you'll you'll get elite status for

three months and so this coming Monday July 7th they released those Duncan flights. They only release these on Tuesdays, the Tuesday before the following Monday. They tell you which ones are going to qualify and get you elite status. So they did that this week and I took a look at it and I was like, oh, well, this would be kind of interesting and I thought to myself that we would all need to do it so we could all get mosaic status and it wasn't terribly convenient for all of us to do it. But then I realized well, we don't all need mosaic

status because many of the mosaic benefits apply to other travelers on the same reservation. So I realized well, you know if I just did the Duncan flight or one of the Duncan flights by myself, then everybody in my reservation would get free check bags and I think we'd all get extra legroom seating at check-in if it's available. So if I just went into the Duncan flight, then I would make hopefully the rest of our trip more comfortable. You get priority check in. Again, we get

the bags, hopefully the extra legroom seats. So I decided, okay, you know what? I gotta do this and I gotta do it soon because it says it can take up to two weeks for the mosaic status to reflect in your account. And we're talking about taking off in the first days of August or maybe even the end of July. So I wanted to get it in as soon as possible. So this Monday, July 7th, I'm taking one of the Duncan flights. I booked that flight through Capital One Travel and I did that because my wife had credit from her

Venture X, the annual $300 travel credit. So I used that towards paying for this flight. And so that was all well and good, but then after I published the post, so I bought the flight a few hours later, published a post about how I was going to do the Duncan flight and whatnot. And then a few hours after that I got a

text message from a friend saying, hey, see you Monday. I'm taking the same flight and in the text message he sent a screenshot of like sort of like his confirmation so I could see how much he paid and I said, you got a better deal than I did did you know I assumed that maybe he had booked it earlier but he said I just booked it you can probably rebook yours and I was like oh interesting sure enough price had dropped by 50 bucks and so I got looking at Capital One because I thought they have they have price protection they have what's called price protection price drop protection but I found that that only applies in certain circumstances and so I benefited from this before but what I didn't realize until I got digging into the terms yesterday was that oh the price drop protection the way it works is they have this price prediction

software that says oh the price is good you should buy now and if it tells you that and you buy and then the price drops after it within the next 10 days after you buy, then they'll refund the difference in the form of a travel credit up to $50. I can't remember whether it said to buy or not, because I wasn't looking at that. That didn't matter to me at the time. I was just looking to make this work. So and in fact, prices are pretty high because I'm booking six days in advance. So I'm thinking it probably didn't tell me I should buy. I don't know for sure though so and of course I read into it and that price

drop protection happens automatically but not until after the 10 days are up following booking so I wouldn't know whether or not it's going to automatically kick in until after I've flown the flight. However, capital One also offers price match guarantee and the price match guarantee says if you find a lower price anywhere within 24 hours, then you call and if an agent can verify it over the phone, they instantly offer you a credit for the difference. So that's what I had my wife do. She called, spoke to an agent.

Whole thing took just a few minutes. The agent had to put her on hold, but he just asked for the capital one travel ID. The you know the flight information where we found the better price. And I said jetblue.com. It was also available for less via capital one travel, but I didn't want to push that thinking he might say, oh well, you're going to get the

price drop protection. You'll be fine. Wanted to make sure we push this through, so we matched to jetblue.com and sure enough, he was able to verify that in just a couple of minutes and came back and instantly issued the $50 credit. So it was very easy. The whole call took less than 10 minutes and most of that time was just sitting on hold while he checked to make sure that he found the lower price. So is that capital on travel credit that you get?

It is. Capital on travel credit, not cash. So that's sort of the downside, but the plus side on that is that my wife's $300 annual travel credit would have expired on November 10th, but now I've got this, I essentially turned $50 of it into this price match credit that doesn't show an expiration date. So I think I'm missing a part of this because couldn't you have just gone in and changed the flight and picked the same flight at just gone in and changed the flight and picked the same flight at that lower price and gotten the credit that way? Good question. So I tried to do that in the Capital One Travel portal, but changing to the same flight just showed a plus zero dollar change. So it did not show like with Southwest when you go to rebook, if the price has

gone down, it shows a negative price with Capital travel. It just showed plus $0 for that. So, and it was the same with other flights that were less expensive. It just said plus $0 to change to those. So I don't think they give you back. What about cancel and rebook that? That's the next question, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Could I have canceled and rebooked? And the answer to that is I think so. But here's the thing, the federal regulations around 24 hour cancellation is based on booking at least seven days in advance because the jet blue flights come out six days in advance. I'm not sure that you're protected with the 24 hour cancellation thing. Now it looked like I could cancel online through Capital One travel and it would

issue a jet blue credit that could be used through track Capital One Travel and it would issue a JetBlue credit that could be used through Capital One Travel and it sounded like as I read it like I could have done that online and I could have rebooked using that credit online. I didn't want a chance that that was going to turn into a situation where it can only be booked over the phone and you gotta call and find the person who knows how to use your JetBlue credit. I figured if we can do this and just get the $50 credit back, that's what it was in the first place. It wasn't a refund to my credit card anyway.

It was going to be refunded. Yeah. So that's why we did the price match, but good. Yes, that is probably something I could have done also. All right. All right. So that's a really great information. And I'm going to say something again,

that I think I said on a previous show, which is if you use Google Flights and you have the pro version of Points Path installed, every time you're actually that part isn't necessary for this story, but anyway, every time you're looking up a flight and you decide on Google Flights and you decide to book it, click the button to watch the price on Google flights. And if you're looking at booking with points, click the points path button to watch that flight with points path and you'll get alerted or you should. Some people have told me they've had problems

getting alerts from Google, but I've had no problem with this. You should get alerted when the price goes down and you don't have to wait for a friend to book the same exact flight. Yeah, that was really cool. Google, but I've had no problem with this. You should get alerted when the price goes down and you don't have to wait for a friend to book the same exact flight. Yeah, that was really lucky because I totally was not checking the price of that flight again.

I booked it. It was taking off in a few days. I didn't even consider that the price might drop still. So I was not looking at that at all. If he hadn't sent that text message, then it just would have cost me an extra 50 bucks. Now I got 50 bucks for a future trip. So if you're listening out there, you know who you are.

I'll get you a drink in the Sapphire lounge. It's on me. It's on me. A tip though with JetBlue, when you're booking with miles, with JetBlue miles, and you watch the price with Points Path, it goes down. You can go into your JetBlue reservation, modify it, redo the same one, and they'll give you points back. But what I discovered the hard way is you can only do that once. The second time you go in, when you try to modify it or cancel it, it says, this can't be done online because

this has already been modified. So then I had to like, I had to go into a chat I could have called and ask them to cancel it for me and refund it, which was fine. It wasn't a problem, but it made me realize that like, if you have enough jet blue points, you're better off when the price goes down, just rebook it and cancel your old booking. That way you can always make one modification for free when you need to do it quickly. So yeah, anyway, just a little safety tip there.

Good safety tip, good safety tip. Okay, what about you? I mean, you're doing this or what? Craig, I mean, come on. Oh man. I've got such a story here too. I'm loving your story. Okay. So what's gone before is when this promo first came out,

I spent all day, I was really excited about it. My wife happened to be away on a business trip. And so I was home just like plotting out our future. And I looked at all these ways that we could like do weekend trips and get like anywhere from two to four new destinations each time. And then I started like figuring out what that would actually mean. So towards the end of that long day of planning, I was like, you know what?

Given the trips we already have planned and how many weekends we would have to do this flying around, we'd only have at most one weekend at home a month for the rest of the year. And as much as I like to travel, I kind of like to be home sometimes too. So I got discouraged and gave up on it. Well, then my wife comes home from the business trip

and I tell her about the JetBlue thing and I'm about to tell her, you know, I decided not to do it. But she's like, that sounds like fun. We should do that. I was like, what? So her enthusiasm was infectious. And I got all into it again. And so on last Sunday, so the

Sunday before July 4, weekend, we're looking at the July 4 weekend and and, you know, my wife could take off Thursday. So we'd have a four day weekend. I, we spent all day Sunday working together, coming up with routes and there were discouraging things. Like I first had it, like we'd fly into Nantucket on one day, enjoy Nantucket. Then the next morning fly to Martha's Vineyard via New York, I think it was, um, you know, and, and enjoy Martha's Vineyard. And then the next day, I think it was like fly to Nashville or something. Anyway, we had, I had it all plotted out by the time I went to book it.

The Nantucket part of it skyrocketed in price. So had to redo the plans. And now it was like, go to Martha's Vineyard and then fly to Nashville. And then the next day, fly to Chicago, which that's way out of the way from Nashville, by the way, because you got to fly all the way to New York and then all the way back across the country to Chicago. And then home from there on a different, on an award ticket. And that's what I booked on Sunday evening.

And then, you know, then I go to get ready for bed and my wife, I guess, started looking at her calendar. And she was like, I don't think we're going to have any time at home. You're like, yeah, I noticed that at one point. Yeah. Yeah. So her enthusiasm went completely away. And it wasn't helped by the fact that a friend, due to a Delta meltdown, it didn't have anything to do with JetBlue, but a friend got stuck in Boston for two days because of flights canceled.

And we were thinking, well, what's the chance of that happening during July 4th weekend when we're flying all over the place? Pretty good. Yeah. So, yeah, so we did a 180 and was like, all right, forget it. We won't do it. But I still had my plan for how maybe I could do it myself by flying entirely on Mondays. My idea was this.

I had seen that Duncan flight, the plane that is plaster plaster with donuts all over the side of it. It the the schedule for for the the Monday that just passed as we're recording this was to fly to something like four different destinations. So the one plane would go from one to another to another. And I thought, man, if I could pick up like, four or five destinations every Monday, just by flying on the Duncan plane, it'd be expensive, but I'd be pretty much guaranteed that, like, I'm not going to get stuck missing a connection because it's probably the same exact jet, right? Yeah. So I thought that'd be good. So I had to wait till Tuesday of this week, the same Tuesday that Nick

was waiting to see what the schedule would look like. I had to wait till then to see, are they rotating? Are they doing different destinations every Monday? Because if they're not, my plan is gone. Well, it turned out it was the same set of destinations. As far as I could tell, it was the same exact route, but I didn't write down what the previous one was. So unless they're going to be changing it up from here on out, I think my plan's gone.

And so I've given up on the JetBlue promo as SingStan right now. It's not for me. I am so tempted to join Nick and our friend Julian on that flight, on the one Duncan flight that they're both flying. But I just looked into the finances of it. It's like doing this just for fun. I mean, yes, I'd get mosaic, but it would only help me for a few upcoming flights after that. So there wouldn't be a lot of value in that. It would just cost a lot either in points or dollars or both because I have to get to LaGuardia. I have to get home from Orlando and I have to fly that one flight, all of which, you know, hundreds of dollars for each one of those. So, um, it just doesn't make sense.

Darn it. No, it probably, it probably, I mean, it makes much make sense. Darn it, no, I probably probably. I mean it makes much more sense for me because we're going to try to pack almost all of the 25 flights into the three months when I'll have temporary mosaic status, but if you were going after this challenge and you were going to do it

over the course of the rest of the year, then the Duncan flight thing is less useful for you. Because like Greg said, it would only help you for the next few weeks or months or whatever. So if you're not going to do all of your your qualifying flights within that three month window, then the mosaic temporary mosaic

status may not be as valuable to you, I we're going to look to do, you know, 20 flights, probably by the end of August. So or more flights, 20 destinations, even more flights. So the mosaic benefits will come in handy very frequently for me, but not so much for you. So yeah, that would be a, I think, a much more difficult prospect. However, this begs the question though, if the Duncan plane is flying around spot to spot, so four different destinations on Monday, because like Greg said, it's the same plane. It flies Orlando this week. This coming week, July 7th, flies Orlando to LaGuardia, LaGuardia to Orlando, Orlando to Washington, DC, and then

Washington, DC to Palm Beach. So it's one plane the whole way. And Greg's point is that if one of those gets delayed, they're all getting delayed because it's the same plane the whole way. So you don't have to worry so much about what if my flight gets delayed and I miss the next leg. So that's the idea behind booking all four of those even though there's they'd be separate tickets all on the same day that's pretty risky under normal circumstances because if you hit a delay or cancellation what happens to the rest of your day right but in this case that seems

safer so I mean there must be other planes that do that right is there a way to figure that out I would think so I tried really hard um I looked at flight radar 24. It lets you see, like in the past, I could see that some planes do that. But here's what I realized. For one thing, I couldn't predict it. Like the ones I found didn't seem predictable to do that every, you know, every Monday or whatever, like on a set schedule. But also if it's just some random plane, if there is a delay, they might bring in a different plane to fly that next leg, right? And that'd be a problem.

Yeah, so this is special because I think there's only one plane that they painted with donuts all over it, right? Donuts and coffee and whatever else. Probably, there's probably only one. But here's the thing that everybody's been waiting to hear right? Donuts and coffee and whatever else. Probably. It's probably only one. Here's the thing that everybody's been waiting to hear for, for sure is, are you going to get free donuts on this Duncan voyage? I don't know. I mean, wasn't there one just a couple of days ago?

There should be some reports out there somewhere. Uh, cause there were flights on, uh, on the 30th, but I don't know if there's free donuts. I, I, I hope that there's free donuts and I hope that there is not Duncan coffee, but anyway. You're not a fan. No, I'm not a fan of Duncan coffee, but I, you know what? I say that and I had felt that way for a long time, but when the Amex Gold card came out with their monthly Duncan credit, I said, you know what?

I can deal with one bad cup of coffee a month. That's fine. I'm okay with it, even though I don't like Duncan. And If you like Duncan, hey, that's fine. My dad loves Duncan. So don't don't take this as me slamming Duncan. Well, it is me slamming Duncan. Nonetheless, I finally stopped at a Duncan because I've been using the app. We have a list of shortcuts for stuff like that. So I've been using the app and just loading the seven bucks in my Duncan account every every month. And I finally got to the point where they were like, OK, you can't put any more money on this Duncan card. You need to create a new Duncan card to start adding your seven bucks to because I haven't been using it. So finally, yesterday, as we record this, I went to Duncan for the first time since they launched that credit, I think, and had my first cup of Duncan coffee in probably a couple of years.

And I was like, I don't know, I'm going to get through all those seven dollar monthly credit. But we'll see. So we'll be running on Duncan and I. We forgot to mention another thing, right? You are not gonna only get, you're not just gonna get JetBlue Elite status, you're gonna get Duncan status.

Duncan, Duncan Boosted status is what it's called. Boosted status. So are they gonna give you upgraded donuts or how's that? And they only boost you for three months, same as Mosaic One. No, you get extra points. You get two extra points per dollar you spend at Duncan for three months, Greg.

Okay, all right, well. So it's gonna add up to, the interesting thing about that is no matter how many extra points you add times zero dollars spent at Duncan will still be zero points. Yeah so we'll see how that works out. Normally by the way if you're curious about the Duncan boosted status normally you need to go to Duncan 12 times in a calendar month to get boosted status and then you get it for three months as long as you keep going 12 times a month, it just keeps getting extended.

And then if you stop going 12 times a month, it doesn't get extended, but hopefully then if you stop going 12 times a month, you stop eating donuts 12 times a month, which might be good. So anyway, that's, it's, it does not sound like a way to boost your, your, your health. It'll boost your glucose level, I'm sure. For sure. But anyway, so that's that.

So Duncan, I'll be there with you on Monday, Duncan, and maybe Greg will change his mind. And last minute, all of a sudden, a great award will open up, and maybe I'll turn around to the gate, and there he'll be, who knows? Maybe I will. Every time I think about it or talk about it,

I'm like, I should just do it. Who cares if it costs a lot? That sounds like fun. But then I think about the actual process of sitting there. I don't even know if I could sit near you. Who knows if we'd get seats near each other. Um, so just sitting there on a plane for no reason. Yeah.

It'll be three flights for no reason other than to sit inside the plane that looks cool on the outside, right? Right? Right. Right. That's marketing dollars at work there, isn't it? Otherwise, same experience. Yes. So, but anyway, I mean, it could be fun. It could be fun. So there you go. You'll have to mull that over. But let us know in the comments of the video or reach out to us through the blog or through giant mailbag and let us know if I should do this, why or why not. You have to get on it quickly though because this is going to publish a couple days before that flight. So you have to like pause things right now and tell Greg if he should be on that flight to Orlando on Monday. Yeah, I should book all like cancelable, you know, freely cancelable stuff.

So there you go. I can make the decision last minute, you know, freely cancelable stuff. So there you go. I can make the decision last minute. There you go. There you go. Well done. Smart. That's that's Greg the Freak-O-Miler thinking right there. Well done. All right. Let's get into this week.

Speaking of flying all around the world, let's get into this week's main event. Main event time. Turkish Airlines fly to six continents continents earn one million miles. So yeah, Turkish just they love the SAS promo. They're like, we want in on that. We heard Greg and Nick talk about how it would make more sense to, to, you know, give someone a million miles for flying your own airline instead of partners.

So they're like, yeah, let's do that. And so here's how their promo works. instead of partners. So they're like, yeah, let's do that. And so here's how their promo works. You just in the, during the qualified dates, if you fly Turkish airlines on a paid ticket to six continents, you'll earn million miles. Now you have to, well, I'll get into the rules about what you have to do. The qualifying dates are between June 27th. So it's, you know, the qualifying starts already passed

and October 27th. So as long as you complete all your flights by October 27th, you're good. The continents are kind of obviously Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. Oceania, the only flights Turkish has to Oceania are to Australia. They have Sydney and Melbourne flights, so Oceania really means Australia. Now here's where it gets a little bit tricky is that eligible flights must either originate from or transit through Turkey.

So, um, if you are, you know, flying, uh, if you're flying to Istanbul, uh, you're flying to Turkey from somewhere else, like you don't get credit for that somewhere else as one of the continents and you don't get credit for Europe or Asia flying into Turkey. Right. So you got to transit through there to get somewhere else where you're going to start there to get somewhere else. Turkey itself does not count for anything. I think that's a really important point. It doesn't count for Europe or Asia. You have to transit it to go to another continent. So that's a really important role. And to flesh that out a little bit,

Turkish does have some fifth freedom routes where they fly from one region that's not Turkey to another region that's not Turkey, like Singapore to Melbourne, Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires are a couple examples that they specifically call out and those flights don't count. Because they're not originating

or transiting through Turkey. Yeah, yeah. So that makes it a little tougher. You can't get creative there. You might've thought, oh, I can kind of creatively do this without having to go through Turkey every time. I don't know, you have to go through Turkey every time. I don't know. You do. You have to go through Turkey.

Yeah. Every time not only that, but you need to be booking paid revenue tickets, no award tickets. Can't use even your Turkish miles. Award tickets do not count for this. Right. Right. And no code share flights. You can't, uh, you know, through Turkish airlines, for example, you could buy a flight on United that goes somewhere, but that won't count. You have to actually be flying Turkish Airlines itself.

Yeah, okay. So that sounds like a lot of rules and it is some rules, although I gotta say, I've talked lukewarmly about this thus far elsewhere, you far elsewhere off the podcast. But I have to say a million miles is something that before the SAS promo, if you asked me what would be a huge massive promotion for an airline to run, I would have been like, oh, giving out a hundred thousand miles at once would be pretty wild and crazy. You know, if you told me the airline was considering half a million, I'd be like,

are you crazy? Really? What do you got to do for that? Uh, a million miles is something I would not have remotely expected to see an airline do. And when SAS did it, we were blown away by that huge carrot that they were offering. And so we thought it was amazing. And we said it would be amazing if an airline offered that just to fly on their own flights like Craig said and and Turkish is doing that and I I almost feel like

they're not getting enough credit because it's too easy to compare to SAS and be like oh you know SAS did it now Turkish is doing it a million miles is a huge huge incentive to fly so and obviously you can use those miles a lot of different ways. You can use them to fly in Turkish. You can use them to fly in Star Alliance partners. Remember the domestic flights on Star Alliance partners cost 10,000 miles each way in economy or 15,000 each way in business class. So if you can

find United flights available to Turkish, which is a big if, but if you can, then you're talking 10,000 miles each way in economy or 15 K each way in business, which you can fly New York to Honolulu for 10,000 miles in economy or Anchorage to, I don't know, Miami for 10,000 miles in economy. So you've got a lot of different options within the United States or other big star Alliance countries to use those miles pretty well. Now their award chart has changed for travel on Turkish and Star Alliance partners, and it costs more than it used to.

But there still are some opportunities where you can get a decent deal. So a million miles. That's pretty valuable. Still, I'm going to say a little bit more to about that, which is that flights on Turkish itself, if you if Turkish flies out of your home airport or an airport easy to get to for you, the award pricing at the saver level is good. I mean, not great, but good.

I mean, I think you started something like 65K business class from North America to Europe, something like that. business class from North America to Europe, something like that. And double price or roughly double price is better availability. It's still not available for all flights, but you get better availability at double price. And I'm bringing that up because, you know, if you get a million miles, you might be like, hey, I'm gonna have so many miles that when I wanna fly, wherever I wanna fly to, I'm willing to spend a lot more miles

and it's gonna give me the freedom to say, yeah, that's fine, I'll spend 135,000 miles to fly to Europe or wherever. And Turkish has an amazing route network around the world. So you can get to a lot of places if you don't mind flying through Istanbul. And I think you can book, I'm not sure how it works with award tickets, but I think you could book free stopovers in Istanbul as well. And so you can enjoy that.

And then if you can make this work, they have free layover, free stopover programs where you might get free hotels and things like that as well while you're there. So there's some fun things you could do once you get all those miles that's worth considering. Downside, miles expire in three years. They're gone. There's no way to extend the life of them. Yeah, and that certainly is a downside. Although usually they expire in three years, but I think if I'm not mistaken, I think if you fly this in business class,

if you meet the requirements in business class, they're not gonna expire until 2030, right? So that rule disappeared. Oh, the business class part of it. So initially they had a rule about like economy, the miles expire in like a year and a half, and business, the miles expire in three and a half. But both of those rules disappeared. So presumably they're expiring like normal miles expire. Yeah. All right. Never mind. I didn't realize it expired already. They were moved down the business side too. All right. So yeah. All right. So three year expiration policy.

So we got to be able to use them or lose them. And there's no way normally to extend Turkish miles. Well, I say there's no, I think you could pay a fee, but it's not a reasonable amount. But all right, let's say, let's say you got one cent per mile out of the miles and you should be able to do better than that. But if you got one cent per mile out of the miles, you're talking about about $10,000 worth of miles at a million miles. So it's still a lot.

Obviously you could do better than that. I mean, man, you got two cents per mile, you're talking 20 grand worth of travel. So there's a lot of opportunity there, but I think when you said downside, I thought where you were going with this is, but you gotta fly a lot. Six continents, you know, with this is, but you're gonna fly a lot. Because six continents, you know, like this is-

You do, but you can do it in one big trip. I mean, it's a really big trip, but you could. So let me just give it like a very high level outline of how it could be done. I mean, there's so many ways to do it though, but here's an example. You could book a round trip from North America to Australia and have layovers in Istanbul,

stopovers in Istanbul in both directions. And so the idea is when you're in Istanbul, then you do other flights to get the different countries. And a lot of the continents are really close. So once you're in Istanbul, you can fly to Europe, like go to Athens or Bulgaria. There are really close airports that you can fly to very cheaply. You can make a trip out of it or you could just do a same day there and back just to chalk off out of it, or you could just do a same day there and back just to chalk off Europe. You could do Asia by going to Middle East.

Kuwait city I saw is really, really cheap. You could go to, you know, Bahrain. It depends where you want to go, I guess, but there are options that are inexpensive. You could go to get Africa. You could go to Cairo. And again, whether or not you want a vacation there, you could do a kind of a same day back and forth just to knock off that the the one that you can't really knock off that way is going to South America. So so let's say you're flying to Australia

as part of your big round trip. You do that stopover in Istanbul. You do those little hops to get Europe, Asia and Africa done, boom. You continue on to Australia, enjoy your trip to Australia. On your way back, you stop over in Istanbul again. I'm assuming that that's allowed, but if not, you'd have to do it all

in one big stopover on the way out. But now you do a sub trip where you fly round trip to South America. You enjoy South America, I wouldn't try to do a same day turn on that one and come back and then continue your round trip back to North America.

And then you finally get the North American continent on that last leg when you return home. So that's how it can be done in one big epic trip. And so it's not like, I think you could have a lot of fun on that. And depending on how much time you have available, you could actually enjoy going to Europe, enjoy going to the Middle East, enjoy going to Africa,

and South America and Australia and all that, if you had time, and if you didn't, you still at least have major destinations that you're enjoying. You're enjoying Istanbul, you're enjoying Australia, you're enjoying South America, wherever you go in South America as part of it, and then you're doing that kind of work in between

to get those few other. So it's not that bad. It's actually, I think it's way, way easier, not necessarily cheaper, but way, way easier than the JetBlue promo. Yeah, it is because yes, yes, it's easier. It involves much longer distances. And I think the thing that maybe is easy to not account for.

Here is the time because you're talking from North America to Istanbul is like a 10 hour flight. I assume it's probably and more longer depending on talking East Coast is to post 10 hours so and then I press gotta be at least that to get South America from Istanbul getting to Sydney from Istanbul is probably longer than that. So like you're talking in both directions, right? Because you've got to

pick up each place as a destination and originating in North America doesn't get you North America, you've got to fly to North America or same thing with South America. So you're gonna have to fly to South America from Turkey and back to Turkey. So you're talking at least 20 hours on the plane, plus whatever time in between. So it can't be done quickly necessarily, or at least not pleasantly quickly.

And if you were looking to do it cheaply, first of all, it's not going to be that cheap. And second of all, those are a lot of long economy class flights. If you're, you know, if you're trying to do this in any kind of compact time period, that's a lot of time to be sitting in a kind of a cramped seat and for not necessarily that cheap in economy even because some of

those flights are pricey but you're right. I mean if you're strategic about it, you could put something together and I'm not I'm not surprised you're excited and in fact my wife was more excited about this than the jet blue promotion, believe it or not. Because she was like, Oh, but you can go to Australia, you can go to South America and places that she was interested in going and thought would be cool. Of course, she had no interest in doing it in economy classes, a family of four. So right, so you should do this,

though, it'd be so much fun. You know, you'd love it. And I was like, yeah, I'd love going to the places. I don't know. I'd love the long flights unless I were doing it in business class, which seems like it'd have to be more expensive, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So the next question in our outline is, are we going for it? Sounds like you just answered that. Yeah. I mean, I don't think so. I don't know. I mean, I'm not going to totally give up on it yet, but I don't know when I would

do it, first of all. And second of all, I think I'd only want to do it if long haul flights were in business class. And that seems like it would make it too expensive. But I say seems like because your point about the stopover in Istanbul on the way to Sydney, and then like doing the work in the middle there, I don't know, maybe you've got a point there. And I have found some less expensive business class tickets originating from either Cairo or Tunisia, the airport Tunisia also has some very good pricing.

So you know, I did like a multi city example where I think I started in in somewhere I go into Tunisia, I did like a multi city example where I think I started in in somewhere. I go in Tunisia. I think actually is what it was. I did Tunisia, Istanbul, Washington, D.C., Washington, D.C., Istanbul, Sydney, and that whole bit was like $3,000 in business class and I'd pick up North America and it would pick up Australia. So you know, there are some opportunities like that, but it still would become a lot

of money pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah. All right. So I'm, I was very interested. I've plotted out a route that I didn't connect all the dots, but it looked like prices were all available in kind of like mid August when I would probably do this if I did it at all and that's important because some routes you see like the really cheap prices are in November and that would be past the

qualifying period or October which is within it but if other prices are in August you know or July then you can't match them up. Anyway, so, unless you do multiple trips, here's, here's what I plotted out. My, my requirement is I am not going to do this unless the long haul flights are in business class. And if the long haul flights are in business class, then I think, I think I can make a really nice trip out of it. I found that flying from Detroit, Athens seems to be a cheap destination.

So I could do round trip from Detroit for less than $2,500 in business class to Athens. So that of course goes through Istanbul. And so if I was doing this, that would be the two like bookends of my trip, would be this round trip just to get to Athens, get close to Istanbul basically, for $2,500. Then I would do something like, and I didn't look into Tunisia, so just one example is flying Athens to Cairo through Istanbul is less than $300. That gets me Africa. And then And then starting in Africa to get to Sydney is $2,400 one way. During that time I was looking at, it gets a little bit cheaper at other times.

But so $2,400 to get a business class to Australia. Coming back to Istanbul, I would probably just take an award flight. And then I would knock out Asia by going Istanbul to Kuwait for $118 in economy. So these short flights, I would just book economy, and that's fine for the short ones. And then Kuwait to Sofia. Now you might wonder, why am I going to Sofia? I've already gotten Europe. So I'm going to Sofia just as a positioning flight. So I don't have to book that with Turkish.

I could just do that whatever way is cheapest, book an award flight, whatever. I found that round trip from Sofia to South America in business class is pretty inexpensive. I mean, it's still getting up there over $2,500 round trip, but not terrible. So I found that for about $2,700 complete round trip. But then I found, oh, wait a minute,

if I do a multi-city, Sofia to Bogota, South America, and then back to Athens, rather than back to Sofia, it only costs about $200 more. So I'm going to do that because I need a position back to Athens in order to come home to Detroit on the last part of my round trip. So all of that doesn't sound bad as far as like the amount of flying, the, you know, it seems like you can enjoy yourself at the different destinations. It comes to just over $8,000 though. So it's definitely not a cheap, you know, trip.

The way I think about is this, if I wanted to take this trip, if I wanted to go to Australia, if I wanted to go to South America, I'd say this is a fairly expensive way to do it in business class, but not an unreasonable price to do it, especially since I'd be getting back a million miles for the effort.

So I would do it. In fact, my wife has coming up a paid business class trip to Australia where it hasn't been booked yet. So we could do this and have that and not exactly as I laid out. Cause the round trip to Australia would have to be the, the, the bookends of the whole thing. But, um, her trips in November and it's outside the, it's outside the qualifying time.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. outside the qualifying time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, that stinks. It stinks. It stinks. So, so now it's like, well, I could do this myself and then I have enough miles to go with her, uh, you know, on her trip, uh, using the, the, the Turkish miles I earn, but I wouldn't get the miles until right before the trip. So it's not really practical to do that for that reason.

Um, plus I've been trying to, um, last year when, when we did two challenges, uh, which is unusual for our team to do. I, my wife's like, are you going to be away all the time? You know, and I was like, next year will be different. And then she was like, Oh, we're going to do the jet blue thing. Are you the Turkish thing? Exactly. So it's, so it's like, Oh, I don't want to be away from her that long.

And again, so that was a very long way of saying, I don't think I'm doing it either, but it's, it's much more interesting to me. I would, I would be interested in that slush fund of Turkish miles so that I could fly Turkish out of Detroit almost whenever I want to, but, um, the other thing that stops me that three year expiration, it would, it would, it would hamstring me because like, even when I found better award flights to where I want to go through other airlines I would still feel like I need to use my Turkish miles because they're gonna expire in three years

And so I I don't like that idea. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's certainly a great point I think if you're a solo traveler, this is pretty appealing, you know or or you're traveling in a pair Maybe maybe if you're traveling as a couple as a family, I think it's it wouldn't appeal to me as much and I'll get back to that in a second. But if you're traveling like as a solo traveler, a pair, I look at it and say, well, this is a pretty darn good rebate like you know, cuz like Greg said a little over 8 grand for what he's he'd have to spend to do that mostly

pretty comfortably. So if you wanted to go to all those places, you have the time to actually spend in those places. This is a fantastic rebate on a bucket list trip, right? I mean, like it really is. Yeah, I mean, all intents and purposes. You could put together a bucket list worthy trip and get your bucket refilled in miles at the end. So you know that's that's pretty good.

I'd start to get hesitant doing that multiple passengers because you're building up so many Turkish miles and you only have three years to use them. And so, you know, that's the part that starts to get a little hairy there. And then like, if you're like us and you've got SAS miles, we each got a million SAS miles that expire in a few years. And, you know, and then if I do the jet blue thing, I'm gonna have a million jet blue miles. We each got a million sass miles that expire in a few years and you know and then if I do the jet blue thing, I'm

gonna have a million jet blue miles and those I think don't expire but then a million Turkish miles too and it's like I'm starting to get a little flush with miles that I'm sort of prepaying for two sets. Another hesitation of mine. I think with this, the thing is I will say that you know at $8100 or so or whatever was that Greg just rattled off there for his trip. That's probably not all that much more than flying.

Kind of mean. Common means probably four or five, right? But I so if you were going to spend the four or five doing an economy, I feel like those long haul flights in business for four or five more are not a bad deal if you can. If you can swing it so you, it's worth taking a look if you're considering this at all.

Yeah. And it wouldn't, it wouldn't surprise me if you could shave about a thousand dollars or so off of this by, you know, looking at other positioning cities that are, that have cheaper flights, look for opportunities where round trip is actually cheaper than one way, things like that.

I'm kind of tempted to do that for the fun of it. See like I get it. I don't know. I still wouldn't do it though. Probably so it would be fun to kind of play with it totally. Alright, I think that brings us to this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week is kind of relevant because it deals with round the world tickets.

So Diane writes in says says, hello FM team, enjoy the podcast, listen to all of them. I had saved up plenty of Amex membership rewards points to book round the world trips for me and my husband, but the timing was not quite right to begin planning it. And then they made their announcement. The announcement that Diane is referring to is that they eliminated their round the world award chart at the end of

June 2025. So that is no more. They no longer have around the world chart timing was still not ideal, but I began researching roots. Ultimately, I decided I just didn't have enough time to do justice to the trip, so I made the tough decision to just let it go. So she kept her membership rewards points did not transfer to ANA did not book around the world. I remember a podcast where Greg talked about the ANA around the world trip and Nick countered with an alternate

around the world option. I can't remember which program Nick discussed. I've been unsuccessful finding it. So can you help me out and provide suggestions on other ways to book around the world trip? It's still on my bucket list, but I'll have to do it without ANA's help. Thank you, Diane.

So what are some ways to do around the world trip other than ANA since ANA is now gone? What are the existing opportunities if you're interested in booking a round the world trip? Yeah, first let me say, I think one of the most practical ways to do it is actually to do it piecemeal and look at You know which destinations you're going from and to or interested in going from and to and see what the best program is for

Each each individual leg sometimes sometimes you would do well to do multiple legs together with one program I'll talk about that in a second but I, you know, once, uh, it, it, it'll cost more total points than what, you know, ANA would have charged before when they had around the world, but it'll give you so much more freedom to pick the best flights that are available for where you want to go from and to, because, uh, there were a lot of limitations to the ANA around the world award that, um, you'd be able to not have to deal with. for where you want to go from and to because there were a lot of limitations to the NA around the world award that you'd be able to not have to deal with.

So that's a good thing. As far as what options there are for building around the world kind of formally, there's a few that are probably not worth talking about, like the Aeromexico thing. But British Airways has this multi-partner award chart where you can use that to do around the world trip. I don't know off the top of my head what it would cost to go around the world. I'm sure it's going to depend on how much distance you cover. A way that we've talked about on the show before, I think Nick maybe specifically

talked about, I can't remember exactly, is to use a couple AeroPlan, Air Canada AeroPlan awards, because each one-way flight, you can pay 5,000 extra miles to get a stopover on a one-way award and you can, you know, fly, for example, a one-way award to Australia and stop in Asia or Europe or whatever and then do another one-way award that goes like to different places and then maybe you have some other third-party award to connect those two awards together. Anyway, you could build in, by doing that, I guess three one-way awards like that with two stopovers, you could do what, six?

Six, yeah, six segments. Or something like that. Yeah, well, you can do six segments on a one-way award and you can have up to a 24-hour layover on each Six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six six lot of places for up to 24 hours. And because they have so many partners, you can kind of maximize that sometimes. Right. Right. So if you don't mind staying short time at a lot of places, you can certainly go crazy with that if you were, if you transferred before it was too late, if you transferred a bunch of your, um, uh, American express membership

words points to Hawaiian, which now becomes Alaska miles. Alaska also has the ability to add a stopover on one-way awards. Asyncstan right now, it's mostly for a single airline partner that you're flying, but that's supposed to relax at some point, I think. So, you know, I personally would be looking at mixing and matching, like Alaska, where it makes sense, Alaska miles, where it makes sense. Um, and a, not, not any, uh, air Canada, where it makes sense, but actually a and a two, cause now that they have one way awards, there's going to be places where it, and a may be actually the best miles to use for certain

segments of the, of the trip. Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely a great check to all the boxes there. Those are all the things that came to my mind. So that's what you got to study. Take a look at the British Airways Multi Carrier Award chart, both head for points and Prince of Travel written excellent posts on maximizing the British Airways

Multi Carrier Award chart, you got to be flying at least two airlines that aren't British Airways that are in one world to use that chart, but then the prices are pretty reasonable. The initial chart you see is economy, but double that for business class prices and read those posts because there's some interesting information about how that works. So anyway, yeah, that's that would come to mind. That's not what I mentioned. What I mentioned previously is what Greg said, Aeroplan, because Air Canada Aeroplan. I figured if you did a stopover in each direction, you flew North America to like the far Pacific. It's I think 115,000 miles one way now. So

120 with a stopover if I remember correctly. Yeah, in business class, right? So you'd be talking 240 round trip to do a stopover in each direction of as long as you want up to the end of the booking calendar, I guess. Actually, maybe an Aero plan limits your stopovers to 45 days. At any rate, that's not for most people. So yeah, you could stop over in a different place in each direction going from the North America to for instance, Australia, and then add in a couple of those like 24 hour stops and you could kind of give yourself effectively around the world type of a trip for not much more than what a and a would have charged and you'd have way more flexibility to pick different

partners and you wouldn't have to worry about paying surcharges because you know, a and a of course had surcharges or collected surcharges on an award ticket. So there were certain airlines either had to avoid or it was going to cost you a bunch in in fees. Of course, Air Canada, Aeroplan does have that separate chart for Emirates and now United's involved in that, too. So it's a little bit more complicated than it was the time when we recorded that. But not that much.

I would still say Aeroplan would probably be my pick for creative building around the world type of trip. The other thing, of course, you could do is inside one of those stopovers. Let's say one of the stopovers is in Istanbul. You can book other trips while you're there. If that was a long 45-day stopover, you could go to South Africa from there with other miles or with cash would you could go all around Europe and come back and then complete your your journey from there. Yeah, it's going to take some time and effort to kind of put it all together, but

it was going to take time and effort with the A&A deal also to find the award space you needed. So either way, and these days it takes a little less time and effort. Thanks to all the award search tools so you can use lots of award search tools to reduce the effort that it takes quite a bit. So I think it's a fun exercise. If you're interested in doing it. I I'm going to mention real quickly, um, a while back, I did a bunch of research to figure out what program would be best if it was, if you were just going to use one program where the miles are fully,

where the trips, the awards are fully cancelable, freely cancelable, which miles would be best? I looked at different programs. Unfortunately, before I published it, like some of the programs changed their pricing. But the one that hasn't changed their pricing was by far the winner, which was American Airlines. I could book it, you know, relatively cheaper than the other programs around the world, cheaper than the other programs where I would have fully refundable tickets. And you can fly some amazing things like Qatar, Q suites, and so on. And Eddie had. And so that would be great. It doesn't help you with your American Express membership rewards points, though it might help in the future. People who have city thank you points because we keep thinking that city is going to add American transfers, but we don't know that for sure.

One last thing. I mean, depending on how many MX membership rewards points you were intending to put towards this, keep in mind that until I can't remember the date, so you're going to have to check our post for the date, you could potentially take advantage still of the 35% pay with points rebate for business and first class on any airline. That's going to change a few months from now in September,

I think, in September of 2025. That's going to change. But just as a for instance, Greg just laid out that whole Turkish plan a little while ago for like $8,000. And so if you had a business platinum card and you know if you were booking those business class flights now obviously there was some economy flights in there where you couldn't use 35% rebate but let's not split hairs.

You'd be talking about a net of around 525,000 miles for the trip or 525,000 membership rewards points for the trip that he just laid out and you earn a million Turkish miles and get to visit all those places. So I mean, that's a possibility too, but that really just depends on how many membership rewards points you had and we're budgeting for this and whether you care about Turkish miles and want those or not. So so a lot of ins and outs and what have yous, but good luck anyway. Hopefully that helps and gives you some food for thought. Speaking of food for thought, if you'd like more of that in your email inbox each day

or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our frequentmiler insiders Facebook group where you can ask questions about this kind 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 that you'd like to be considered for question of the week, you can send that to to send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com bye everybody i've heard some crazy travel stories and I got a few of my own. Travel Tales with Mike Siegel, that's me, is full of funny, inspiring and wild adventures. Listen now at voyascape.com