Frequent Miler on the Air - Is this award to Hawaii the sweetest spot ever? Should we have published it?

Episode Date: July 6, 2019

Find out more about the absolute cheapest way to get to Hawaii on points and listen in as we discuss our dilemma: to publish, or not to publish?

Hey. Hey, hey. How's it going today? Very good. Very good. Yeah, yeah. Another day in paradise. We have big news on the blog today. Yeah, really big news. I mean, you know, it's way to get to Hawaii. Because with Singapore, we could get there from anywhere in the US for 17.5k miles when United Award space is available. Which beats the United price by 5,000 miles. Exactly. Or we could get there for as little as, I think it's 11.5K from Chicago and a few other places. Yeah. Somewhere in the middle. 11.5 is, yeah, some of the, like, Las Vegas, you can get there 11.5. Yeah, with Alaska Airlines.

So you can use Singapore miles with Alaska Airlines and pay, like, 11 or 12,000. Right, right. So those were the two best ways I knew. And now, why don't you? We blew right open. I mean, those sounded like good deals until we discovered the fact that, well, so really I should back up and say this 40K challenge that we're doing, the 40K far away or 40K to far away challenge that Greg and Stephen and I are doing where we're each taking 40,000 transferable points and $400 and getting as far away as we can. It's been kind of a crazy

thing where we've been planning a lot. Greg has ultimate rewards. Stephen has membership rewards and I have city thank you points. And so we're each trying to plan the best trips we can with our points and cash. So that caused me to kind of really dig into some of the city transfer partners a little bit, especially the ones I didn't know. And Turkish Miles and Smiles definitely fell into that category of ones that like, you know, I'd read a little bit about them. I was vaguely familiar with some of the sweet spots, but I hadn't really looked into the award chart. And so I got looking into the award chart and lo and behold, I'll cut to the chase. I found that you can get to Hawaii super cheap, right? So Hawaii is part of the United States and domestic awards with Turkish, domestic Star Alliance awards with Turkish are 15,000 miles round trip.

So that's just 7,500 miles each way domestically, which I thought was a great deal for like North America flights. I was like, oh, New York to LA for 7,500 miles. Right, right. If you think about even people who don't know frequent flyer miles have probably heard about 25K round trip awards, right? I mean, that was the default for years and years that if you wanted to fly within the continental US round trip, it costs 25K miles.

Now you found it costs only 15K with Turkish. Right. Round trip. And that's a terrific deal. And it's not only direct flights. You know, sometimes when you have a sweet spot for that, it would be on just short haul flights or just direct flights. But with Turkish, even with connections, I priced out connections. You can, it doesn't have to be directly from point A to point B.

You can backtrack. So for example, I priced out Washington, D.C. to Las Vegas with a connection in Los Angeles. So you'd fly past Las Vegas to Los Angeles and come back. Still 7,500 miles and $5.60. I mean, that seemed like an incredible find to me by itself. That's insane. That's insane. But there's some downsides. Right. There are some downsides. And I'll get to the downsides in a second. But what I realized after that was that, well, I looked at the North America definition to see what places are in North

America. And the surprising thing to me was that Honolulu is in North America. Now, the reason that's surprising is because it used to be listed in a different region altogether, in Oceania, which was a crazy sweet spot in and of itself. But the move back to North America made me think, hmm, Hawaii is part of the United States. It's a domestic flight, right? so is it 7,500 miles one way to get to Hawaii lo and behold 7,500 miles and five dollars and 60 cents one way to Hawaii I mean that that is just the craziest thing I've ever heard I mean that is a better deal than than when uh Avianca Life Miles thought that Guam was within the continental U.S., right? Right. I mean, that's that caliber of a deal. It's just absurd.

Yeah, I mean, you're talking from New York. If you fly from Newark, the direct flight, it's like a 10-hour flight or 11-hour flight, I think, for 7,500 miles and $5.60. That's just, that's amazing. And so, of course, they're a city thank you transfer partner, as we said. So you got lots of different cards, you can earn your city thank you points with. But that means that even, you know, if you're a manufactured spender, you can manufacture flights to and from Hawaii, pretty cheap. And it's not just the direct flights, again, and I priced it out with connections. So Washington to Chicago to, to Honolulu, for instance, was 7,500 miles one way. So, I mean, deal of the year.

I can't think of a sweet spot. Without a question. I mean, a deal of a decade. Especially when you consider United domestic first class to Hawaii, which is? 12,500 miles each way. We're talking the price for a domestic flight, or for an economy class flight. An economy class domestic, like North America,

lower 48 states flight is typically 12,500 miles. But you could fly to Hawaii in a flatbed business class for 12,500 miles. Now that's when it gets like really just beyond insane. I mean, either way, it's completely insane. But this is, I mean, just to give some people context, right? With the Citi Prestige card, you're allowed to cash out Citi thank you points for a penny each. So if you took 12.5K points and just cash them out,

you'd have $125. Right. Or I know a lot of people that don't know study thank you points will redeem those for gift cards. And so you might redeem them for, you know, like $125 worth of gift cards where you're like locked in the best buy and buying a toaster that's, you know,

double the price it should be. Or you could fly business class to Hawaii. Pay $5.60 on top and you got yourself a one-way to Hawaii. That's just, that's crazy. Even if you're not flying the flatbed business class product from the few gateways where United offers that, it's still a great deal. Even if you just get the regular domestic recliner

seat and you get the additional luggage allowance and priority check-in at the airport and the whole nine yards for 12.5 I mean I don't I don't know what beats that I'm looking forward to seeing what you and Stephen come up with so let's get back to that but first I have a question for you so this feels to me that this reminds me a little bit way back in time when I walked into a office depot and saw this thing called a vanilla reload card sitting on a shelf. And back then and I was able to buy it with a Chase Inc card that earned five points per dollar and found out with some experimentation that it was essentially like buying cash and getting five points per dollar. And so there was a sense of wonder, disbelief, euphoria, sleepless nights, because I was so excited about it. This to me feels like that. Did it to you? What was the experience like? Oh, it sure did. I mean, I couldn't, when they, so I, and we'll talk about some of the downsides in a minute,

but I had to price this out via email. And when they wrote back and told me it was 7,500 miles, first it was disbelief. Like I couldn't believe it. I thought it just can't possibly happen. And it took a few more steps in order to get it booked. So it isn't an instant transfer to Turkish. So it takes a day or two to do that.

And you're dealing via email, which I'll get back to in a minute. But so it was a lot of lag time. So there was a lot of time where I thought, you know what? The availability is going to disappear. Or they're going to come back and say that that's not actually how it prices. But sure enough, it ticketed. And once we got all that done, and I got the ticket numbers, and I went on, and I selected my seats. Yeah, I mean, like you said, sleepless nights.

I went to dinner with friends the other night who know nothing about miles and points. And, you know, they asked what I've been doing lately. And I was like, oh, there's this really cool thing. And, you know, I didn't want to get into it because I knew it wouldn't matter. But then they asked anyway. And I was trying to explain to them the amazingness of 7,500. Did they get it? No, you know, they didn't initially.

And I said, you know what? Let me put it this way. The signup bonus on one card, you know, if you catch one of the 60K offers on the thank you premier, I said the signup bonus on one card would be enough to fly economy class round trip to Hawaii four times. Like, that sounds like a big deal. I was like, yeah, yeah, I mean, a family of four round trip to Hawaii on one signup bonus. That's like, that's unbelievable. Or I guess a 50K signup bonus will get you two rounds. Two rounds for a business class. Or a couple. A couple, yeah.

A round trip and business class for one single 50K signup bonus. One signup. I mean, that, yeah, I know. And when I explained it that way, then I got like a, you know, oh, wow, that's kind of interesting. And I said, yeah, I know. And when I explained it that way, then I got like a, you know, oh, wow, that's, that's kind of interesting. And I said, yeah, I know, it's really exciting. But, and I wanted to tell lots of people about it. But again, I, people in my inner social circle, I knew wouldn't be as excited. So I couldn't wait to be able to share it with frequent miler readers. So I was very excited to be able to get it out there today and help people find it and also figure out how to book it. But you emailed me ahead of time saying, you didn't know for sure. Should we publish it? That's true. What should we do? Talk about that. What were you thinking?

That's a good point because I was excited once we decided to do it and we published it. But of course, you know, deciding whether or not to publish these kinds of things is, is, is tough. You know, when I, we emailed back and forth and talked about it a little bit because my first reaction was, this is amazing. I want to tell everyone, but once everybody knows this is going to be dead in like 10 minutes, right? There's no way this can possibly last. That was my thought anyway, initially. So then it was a dilemma, you know, do we publish it and let people know? Or do we keep it quiet so that so that it can hopefully live a little bit longer? And there was the debate, are we going to kill the Hawaii deal?

By publishing that? Are we going to kill email bookings, which we talked about how to book the email on the blog today as well. And so that was really tough. It wasn't clear. And, you know, we were emailing back and forth with different opinions and different ideas. And, you know, ultimately, I felt like it was going to be up to you what we would do. But I kept arguing both sides out. And I think I sounded like I was in favor of publishing it, but I felt very unsure of whether or not that was the right decision. How did you come to the conclusion that you thought this would be okay to publish? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, this blog is about trying to show people how best to earn miles and how best to use them. And this is the single best way to use Miles, I think, that's out there, period.

But so in a way, I mean, it seems obvious we should publish it. But at the same time, you're right. I was worried that we were going to be killing a deal by publicizing it. And I still am worried about that. But here was my rationale. And I'm curious if you have a different thought process around it. So my rationale was sort of twofold. One is that the ability to book these Turkish awards through email was a significant, important thing to write about. I know it's been in some forums and some older blog posts before, but it's not well known that you could do that. email, just to make it clear to listeners, the default way to book these Turkish partner awards is to actually go, right? You call to have it reserved, but then you actually have to show up at a Turkish ticket counter, right? And there's like eight or nine or something

in the United States. There aren't six. There's not very many of them in the entire United States. Yeah. So for most of us, that's a very big hurdle. And so I think a lot of us knew that Turkish had some really amazing sweet spots. I mean, we didn't know about this one, but it has other really good sweet spots. It does. We knew that. A lot of us knew that. What we didn't know is that there was a way to book these without going to a ticket office. And that makes all the difference in the world. So I felt like that was very important to publish. And when that decision was made, the other decision fell out naturally because I think that once we published how, it's not,

I wouldn't say it's easy to book these awards, but how much easier it is to book the awards. Everybody would be looking at the award charts in more carefully than they had been before. And it wouldn't have been long before other blogs published this Hawaii deal anyway. And I really wanted you to get full credit. I mean, you deserve it. You found the deal and you deserve to get credit for it. So I really thought it was important for that to go out first and with your name on it. Well, thank you.

I appreciate that. But for me, I think it wasn't as much, I certainly wanted Frequent Miler to get the credit for it in the sense that I'm sure some people looked at this 40K far away challenge that we're doing and thought, that's silly. You're going to fly in economy class all the way around the world and be uncomfortable. All I want to do is fly in business class. And I can understand that that perspective from a small group of people, perhaps, who aren't as interested in all of the different sweet spots. But for me, a lot of the benefit coming out of a challenge like this is looking into things we hadn't looked into and hadn't considered before. And so I think that a large part of the point behind that should

be to discover sweet spots like this. And so I think that the challenge in and of itself deserves a lot of credit for having produced something like this and the other things that it will produce, the posts that we've had on the United Excursionist perk, some of the creative ideas that come out of that that also can be applied in other situations. I think that's valuable. I definitely agree with you that the email booking tip was valuable. And like you said, I look at things like award charts as public information. You know, if something is publicly published like that, is it a secret? Should it remain a secret? It seems kind of silly to me to consider it a secret. Okay, we're definitely pointing people to the fact that it exists, but Turkish is the one that published the award chart, right?

So, I mean, they've published the prices this way. And like you said, I knew it was only a matter of time before somebody else saw this. I know, I'm sure that some readers and some other people out there are looking at award charts thinking, oh, you know, I wonder what I could do if I were to do something like this. I know a number of readers said, oh, I wish I could do this challenge too. And I know the type of person I am reading about it, I'd probably be looking at award charts trying to find what I could. And so like you said, I think eventually it was going to come out. And my thought was that the people who loyally read Frequent Miler ought to get first dibs at booking that. If we wait, some other blogs readers are going to get the first shot,

the first crack at booking that. And I wanted to, I thought it was important our readers got the first shot at booking that. And to be clear, it's not necessarily easy to book. And I think that's another piece of it, that there's obviously a hurdle. Because the email booking is a bit of a challenge. It takes some time back and forth. It's, you know, you have to find an office that you can work with. And it's not a five-minute process. So it takes a while.

So I think there is some barrier to entry that will probably scare some people off anyway, and perhaps hopefully keep it alive for those of us who can take advantage for a while. There was a big piece of me that said, though, I don't want to tell anybody. I just want to book to Hawaii twice a month for this. But that didn't seem fair. Yeah. So I'm guessing that United Airlines, their website is getting slammed with award searches to Hawaii today. And, and the reason of course, is because, because that's the easiest way to look for these awards, uh, to see whether they're available to then book on Turkish. So I'm betting that everybody who's read your post is now like, you know, jumping on a united.com.

I know my wife and I are doing that. Me too. I mean, I've been all week. I've been like looking at different dates and things. Right, right, right. When are those business class awards available? Right, right. Well, that's the thing.

I don't think it's available. Yeah, yeah. Running the business class awards is tough. And the other hard thing about the Turkish Miles and Smiles program is because it's not instant, transfers aren't instant to Turkish, and neither is the booking process, you're not going to probably be able to jump on that last minute award seat that becomes available for like, tomorrow. If you see that kind of availability. So should people transfer prospectively so they have a bank of Turkish miles? You know, boy, I always say it's a bad idea to transfer prospectively so they have a bank of Turkish miles? You know, boy, I always say it's a bad idea to transfer prospectively because why lock yourself into one program rather than retain

your flexibility? But boy, it could be worth it with Turkish unless they completely change their award chart. Which we know they could do at any moment. Other programs have done that. It's true. I would think that there's at least a chance that Hawaii will not price this way forever. So I think if I were going to prospectively transfer, I would be prospectively transferring, willing to accept the fact that a domestic United flight is like my backup plan. And that's probably going to stick around at the 7,500 points each way in economy or 12.5 in business, I think. And there are plenty of times where that will be a good enough deal for me that maybe I would

transfer over enough for one or two round trips. I wouldn't probably go crazy. What about you? Thinking about what's the expiry policy, do you know? That's a darn good question. I don't think I'd keep miles around long enough to find out. I mean, that's the first thing I would check because worst case, even if I'm thinking I'm going to use them, things happen. I might not. I don't want to lose them. And with some programs like Singapore, I would. You would, yeah. Or ANA. Now those are both, you know, Asian or, you know, Indonesian airlines. And I don't know if any European airlines have that kind of policy, sure. I don't think that I would let the miles languish all that long because it's just not that hard to find a pretty valuable use. The other thing to keep in mind and consider, though, is that they did run a transfer bonus back in January of this year. Citi ran a 25% transfer bonus. So I don't necessarily think that we'll see another one this year. Maybe we will. I have no idea for sure. But I find that a lot of the transfer bonuses, when you look at our

current transfer bonuses page and you look at the history, a lot of them seem to run about once a year. So I would expect that maybe we won't see another transfer bonus to Turkish Miles and Smiles this year. But there's at least a fighting chance that we'll see one next year. So if you're not ready to make a move, maybe you can hold off for that. Although I can't say for sure that these Hawaii bookings are going to last at these prices. So let's say you can't find Hawaii award availability when you want to go. What other sweet spots have you seen in their chart?

Yeah. So their sweet spot, really their chart is really interesting from Europe. From Europe to Oceania is in business class, 52,500 miles one way. So you can fly from Europe to Australia or any of those little tropical islands in Oceania for 52,500 miles one way. So you can fly from Europe to Australia or any of those little tropical islands in Oceania for 52,500 one way. Now I say any of those tropical islands, and that's a little misleading because one of the drawbacks with Turkish awards,

Star Alliance awards, is that you can only fly one carrier in each direction. So you can't mix carriers on a Star Alliance award. So if you were going to fly from Europe to Oceania, basically your only option, well, maybe you have two options. I was going to say your only option is Air New Zealand. They fly from London to Auckland, and then you can connect from there. Or Turkish or Thai, perhaps. Thai perhaps flies to some places in Oceania. I know they fly to Australia, so they probably fly a few other places in Oceania as well. And another thing along with that is this year's their 30th anniversary. So monthly, they've been running these deals for 30% off on specific awards to specific group of cities every month. And they started that back in February, and we wrote about it in February, and then I totally forgot about it until a reader emailed me the other day about it. And so we've got a post that's coming out in just

a little while here. So it'll be out here today, Friday about the current deals. And so right now, for example, if you wanted to travel this month or next month, you could, you could fly in business class from Istanbul to Bangkok or Manila in the Philippines this month anyway for 31,500 miles in business class. We're talking like nine to 12 hours in business class for 31,500 miles. Or Kathmandu in Nepal, if you wanted to go see Mount Everest, that's available next month for 17,500 miles one way, again, out of Europe. So those are some interesting deals to look at. But if you're based in North America, the other key sweet spot is going to be flying to Europe

for 45,000 miles each way in business class. Yeah, that's great. I mean, there are other programs that come, that are in that range, I think. ANA charges 88K round trip, but you have to book round trip with ANA. Right, right. You can book round trip with ANA. Right, right. You can book one way.

And then Aeroplan, I think there are 45k? Aeroplan is 55k. 55k. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. So it's not a huge leap better than those, but it's still darn good.

But it's still pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah and they do charge fuel surcharges so that's kind of gonna gonna be a downside uh for for especially i i would say for travel to europe because at 45k it's it's very good it's better than most programs uh but it's not so amazing as to make up for a huge amount of fuel surcharges. So you'd really have to go carrier by carrier on that one. But from Europe and Turkey to much of the rest of the world is really competitively priced. So if you're looking to put together a multi-stop trip where you can start in Europe on one of those awards, it's worth taking a few minutes to look at the award chart.

Yeah. Okay. So a few readers in response to your post have said, game over, no point in finishing the 40K challenge. Nick won, right? What are your thoughts? I appreciate the support. I responded to one of them that said, you know, Nick won, game over. I said, that doesn't sound nearly as much fun as watching Greg and Steven fly miserably in economy class for days on end around the world, does it? So I was like, no, we can't call it here. We got to see what everybody comes up with. But although I say that, I'm sure that Greg has probably already figured out how to get around the world in business class for 40,000 miles now. But no, I mean, this is a really cool sweet spot for sure. But I'm hopeful anyway, that it's going to light a fire and, you know, heat things up a little bit because, you know, the competition is on. It's getting pretty serious.

I showed today at the end of the post I could just fly back and forth between New York and Honolulu and do 25,000 miles and still have like most of my money and a few miles left over. So why aren't you going to do that? You know, that doesn't seem like it fits the spirit of the challenge, does it? I mean, it would be enough miles, but I think it's not exciting enough. And besides, I want to go see a few places. So I don't want to stick with just Hawaii. I wouldn't mind getting to Hawaii for 7,500 miles. And for those of you who have some flexibility, it's worth then using Google Flights to look at the places you can get to from Hawaii pretty cheaply. Greg wrote a post a while back on how to use Google Flights to find great business class deals,

but that works for economy class too, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. And I've been using Google Flights like crazy all, not just all week, but ever since we announced the challenge, that's been my thing. As you know, with ultimate rewards, I can book flights, paid flights, and get 1.5 cents value. So with my 40,000 points, I could essentially get $600 worth of flights. So here was my thought when I tried to decide, am I completely screwed or not because of your deal here's the math that I ran all right okay tell me if I have this right all right so the the route that you described in your post if I if I remember right it was um it was it was just under 5,000 miles in distance distance that could be that sounds about. I think I plugged it in GC map.

And so you could go five times, is that right? You go five times back and forth. So 25,000 miles, you just said that a little while ago. The question in my mind was, could I go 25,000 miles or more with $600 of paid flights. And you know what? I think I can actually do that pretty easily if that's my only goal. Because what I've found, I don't think this is a surprising new finding, but when looking for the cheapest paid flights, it really, really pays to look for not just one ways, but round trips.

A lot of times. So a lot of times I'm finding deals, you know, all the way to 10,000 miles in one way and you're going round trip, that's 20,000 miles for less than $400. And I've still got then $200 more in that $600 budget that comes out of my 40K points. So mathematically, I think I'm there. Now, to be honest, though, the... I'm going to get a rebuttal on this. Keep going. The route that I've picked as, as like, I have a spreadsheet full of routes and, uh, the route that I've picked as the one that I'm sort of at the moment,

most likely to do, um, is, is probably going to hit about 25,000 miles altogether. That's including the $400 cash, whatever I use for that. You're just putting it right out there, setting the bar. I'm putting it out there a little bit. Um, so you could go further than that though. I mean, with deals like that, if you want to just fly back and forth, I could, I think for example, I think you could do something like fly.

I mean, this deal is not the only one you've found, I'm betting. No, no, it's not. It's not even the only program that I've made an email booking with as of late. Yeah. So I'm kind of doing that mental math, just sort of assuming that this is the high bar of what you can do. But I don't know that to be true. Because it occurred to me that you might have picked like a program that has loose routing rules. And you may have found like a relatively cheap award, let's say from Honolulu to let's say Europe and

found that you could route that thing through Australia and Africa and South America before going to Europe or something like that and if you found that then yeah I'm screwed well we'll see we'll see what I found I'm not gonna tip by not gonna tip that one just yet but I will say this you know Greg was talking about a second ago how for his cash budget there was $600. He could get himself 25,000 miles or so. And so I showed today how he had 25,000 miles flying back and forth to Honolulu. What I didn't mention in the post, but for the benefit of readers who are listening here, is take a look at those airfares from Honolulu to Asia and also to Oceania. With Google

Flights, you can type in a region, a country or a region. So for example, I typed in Honolulu as my destination, or excuse me, as my origin airport. And then for the destination, I typed in Oceania to see where I could get. And wouldn't you know it, not necessarily on the dates we're traveling, but wouldn't you know it, you can fly from Honolulu to Sydney, Australia for $118 quite often on Jetstar. That's incredible. You're talking for 7,500 miles from anywhere in the continental U.S., you could fly to Hawaii. And then for another $118 from there, you could get yourself to Australia. Now, is Jetstar, that must be a budget carrier.

It sure is. So you don't get very much comfort for your $100. Are they going to charge more for carry-on bags and to go to the bathroom and things like that? Yeah, so I think if I remember correctly, because I only briefly looked at that option because the dates didn't line up right for me. But I believe they included both a carry-on and a personal item, I believe, at the $118. But they didn't include seat selection, no meals, drinks, that kind of thing. So, you know, you are going to be on your own, and it is a long flight. It's got to be a 10-hour flight.

Yeah, yeah. And we know you've been training to eat on nothing but power bars. So we know that you could survive a Jetstar flight. I sure could. All I would need is one, maybe two protein bars for the 10-hour flight. And, you know, of course, Sydney, if you're not familiar with Priority Pass and some of the options abroad, Priority Pass has been getting some attention in the last year or two because they've been adding more and more restaurants. Well, you know, at Sydney Airport

has like three or four Priority Pass restaurants. So once you get there, you can eat like for hours, $28 per person and credit on a priority pass. So you can go restaurant to restaurant. Right, right, right. The way home is no problem. I'd be totally full before I get on the plane. There you go. There you go.

So I'm beginning to think that there's a good chance you're going to beat me in total distance, but that's not necessarily how we're going to judge the contest. We're going to, at the end, we're going to let readers decide who won. And I think that if one of us does a better job of not just going far, but also experiencing things outside the airport, that they might have a leg up because of somebody. So for example- You're trying to influence the judges here. Is that what you're trying to do? I am, yeah. So for example, when I take a hot air balloon across the English Channel, I deserve more than the number of miles that are clocked, right?

As long as one of your co-passengers is Richard Branson, then yes, you do. He's going to be my pilot because I don't think I could do it on my own. Yeah, well, it isn't written back to my email inquiry yet, but I'm sure we'll do it for a few Virgin Atlantic miles. All you need is, you know, one and a half million for that one probably, but and quadruple platinum status. But, well, you know, I totally agree. I hope that people consider the things we do outside of the airport and the uniqueness of the trips that we book. So I think that that's kind of going to be an interesting angle. Although I'll admit that right now, what I think I'm going to do is going to eat

up quite a lot of my cash. So I'm going to be eating a lot of those protein bars that I'm going to bring from home, I guess, because I don't anticipate having a lot of cash left over for things like, you know, food, accommodations, and entertainment. So I'll be looking for those cheap things to do. Sorry, Ed, say that again. I'll be looking for some of those cheap things to do,

although I do have some things in mind. And I hope that readers don't just vote based on the longest distance, because I don't know if I'll get the longest distance. But I feel pretty good about the fact that I think I'm going to have a pretty darn interesting trip. I don't know. How confident are you feeling right now? I feel like I'm not super confident. I mean, I was before, I'll tell you. Before this and before you had hinted to me last week about a booking that you managed to get done and that as I thought about, like I said,

about potential routing options you might be able to take advantage of. That made me less confident about the going furthest part. I really thought I had that in the bag. Not sure at all that I'm going to win that. I don't know. I think I have some really interesting ideas for how to kind of explore the world, even outside of the airport for very little money. And so I'm looking forward to seeing, you know, what you and Steven have come up with along those lines.

And also it'll be kind of funny. It wouldn't surprise me if a couple of us figured out the same ideas and end up doing some of the same things. But we'll, you know, we'll some of the same things but we'll you know we'll see it'd be interesting you know i think that i for me also part of the fun of this has been trying to find a way not just necessarily to get as far as i can on the miles and points that's certainly been the push from the beginning and so i'm sure going to get far away uh but it's

also been to kind of find some places that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise and wouldn't have seen otherwise. So I'm kind of I think I'm most excited that I intend to have quite a few places that I haven't visited before. And so I'm interested in seeing some of those places that I may not have otherwise seen. And perhaps that some readers might not have seen. And maybe you'll get an interesting idea out of something I've done and I also really look forward to seeing the creative spots that you guys put together because I think we're three fairly competitive people so I don't think anybody is just going to lay down and be like okay I'm just going to book the easiest option uh right I think probably each of us feels like we got to come up with something a little creative and you know this Turkish smiles and smiles thing certainly helps me set the bar up there and uh it does it's a little easier in your hearts in a big way in a big way so i can't wait i

can't wait to leave either arts um i have not booked anything yet uh you and steven have booked the first ones um i'm uh you know every time i think i have have it, I either think of something else that I want to try out or, you know, or you write about this deal to Hawaii and I think, oh, man, I need to up my game. This isn't good enough. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see how it works out. Because one of the things that I've learned about this process and doing it is if you're going to try and do something like this, you almost have to be ready to book all of it at the same time. Because if you book it piecemeal, it gets really tough because then you're stuck, like, hoping that you can find the right deal to fill in the blanks. And so you, A, have to be ready to book it all at once and, B, then have to be able to get the right deal on

everything all at once. And I'll admit right off the bat here that that is not how I've done this. So I do have some gaps to fill in that I hope I can fill in. That's interesting. Do you think that you will have the gaps like when we start? I sure hope so. You hope so? You hope there's still gaps or you hope you'll fill the gaps like when we start? I sure hope so. You hope so? You hope there's still gaps or you hope you'll fill the gaps? No, I hope I'll fill the gaps because I would rather not have to try to fill them in myself. But as we go, I'm hoping I don't have to travel by hot air balloon and hire a

Patamaran at the Yacht Club. My other concern actually is getting home because I intend to be pretty far away from home when this all is said and done. And at the moment, award availability for where I'm going to end up is not very good. So hopefully I can get back. I might be stuck somewhere for a while. Are you going to be like over hot or are you going to be too cold where you're stuck? That's a great question. I haven't looked up the local weather yet, so I guess I can't really tell you.

All right. Any last words before we sign off? No, definitely. If you haven't had a chance yet, though, to check out the Turkish Miles and Smiles post today, I really suggest you take a look at those because both the sweet spot to Hawaii and the booking via email, because there are some hoops to jump through. It's worth checking that out. Some of those hoops you might not be as comfortable with. You're going to book via email. You do have to send like your credit card information and your driver's license number and stuff like that over email, which is

not my favorite thing to do. On the flip side, I was willing to accept it in order to fly to Hawaii for 7,500 miles. So you can decide whether or not you are, but worth checking out. I'm excited about the challenge, excited about what's, what's coming with 40 K far away and what other sweet spots we're going to find it. I look forward to reading your post next week about how I can fly to Hawaii for 5,000 miles. Yeah, exactly. You wait for that.

All right. All right. All right. Thanks, Nick. And congratulations on the find of the decade. Thank you very much. It's been fun. Yeah. Bye, everyone. Take care.