Frequent Miler on the Air - It's Raining Mail! (From the Giant Mailbag) | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep308 | 5-30-25

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Today we learn that we're all wrong about Wyndham, we discuss some miscellaneous tips to save on flights, we hear from someone who's traveling the world one day at a time, and much more...(03:07) - "I got the Chase Ink Cash last summer and immediately tested to see if YouTube TV would qualify for the 5x Ultimate Rewards points. ...it didn't."(05:07) - Use Walmart scan and go and it may code as an online grocery expense for 3x on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card.(08:05) - One listener opened a card to get a better boarding position. What crazy thing(s) have Greg and Nick done when opening credit cards?(11:40) - Apparently you can move points online from one Wells Fargo Autograph card to another, (and in that way, could covert cash back to transferable points.)(14:42) - Correction about the 10% discount for the Wyndham Earner card. "For properties where the award can be booked online, Members who are Earner cardmembers must be logged into their Wyndham Rewards account and have enough points in their account to obtain the award at the pre-discounted redemption level."(18:08) - Because you can often buy Wyndham points for under 1cpp (and a couple times now under 0.8cpp), is booking Vacasa rentals with Wyndham points really a way to get good value out of transferrable points for lodging?(21:43) - "I have never heard you discuss and unsung benefit of the Platinum card (consumer at least). With select airlines Amex travel sometimes has a cheaper fare in premium cabins."(27:23) - "On the most recent episode you shared some tips related to the AA aviator companion pass and just wanted to share some additional experiences..."(34:12) - Sometimes airlines charge less per ticket when buying for multiple people vs. just 1 ticket. This listener has a datapoint to add.(36:56) - "Each time after I book via Alaska ( because you cannot change your Alaska number on these bookings, not that I have found ) I get on American Airlines chat and add my American Airlines number for my Executive Platinum status benefits.."(41:10) - "I don't hear people talk much about PointsYeah and tracking existing award tickets. I book a lot of domestic travel for my family where travel dates are fixed and times are limited. I have started tracking all my bookings with PointsYeah (like I do the cash fares with google flights) and I can't tell you how many points back I have received."(44:45) - "I was listening to a recent episode and heard Greg talk about booking an American Airlines business class flight with connections in economy and being able to select Main Cabin Extra for no additional cost when using Alaska miles. I decided to try this with an AA premium economy flight I already booked for my mother and I using Alaska miles to Paris with a connection in Economy..."(46:46) - "Your Question of the Week last week about whether there’s a minimum trip length for you to make a trip “worth it” inspired me to share my story..."Visit 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 Voy Escape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. All right. On today's show, we're all wrong about Windom. We'll learn about some miscellaneous tips to save on flights, and we'll hear from someone traveling the world one day at a time. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, the giant mailbag goes on vacation. By the time you're listening to this, Nick and I just by chance are on vacation at the same time. And we're actually going to run into each other

at the same place, which is really surprising. But this is all recorded way in advance of that. And on today's show, we're going to be going through lots of mail that's accumulated in our giant mail bag over time from listeners who've contributed all kinds of really interesting tips, great tricks, and we're gonna unpack all of that. It's basically a giant mailbag dump,

but it's organized and we've picked out the gems. We've picked out the gems for you. We had a little trouble coming up with the perfect title for this week's show. And so we have a number of suggestions, including what I read at the outset, which was the giant mail bag goes on vacation. But you know what?

We're on vacation. I'm gonna let Carrie do the work of actually picking out the title of the show. So let's read through the other titles and let her choose. Today's main event, the giant mail bag unpacked. Today's main event, you've got giant mail. Today's main event, you've got Giant Mail. Today's main event, it's raining mail from the Giant Mailbag.

And today's main event, Giant Mailbag Mania. You know, the reason we can't decide on the title this week is because our shirts are already on vacation. If you're watching the video of this, you can see that we're both wearing Hawaiian shirts, we've got vacation on, vacation brain. I'm not even we're both wearing Hawaiian shirts, we've got Vacation Brain. I'm not even going to say Vacation on the Brain. We've got Vacation Brain going on.

So thank you, Kerry, for selecting the best one and everybody else for supporting her. Great decision. So there we go. Let me just say, if we keep the title, The Giant Mailbag Goes on Vacation, Kerry, you've got to find the picture or video clip where we're getting off the plane in the Maldives and I'm carrying a bag that's labeled the giant mailbag and one of the staff comes up to me and says, can I carry your giant mailbag? That was such a classic moment. Anyway, if you could find that, that'd be awesome. Let's move on.

All right. Very good. So this is normally the part of the show where I tell you to go to the timestamps and check the show notes if you want to jump ahead to something or come back to it later. But we're on vacation. So I don't know what Carrie is going to do. Take a look. And if there are timestamps there, you can use them. And if not, then they'll probably be there next week. So there you have that wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this, give us a thumbs up,

leave us a little bit of feedback, tell us what you think, give us your tips in the giant mailbag so that someday when we dump out the giant mail bag again, maybe we can read your letter. So let's drag out all of the giant mail that has accumulated. All right, let's go. Let's start with the topic of earning points, signing up for credit cards, that sort of thing. First up is giant mail from Greg, but it's not from me. And Greg says, first of all, I just love, love, love your podcast. I learn something new every single episode. The two of you provide the clearest explanations of concepts in the industry. Just wanted to share a data point regarding the discussion in a recent mailbag about YouTube TV

and the Chase Inc card. And as a side, that's where we talked about how someone wrote in saying that the chasing card earns five X for streaming services. And I said something like, I don't use it for YouTube TV because it hasn't been consistent for that. And so the, so Greg says, I got the Chase Inc. cash last summer and immediately tested to see if YouTube TV would qualify for the 5x ultimate

rewards points. It didn't. I haven't tried since. I've only been able to get 5x points on Comcast and Roku. Yeah, well, so this is a really interesting one because Google services seem to change how they code from time to time. And, you know, YouTube, of course, is owned by Google.

So, cause I remember there was an Amex offer for a while that was like, I don't know, advertising through Google and you could buy like a phone through the Pixel store, like the Google store. And it would code as Google Advertise, Google Ads or whatever for the Amex offer sometimes. And and it would code as Google ads or whatever for the MX offers sometimes and then it would stop and Google Fi would sometimes count for wireless credits on cards that carry those and sometimes not.

It seems like Google just can't leave things alone. They keep mixing it up all the time. It does seem that way, yeah. Unfortunately, or though I guess sometimes it works in your favor as an MX offer. True. Yeah, so good tip there though. Thank you Greg. Unfortunately, or though I guess sometimes it works in your favor as in that Amix offer, but Yeah, so good tip there though. Yeah, there you go. Good luck if you try it again All right So on that kind of train of thought of things coding differently than you might expect or the frustrations and trials and tribulations of that We've got one about the chase sapphire preferred

So will gomez writes in and says i tried my sapphire preferred card at walmart self checkout paying with walmart pay and that didn't count now let me stop of course the chase sapphire preferred card offers 3x for online grocery so we had heard data points from people about walmart pay working okay so went to self checkout and tried using Walmart pay there and that didn't count for the three X that Will was hoping for. But using Walmart scan and go did count as online. The only difference between the transactions

was the description self checkout was Walmart pay and scan and go was WMT scan and go. Both code is grocery and supermarket and online mail or phone. So apparently the tip here is to use Walmart plus and the scan and go and then pay with Walmart pay on the way out. It does function a little bit differently because if you use the scan and go so you get Walmart plus which is a benefit on a bunch of MX cards nowadays, then you scan all the items and

when you get to the self checkout, you scan a QR code to pay and so it must set it up differently. There kind of looks almost like you're paying in your online cart. So it kind of makes sense to me that it does code is online grocery. So anyway, if you're a Walmart shopper, 3X on the Sapphire preferred by using Scan and Go apparently. At least in this example. Now we've had reports around Walmart stores sort of in general, some of them coding as grocery and some not. And so, you know, don't take this one data point as definitive, but at least it's a good tip

that it's worth trying it that way for sure. Well, and on that note, so I've mentioned before, my local Walmart, anytime it chase card offers a grocery bonus, it codes as grocery just regular checkout, just paying physical card. I don't know why, but that's it's always coded that way. It doesn't code as grocery on other cards. I've tried it on other cards and it doesn't code as grocery on others. For some reason, it does on the chase cards. But the three X category in the staff are code as grocery on others. For some reason it does on the chase cards. But the 3x category in the Sapphire Preferred is online grocery specifically. So that I think

will only work if you're paying somehow through Walmart Pay. But then like Greg said, it might vary by store. Right, right, right. And we haven't heard any data points saying it doesn't work with regular grocery stores that have an app where you could pay through the app. That's the trick, is that it's supposed to only work when you're ordering online, but when you pay through an app, even though you're in store, it's online basically because the app is making an online purchase. It will credit as long as that online charge looks like a grocery store to, um, to chase. Yeah. And that makes sense because if you're using Walmart Plus, you're paying in the Walmart

app for your groceries. So that doesn't make sense that might work. All right. Next up. Okay. Next up, uh, this, this, uh, mail comes from Amber who has a kind of fun one here. Uh, she says, so I just applied for the Delta Reserve Business credit card because I wanted a better boarding group.

She says, I had a repositioning flight I needed to get to. Notice the aircraft was smaller than I expected, do not have airline status and did not wanna check my bag, pick it up and then go through security to get to my new gate. So I applied for the Delta Reserve card. This had me wondering what crazy thing have Greg and Nick done when opening credit cards?

You know, that's a good one. I have not opened one just for a better boarding position before, so this is your step beyond me, I guess, Amber. Would you consider doing this, Greg? Sure. I mean, you know, as long as there's also a welcome bonus involved, I totally could see planning my or even spontaneously, like in this case, saying, well, I might as well

get that card now because it has a good bonus and it'll help me with this trip. I can't remember specific examples, but I think I've done not not for boarding groups, but I think I've done stuff like sign up groups, but I think I've done stuff like sign up for cards in order to get free check bags, for example, which is pretty common. Yeah, just last summer, I guess I applied for the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant card just because I had an upcoming Marriott stay where it would save a bunch on breakfast having platinum status and I didn't have platinum status last year with Marriott until I got

the card. So I did get that card specifically for that benefit save a bunch of money on breakfast. So it's like a same kind of a thing there. Now, one other question this one left me with is, so my experiences, when I gate check a bag, I usually get it usually at the jet bridge. Is there any way to know whether you're going to be able to get it at the jet bridge or because when she said this, I thought to myself, well, you don't have to go to baggage claim

and recheck it probably as long as it's gate checked and you get it back in the jet bridge. But I have run into a situation now and then where they've said I have to pick it up on the baggage carousel. I don't know what the difference is to you. I know. I mean, I've been known to ask them at the gate, you know, hey, if I gate check this, where's it gonna go? I don't know how accurate the answers will be.

Well, they really know the answer for sure. I mean, in the cases where I've asked, they've been right, I believe, when I've followed up. But yeah, other than that, I don't know how you would know. I wasn't sure if there was some way, if I just don't travel and run into that situation often enough, because usually domestically we fly southwest. And so I haven't had an issue needing to gate check a bag

very often. But sometimes when I travel by myself for work, I'll travel other airlines. And if I fly American out of my home airport, then I'm going to have to gate check if I have a rolling bag because the types of planes they fly out of my airport with rare exception are too small for rolling bags in the overhead.

So I very often have to do it. And I can't remember the last time I had to go to baggage claim to pick one up, but it has happened before. So yeah, interesting. Yeah. With American one time, that's just complaining, I guess. So one time I had a little tiny roller bag that would have easily fit on the plane

or even under the seat in front of me. And they wouldn't let me take it on because it was a roller bag. So had I just been carrying the bag, they wouldn't have even noticed it was a roller bag and it would have been on. That made me so mad. My share of those moments over the

because of wheels. I can't bring it on what right? Right? Yeah, OK, so alright next up. Do grows reports gives us a tip about Wells Fargo or more. Some information about Wells Fargo. So do grow says I have both the Wells Fargo Visa signature from around 2007, the golden ponies card as it's often known. I did not know the golden ponies card but cool as well as the current autograph. So an old Wells Fargo visa signature and the

current autograph. Yes they do work together just fine since they're both point earning cards there's just one pool of points for all your cards that earn points similar to Citi or Amex. So yes, you can earn 3x on the autograph and then use those points at 1.5x in the portal for airfare for an effective four and a half percent cash back equivalent all with no annual fee. So again, that old card enables the ability to redeem points at one and a half cents per point towards travel booked through their travel portal. So what Dugro's reports is- Yeah, I think flights specifically, but yeah. Okay, flights. There you go. So it is reporting's reports is I think flights specifically, but yeah. Okay, flights. There you go. So it is reporting here is that you could earn three acts on the

autograph card and then essentially use it for four and a half cash back towards flights with no annual fee, no point moving needed. I also have the Wells Fargo business signify card. Since it's a cash back card, its earnings don't go into the pool of points automatically, but you can easily convert cash back to points at the normal ratio on their website or in the app so it's all pretty seamless. As an aside my wife only has the business signify and she can't move cash back online to another cardholder neither as points nor cash so we can't combine her signifier rewards with any of my Wells Fargo cards at present at least not online. We've not yet tried calling in together. Who

wants to do that? My dad has an autograph too and his points can be sent to me online. So it appears the key to share points with another person online is that you must have at least one point earning Wells Fargo card autograph, a grandfathered signature or autograph journey. Presumably I'm considering getting an autograph or autograph journey for player two just so we can have a fully combinable Wells Fargo household. This is

fantastic information. So I know there's a lot of reading there, but the moral of the story is that apparently you can move points online from one autograph card holder to another. And if you have an autograph card and some cash back earning card, you can convert the cash back to points and then transfer on to Wells Fargo's Transfer Partners, which they have a pretty limited set of Transfer Partners, but they do have some Transfer Partners

that can be quite useful, and they have one to two Detroit's privileges, just like Citi. So there's certainly a number of use cases where that could come in really handy, especially if you've got one of those old Wells Fargo cards that gives you additional options in terms of redemption. Yeah, yeah, that's really good information from,

now how'd you say his name again? I think he pronounced it, Dugro's Reports. Dugro's. Yes. Dugro's, am I saying that right? Yes, yes, because I pronounced it differently at some point and I hope I'm getting it right this time because I know you corrected me out there.

I'm asking because I think we have another one from him later on. Hopefully, I got it right both times for DuGrosse Reports. All right, let's move on to booking travel. Thomas writes in, in the recent coffee break, you mentioned that the 10% discount for the Wyndham earner card is a discount, not a rebate. I believe this may have changed recently.

MyPlayer2 has the rewards earner plus card and recently tried to book a stay. P2's account had enough points for the stay at the discounted level, but not at the pre-discounted level, and the website did not let P2 complete the booking. Sure enough, P2 actually did some legwork and found this fine print. For properties where the ward can be booked online, members who are earner card members must be logged into their Wyndham Rewards account and have enough points in their account to obtain the ward at the pre-discounted redemption level. Thomas goes on to say, this surprised me. I'm not sure how recently this was added. I wonder if calling to book is way around this new change.

I did not care enough to find out and just bought some more points and booked online. This was a really timely piece of mail because we've been looking at this behind the scenes too and just just ran into this ourselves. So yeah, I know that in the past it showed a discounted price. A 15,000 point room definitely showed 13,500 points per night online at some point. Now whether or not it was bookable if you didn't have 15,000 points, I couldn't say for sure.

But I know it definitely used to show the discounted price. However, I went back through screenshots both of bookings I made a few months ago and more than a year ago. And sure enough, this is absolutely true that they did change it at some point. So you do have to have enough points in your account to book at the pre discounted level. So if a property costs 15 thousand points per night, you're going to need to have 15 thousand points and then it's only

going to take 13 thousand 500 for the redemption and it doesn't show in your account like it's a rebate so it doesn't show that 15 000 points were redeemed and then 1500 were returned it just shows that you redeemed 13 500 but it seems like the computer system is set up more like a rebate now that said the good news is when i looked at doing this recently and i tried to make a booking where i didn't have enough points for the pre-discounted price but i did did for the discounted price, it gave me a pop-up message saying if you're a Windham earner cardholder, call to book this. It said you don't have enough points, but if you're a cardholder, call to book it. And so, and I was logged into my account, so presumably the system should know

that I'm a cardholder, but apparently an agent needs to do it. I don't know what has to happen on the backend, but it does sound like you can call in to Book It Still. That's annoying though. Yeah, it really is. So that's just, I bet that's just a technical issue that for some reason, like they have the room coded as 15K per night, and so the computer is making sure you have that much and no one's done the work to fix that.

That's my guess. Yeah. I mean, it would seem like an IT issue that somebody- Although if it used to work. Well, we don't know, do we? I don't know if it worked or just showed- We know that it displayed as if it was only 13.5. Right.

Right. But I don't know what actually happened because I don't think I ever tried to book something where I had enough points for the discounted price but not enough for the pre-discounted price. So I had to run into it. But yeah, so that's a good piece of info that you'll probably have to call if you don't have enough for the pre-discounted price. All right. Let's talk more about Windham.

All right. So next up about Windham, everybody's favorite chain. Owen says, I heard you say that booking Vecasa rentals with Windham Points is a way to get good value out of transferable points for lodging for Capital One and City which transfer to Windham but not to Hyatt and it's true that you can get great value using Windham Points to book Vecasa rentals. However, I don't think that means it's a good value for

your transferable points because you can often buy Windham Points for under one cent per point and a couple of times now under 0.8 cents per point. So in that sense, you're getting bad value for your points compared to using cash to buy points and then book the cost of your Wyndham. What do you think? Is this a bad? Yeah, no, I was totally right.

And that's not all that unusual. So you can get excellent value for Wyndham points, full stop. But I agree with Owen that transferring valuable transferable points to Wyndham in order to book those valuable rewards is not often the right play. If you're going to book a valuable Windham award, you know, and there happens to be a Windham point sale going on, just take

like, you know, points where you can cash out at one cent per point, you'd be better off, if you really wanted to use those transferable points for this booking, you'd be better off just cashing them out and buying the Windham points for less than a penny each. So yeah, Owen's totally right. Okay, no, he's not. Owen is partially right. And so here's why.

So yes, you should buy the points if you can buy enough points to meet your needs. However, Windham only allows you to buy 100,000 points per year. And a property that costs over $250 per bedroom per night is 30,000 points per bedroom per night. So if you're booking a three bedroom place, you can only buy enough points for one night. And you're probably going to stay more than one night at your vacats around. Yeah. So I mean, it depends. I mean, obviously, yes, if you can buy enough points to cover the Vicka need, then yeah, you should buy them.

Certainly, if they're on sale, definitely under a tenth of a cent per point in the past. We didn't see when them put the points on sale as much these last couple of years, though they have very frequently offered them on sale. And in fairness, if you're playing with another person, I think at least in the past, like if my wife and I were planning to go to a Vekasa, I could probably buy some of the points and she could

probably buy some of the points that we could probably call and make the booking together and you know, like where I'm covering some nights and she's covering some, but again, only up to a hundred thousand each and you could very easily need more than that. Yeah. Unfortunately, my understanding is they don't allow that for a single booking anymore with Vakasa. No. And that's a problem because the Vakasa, the cost includes the housekeeping and stuff like

that. And so if you do two separate bookings, the total cost across all those bookings will be higher and might price you out of like the 15K per bedroom per night range. Well, there you go. Depending on the situation. So you gotta be careful about that. So like Greg said, Owen's only partially right.

You probably can't buy enough points to cover up. I've true, like if you're staying for a week somewhere, you probably can't buy enough points. So all three of us are only partially right. Partially right, partially right each. Welcome to the club, Owen. Yeah. OK.

All right. Let's move on. Enough of Windham. I'm sick of Windham. All right. Sean has a tip about saving money on flights. On this week's Coffee Break, Greg mentioned the 35% back on bookings through the Amex travel portal. and as a side, so that's if you have the business platinum

card, uh, and you book flights with points and there's some rules around which flights qualify, but, um, the points are worth one penny each towards airfare, but then you get 35% of those points back as a rebate. And so your points end up becoming worth 1.54 cents each when you do it that way. So that's the background. Then Sean says, he also said it's it was the only reason he looks there in Amex Travel and has sometimes found the cheapest flight prices. I've never heard you discuss an unsung benefit of the Platinum card, consumer at least. With select airlines, Amex Travel sometimes has a cheaper fare in premium cabins.

I booked business class flights occasionally. I once saved $1,500 round trip for two tickets from Chicago to Cape Town on Delta. I also saved about $1,000 round trip for two tickets, New York City to Singapore. I got to fly both the Newark and JFK Singapore flights. If you are booking directly into Premium Cabin, it's worth checking flight prices. Yeah, so Amix has the, what do you call it?

The insider fairs and or the international, whatever premium fair. I can't remember why don't we talk about those things Greg. I guess. Why don't we talk about that? Yeah. So so stepping back. So yes, Amex has a couple of things where they have special fairs available under certain

circumstances especially platinum card holders. And yeah, I think the reason we don't talk about it much is just because it's not certain. Like we don't know when, you know, I'm going to buy a Singapore Airlines flight, is it worth checking this travel portal to see if the price is really good? I mean, I guess if you have a platinum

card, you could say you should always check or at least always when booking business class or first class international travel, because there's a chance it'll be cheaper. And I found it kind of ironic that one of the flights he talked about is Chicago to Cape Town where he got a great deal because I had that. I was trying to figure out how to get back from Cape Town to Detroit and I was looking at all my mileage options and there were some okay options but nothing really great for the time we had and then for the exact day we wanted to fly I found through Amex Travel, like a book, one stop all the way home, all business class for, I don't remember exactly,

but it was a very reasonable price for the two of us. And that I don't even think was specifically one of those insider fares or whatever they call it. It's just that it's part of that randomness that they somehow have access to certain fares. But I have to say they often have worse fares than I could find elsewhere. So it's a bit of a gamble.

Yeah, so I, yes, yes, cosign all of that. I think the reason that I don't talk about this much is twofold. Number one, I very rarely am booking cash premium cabin fares and in fact overall pretty rarely booking cash fares at all. I'm almost always booking award flights and most of the time on routes and things where the cash fare is not going to be a better deal. Now I do look at Google flights to get an idea of what cash fares look like.

And if it looks like it may be close to a good deal using points around one and a half cents per point, then I'll log in to Amex Travel and take a look and just see because every now and then you do get surprised. But in my relatively limited sample set of times searching through Amex Travel, I've very rarely ever seen a flight with the insider fare discounted at all.

And invariably in the situations I've looked, which again is a limited sample size, they've always not been the cheapest flights that I could have gotten anyway. They were like cheaper for those specific combination of flights, but not the ones I would probably book anyway. So, and again, that's just my luck. I mean, maybe I-

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, that's just my luck. I mean, maybe I, yeah, yeah. So, so, you know, in my case, the example I gave, I had been searching Google flights and prices were at least double what I found on, uh, Amex travel in that very, very specific instance. It was also a really bizarre, uh, ticket that was, it was half British Airways and half Delta booked as an Air France flight. That doesn't make any sense at all. All in one itinerary that was cheaper than booking a single airline or a single alliance even.

So I have no idea where that combination came from, but hey, it worked for us. All right. So Sean, you got me between you and Greg. I'm going to have to look more often anyway and see if I can do okay by booking through MX travel and I'll see what I would I uncover. But it's a good tip if you have a platinum card that you may be able to save some money or some points by booking a cash fair and using the rebate or just booking a cash fair like Sean did, I think and paying less money. Right, right. Yeah. In my case, I did both. I did both. Alright, next up, we

have some American Airlines companion tips. So, Michael writes in and says on the most recent episode, which is not the most recent anymore, but on a recent episode, you shared some tips related to the American Airlines Aviator Companion Pass. And I just wanted to share some additional experiences. Number one, even though the certificate says upgrades are not possible in my own experience, their system

doesn't enforce this with one companion, uh, normal elite, I'm sorry, with one companion, normal elite upgrades work automatically with two companions. You can split the third passenger into their own record and then the first and second passengers are eligible for Elite upgrades. And they sometimes show you options for paid upgrades as well. So that's interesting because the terms say that you won't be eligible for any upgrades and I had mentioned that on the show, but apparently it is possible. And if you're confused about one companion, two companions, then I should

know it. I guess the Aviator Red card, which is the one that you can apply for if you spend $20,000 in a card member year, you get a companion certificate good for one companion to join you on a trip for $99 plus taxes. If you get the Aviator Silver card, which is only available by invite for some Aviator card Red card holders, then that card comes with a companion certificate that's good for two companions at $99 each plus taxes.

So that's why the difference between one companion and two companions. Yeah, and so that's, I'm pretty excited about that because not being able to upgrade was one of the reasons I haven't liked the idea of using my companion tickets. So that's really cool. And if you did have three people

and you're able to split the third one off to another, you could theoretically use Hyatt points now to gift that third person American Airlines gold status for a day to give them their own status if they didn't already have it. You know, I thought that you, it turned out that wasn't giftable, but maybe you're right. No, for a day one is, it's the elite status for a year kind of thing that it's not giftable very good That's all right. That's where I got confused. All right, so that was number one of

multiple here from Michael on the aviators Companion certificate tips so tip number two one thing that's really annoying about these certificates Is that if you ever need to cancel the original booking and you're left with trip credits Then you can't use the trip credits to rebook with the certificate because the terms are that booking using the cert has to be paid with cash, so you can't use a credit to book with a cert. So when you go to rebook, they'll make you pay cash for the new booking.

I learned this the hard way and a very expensive booking since that's usually when you want to use these certs. Similarly, you can't book a companion certificate fare with any other existing trip credits. So if you're going to book that you gotta pay cash. You can't use existing credits and you can't use a previous one. Now what I I found intriguing in this the the light here so to speak is that my understanding was that if you cancelled a trip booked

with a companion certificate according to the terms, then you just lose the certificate. You don't get it back. So it sounds like from what Michael said, you do get the certificate back, but the trip credit you got from the canceled trip can't be applied to make a new booking with your certificate again. So that's a bummer. Yeah. So you went on to say back in the day when you can cancel a fare and be left with a flight credit. That was a way around this limitation, but now they pretty much always issue trip

credits for canceled flights to get around this issue one other trick that can work is that if you needed to cancel instead of canceling you can make a change to a date in the future so that at least the PNR would remain active with the certificates attached then when you're ready to use them make another change to the itinerary so that's potentially a way around. Finally one tip for how to use these when booking for parties of more than three which also happens to be a tip for how to save money when booking domestic that I think wasn't mentioned during the show is when there aren't enough seats available at a lower fare class

to split into two reservations. So for example if you need to book for four people and there are only three seats available at the lowest fare class it's cheaper to book three seats and then one versus booking all four together, which would bump all four passengers to the more expensive fare class. I come across this a lot when booking the whole family. Also some airlines aren't great at real-time inventory validation, so you can sometimes set up to purchase three-in-one on two different browsers or devices and it'll sometimes give you all four

tickets at the lower fare class. This tip also frequently works for award bookings, especially since a lot of airlines have moved to dynamic pricing. So that's something that we may not have mentioned on the domestic show, but we have mentioned before, and we should have. Yeah, yeah.

Because that's a great tip that, yeah, so there's different fare buckets, and if there's only three seats left in the fare bucket and you need four and you put in four people, it's going to look for the first fare class that has four seats, which is going to be a higher fare class. So everybody is going to pay more if you book for four passengers, whereas if you book for three, you might be able to get that lower fare bucket for three people and it'll come out to be less money. So that was a great tip that we absolutely should have mentioned. Yeah, absolutely.

And I love the tip about using multiple browsers. The idea is you have one browser set up for two of the passengers to book and another browser set up for the two other passengers to book. You try to get both bookings through at the same time and you might be successful at getting all four in that lower

fare class. If it doesn't work though, his first tip about like at least get as many people in as you can under the lower fare class makes a lot of sense and you're just paying more for one person. So a whole bunch of great tips there from Michael. Keep in mind the risk you're running if you're on separate PNRs like that though, is if there's some sort of irregular operations, flight gets overbooked, canceled, equipment swap, then you may end up with two separate solutions to that

problem. You may not all end up on the same itinerary, obviously, you can get your case and hope at the gate, but if you're on different PNRs... Yeah, and that's a real risk, and so, hopefully you have, for example, two responsible adults and two children. So you have one adult with each child on the separate reservation, unless you don't like the children, in which case put the two adults together on one

and the two children on the other and hope that things go awry. I was thinking you put the one irresponsible adult on their own PNR so that they're just separated all together and they're on their own. You could do that too. Yeah. Okay, so that was a really good example

of how when you have more people on a ticket, it costs more, so ways around that issue. But one thing we did talk about during the show was how under certain circumstances, having more people reduces the fare. Like it's a really weird random thing that happens. I don't think we've figured out why or when it happens, but DeUgros, is that right?

DeUgros reports says on, again, he says last week's show, but he wrote this a million years ago, so who knows when the show was. On a past show, Nick mentioned that sometimes airlines charge less per ticket when buying for multiple people versus just one ticket. Well this week I was looking for a repositioning flight for the summer and was discouraged when the price I found for a Delta flight was more than I was expecting based on some prior looking. Then I realized that I had mistakenly only selected one passenger. Sure enough, the exact same flight, exact same date, exact same fare class was $219 $219 versus $178 per person with one person versus four. So, yeah, so this is just an example of what we talked about happening in real life. And I double-checked at the time when he wrote this,

that it was in fact working exactly as he said. He gave enough detail to just run that same search. run that same search. The per person price was about $40 less when you search for four people instead one person. Yeah, you know, so it makes sense because they're probably just looking to charge last minute business travelers or business travelers in general, as much as they can figuring the company's paying for it. So the business travelers are less price sensitive, whereas folks traveling as the business travelers are less price sensitive, whereas folks traveling as a family may be more price sensitive

and they got to be competitive with other airlines. So it's just wild to me, though, that the algorithms are set up so well to to recognize those situations. It's amazing what they're what they're figuring and the math that they're running behind the scenes. But it's a great reminder because I am lazy about searching for airfares. I almost always search for one person and even though I've mentioned on the show that I discovered sometimes that looking for two people might change the price, I just rarely

do that and so it's a great reminder that I should do that more often. So just to sum up, the advice we've learned today is to save money on airfare. You need to reduce the number of passengers or increase the number of passengers or look to Amex Travel. Yeah, we need somebody to build a tool so you could do all that in one place because I don't want to have to go to like

three different places and search three different ways. It would be one spot. The Amex Travel part would be tricky because you need to be logged in to see your your fares. I know I know just wishful thinking. Alright next up we've got one from Christie about Alaska status earning. So Christie says just listened to your recent podcast and heard you discussing award bookings via Alaska Airlines for American Airlines Medal of

Flights and deciding which frequent flyer number to add to your booking. I have flown several American Airlines metal flights this year. And when we say American Airlines metal, we mean she's flying on American Airlines operated flights. So there's an American plane all booked via Alaska. So American plane ticket booked via Alaska mileage plan each time after I booked via Alaska because you cannot change your Alaska number on these bookings. Not that I've found I get on American Airlines chat and add my American Airlines number for my executive platinum status benefits. I originally thought I would not earn any benefits towards my Alaska Airlines status. However, this has not been the case and each flight I've earned elite qualifying miles and I'm about to hit the first Alaska mileage plan MVP tier to confirm. I'm also getting my American Airlines executive platinum benefits like free main cabin

seat or free main cabin extra seats. I assume uh et cetera. So there's some great uh tips in here. So uh first of all, yeah Alaska tries to prevent you when you're booking an award uh to change change your elite number after the fact or to change it from anything other than your own Alaska number. And so I think it's a pretty great tip that apparently you can online chat

with American Airlines and get your American Airlines number on there if you need to, so that you could get your status benefits assuming you have American Airlines number on there if you need to so that you could get your status benefits assuming you have American Airlines status. So that alone is a great tip. Now the second part, Alaska recently introduced the ability to earn elite qualifying miles on award bookings. Our assumption has been that in order to get those elite qualifying miles on award booking, you have to make the award booking with your Alaska miles. That's definite. But we've assumed that in order to earn those elite qualifying miles, you have to keep your

Alaska number on the ticket in order to earn those elite qualifying miles. This seems to be a workaround to that. I wouldn't at all count on it working. I mean, so, you know, I would look at it more as like, woohoo, it worked. But if it doesn't work, you shouldn't, you know, don't be in a position where you're at the end of the year and trying to get that next level of elite status and counting on this flight for working. Because it seems to me like something that it's probably working by accident, not by intent. Right.

Please don't follow up with Alaska and be like, where am I elite qualifying miles if they don't show up? Yeah. Franklin Myler said that I should get my house here. Please don't do that. No, don't complain. Just blame Christy. Blame Christy.

Yes. Blame Christy. That's true. Uh, and by the way Just be happy. Blame Christie for that. Yes, blame Christie. That's true. And by the way, Christie, if you were ever in a situation where you didn't care about the Alaska earnings, but you really did care about the executive platinum benefits, or rather, yes, executive platinum benefits, whatever, the elite status benefits from American

Airlines, then the workaround for that, because you said you can't change the Alaska number, is instead of booking for yourself through your Alaska account, choose that you're booking for a different passenger, for somebody else, because there's a little drop down, where you pick yourself or you pick for somebody else. And so pick for somebody else, and then just put in your own name and birthday

and all the rest of that, and just don't put in your Alaska number there, or you should be able to change it, maybe to American Airlines. Yeah, they don't let you actually put it in during the booking process, but by booking it that way without a number, then you can go in through the American Airlines,

like manage your trip, and put in your American Airlines number to the reservation there, and then it's officially in there, but then, of course, you definitely will not earn lead qualifying miles. Yeah, so if you're trying to double dip, you wanna do it the way you've done it.

But if that's not your aim, then that would be your way around if you don't wanna have to chat or if chat starts to say no to that. Next up, we've got a tip from Reed. Reed says, I don't hear people talk much about Pointia and tracking existing award tickets. A lot of domestic travel for my family

where travel dates are fixed and times are limited. Sorry, he said, I book a lot of domestic travel in those conditions. I have started tracking all of my bookings with Pointia and I can't tell you how many points back I have received. So basically what he's talking about is setting up alerts so that you're alerted when the award you've already booked goes down in price, then you can rebook it

at the cheaper price. Yeah, I mean, that's a great tip. That's something I've started doing, not just with flight bookings, but hotel bookings, because we've talked about a lot of award tools that let you set alerts on hotel prices as well. Some of our favorites are rooms.aero and MaxMyPoint for hotels.

And for flights, personally, so I haven't been using points yet for this. I've been using Points Path because it lets you in one spot. So Points Path is the one that integrates with Google Flights. And so if you're booking a domestic flight, I always like to look at both the cash price and the points price because sometimes one or the other is better. Points Path will automatically tell you which one's better. But even better, when you click into the flight,

Google Flights lets you click a button saying, track this. Well, so does points path. So you can track both with just two clicks of the button with points path. So that's why I prefer doing with points path, but either way, it's a great general tip to to monitor your reservations after you make them and you can save a lot of points and miles.

Yeah, it is a great tip, especially for domestic flights. And with more and more programs going dynamic, I suppose, not necessarily only domestic flights. Yeah, that's a great tip. I frequently in the past just obsessively would search and see every now and then I'd search again and see if anything has changed. And I found that award alerts in general have really reduced the amount of time I spend doing that.

And this would be another great way to use these different tools. So I haven't been doing this. I haven't booked very many domestic flights lately. So that's probably part of the reason why I haven't thought about this, but I really hadn't thought about it. So I'm gonna have to try to make this part of my habit

and routine because it's a really good idea. Oh yeah, it sure is. And I wanna just quickly walk you through exactly how it works with Delta, because I do this frequently with Delta, because Delta's award prices are totally dynamic and they change all the time. So I get an alert saying the award price has gone down

and I just go to manage the reservation with Delta where I booked with miles and I just click change this flight and then it gives me a list of flights including the original flight that was booked and I just change to that original flight. And it says, it shows right on the screen, like you'll get back this many miles. And so boom, it's easy.

You don't have to change the confirmation code or anything. And you just get back some miles. So it's a great way to do it. Yep. Same thing with Southwest. So my same experience there doing that. So yep, certainly worth doing in the past. I would refer to tending to your reservations,

taking a look now and then seeing what the price is. But now you can just let a tool tend to your reservations for you. So that's terrific. Alright, next up we got mixed cabin awards seat selection. Ellen writes in and says I was listening to a recent episode and heard Greg talk about booking an American Airlines business class flight with connections and economy and being able to select main cabin extra for no additional cost when using Alaska miles. So as you may recall, Greg had booked a flight, I think it was from London to Chicago and

then Chicago to Detroit. And so the Chicago to Detroit leg was an economy class, but because it was a business class award London to Chicago to Detroit He was able to select main cabin extra even on that economy flight a plus Nick was paying attention I remember something every now and then every now and don't ask me what I had for lunch yesterday Alright, so I decided to try this with an American Airlines premium economy flight I already booked for my mother and I was using Alaska miles to Paris with a connection in economy. When I originally booked it, I selected regular economy seats thinking that would be my only

option. When I went back to my reservation to change seats, I happily discovered I could also select a main cabin extra for free. Just wanted to say thanks for this tip and making the economy part of my trip a little more comfortable. So in this case, premium economy award with a connection domestically, presumably an economy class. And yeah, those main cabin extra seats were available. So I don't know what Alan picked, but presumably maybe an exit row or something up near the front with extra leg room. So that's certainly nicer than a regular

seat. Nice square. Well done. Yeah, it's great little perk. That's just not obvious. And not all airlines do this. Often when you book with miles and you book business class or premium economy in this case, and you have a connection that has a leg in regular economies, often you're just stuck with whatever normal economy is. So it's nice that there are situations like this

where you can actually pick a better seats. Yeah, it's worth checking to see when you click on a different seat. Is there a fee for it or is it free? Exactly. That's exactly how I did it. Yeah. All right. Okay. Last up, this is a, this is, this is just a fun one. And this gets pretty long, but I thought it would be fun to end our giant mailbag show with this from Andrew. Andrew writes, big fan of the podcast. Your question of the week last week about whether there's a minimum trip length for you to make it a trip worth it inspired me to share my story. I'm a Broadway actor. It's a great job but but when I'm lucky enough to be in a show, as I am now, I'm not able to travel even close to as much as I'd like. We only get one vacation

a week every six months, and one day off, usually Monday, every week. I'd go crazy if I were only able to travel twice a year, so I've been taking some very ambitious Monday trips. My matinee Sunday is over at 6pm, so I can get a Sunday night red-eye from one of the New York City area airports, getting me to a new destination on Monday morning. I sleep, business class on the plane, and then have a full day Monday to explore and eat. If it's Europe, I'll spend the night and return Tuesday morning, where the time zones really work in my favor. With South America, I just take a red eye back Monday night. Either way, I get home with plenty of time to get myself together for my Tuesday night

show. I'm limiting myself to one of these per month since I usually do like seeing my family on my days off, and I also like to save the bulk of our points for trips we can all take together. But last month a friend and I had a terrific Monday in Lima, booked for a 70,000 Alaska miles round trip in La Tombe Business Class. We saw the sights, had a Michelin star dinner, and flew right back home. Later this month we'll be in London for about 24 hours. Is this how I'd prefer to travel? No. But what I love about this hobby is that it gives you the opportunity to create your own sampler platter of the world and bookmark places to revisit later. For example, a long weekend trip

a couple of years ago to take the Bernina Express through the Alps inspired the week-long trip to Lake Como I'm taking this summer with my wife staying at the Grand Hotel Victoria. Thanks, Nick. I'm also one of those hobbyists that really enjoys the lounges and planes themselves, which makes the journey part of the fun. Anyway, there's no wrong way to travel. If there's anything I learned from the pandemic, it's that the whole world is out there. You don't need a special occasion or an invitation to go out and see something that interests you. This was maybe my favorite email that we've gotten in a long time.

I loved this. The absurdity of, of traveling to London for a day, uh, is so attractive to me. And it seems, uh, you know, kind of ridiculous, but at the same time, so much fun. I w I, I wish I could convince my wife to take a day trip to Lima or But it's so cool and it's wild to think about but it is possible the hobby makes things like that doable and what I love About this is the approach of like the sampler platter idea that you know You can go and sample something and see and if you like it go back for more later on and if you don't Then you don't have to but not every trip needs to be an in-depth exploration of you know weeks in a city getting

You know full sense for the ins and outs Sometimes you know it could just be that sampler just like you know, just like getting an appetizer or something You don't necessarily need the full entree every single time. So yeah, I loved this. I thought this was so cool and so on point in the sense that there's so many things like that that are possible that seem crazy and ridiculous, but you can do with miles and points. And so I don't know. I loved this idea. I thought this was and it

was also just kind of cool to think that when you go to a show there might be somebody on that stage getting ready to run to the airport afterwards so they can fly somewhere and get back in time for the Tuesday show. That's a terrific, lovely thing. Right, right. Yeah, I loved it too. And he says himself that it's not how he would choose to travel if he had a good option, but he just loves travel. And so he's taking advantage of what little time he has and just making the most of it. And I just absolutely love that. And it reminds me so much about like sort of a day

in the life when we're doing one of our team challenges. It's almost like he does a challenge, you know, every- Once a month. Every other week. Oh yeah, once a month, right, right. So love it. That's great. And it means be able to sleep on the planes in both directions.

It does make such a big difference. It makes something like that potentially doable because you know, you do have the ability to rest like you're in a hotel room and get up and go and spend the day. So, so much fun, so much fun. Thank you for that one, Andrew. That one got me all excited for our next challenge too. So we'll see what that holds in store sometime down the road. All right, that my friends brings us to the end of this week show.

No question of the week because today we had all giant mailbag stuff. So we're trying to clear the mailbag out. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to get more of this stuff 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 the various social media where you probably if we're still traveling might find Some pictures and video from the places we've gone and things we've done. So check that out Please don't forget to join our frequent myler insider's Facebook group so you can ask and answer questions And if you'd like to send us a message so that we can consider your message for a future giant mailbag mail dump or

Question of the week or whatever it may be you can send that to Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody. Hi, I'm David Brody, cohost of the Travel in 10 podcast. Together, myself and my cohost, Tim Johnson have traveled over 150 countries around the world and all seven continents. Now we're sharing our favorite places, some of our best tips and experiences from all around the world in just 10 minutes on Travel in 10. Join us at Foyascape.com.