Frequent Miler on the Air - Sweet spots realized | Ep169 | 9-24-22

Episode Date: September 24, 2022

Having just wrapped up our #3Cards3Continents trips, this week we discuss the sweetspots realized during our journeys and how you can leverage them as well or better in your future travels. 00:57 Giant Mailbag 6:58 What crazy thing . . . did Nick do this week? 11:23 Main Event: Sweetspots realized 11:34 Stretching the Aeroplan award chart 19:50 ANA Round the World Awards 29:05 Turkish for intra-European business class awards for a better experience 32:30 Taking AAdvantage of Middle East to/from Asia sweet spot (40K business / 50K business -- and getting the first class lounge for the business class price) 38:15 Crazy Qatar business class award price: 6K Avios in business class for ~5hrs (no longer available) 40:57 Choice Privileges for Nordic Choice 48:37 Build your own sweet spot with transfer bonuses Join our email list: FrequentMiler.com/Subscribe Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event, Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, Sweet Spots Realized. You know, we write and talk all the time about award sweet spots where you can get incredible deals for very few points, very few miles. But recently, we've had some opportunity to actually execute a number of those sweet spots. Right. We've been digging into dessert left and right here. We're full of sweetness this week. That's absolutely true in more ways than one. And so we're going to go over some of those great sweet spots and talk about what we did to actually take advantage of them and why

they're so good. Or if we found out they're not so good in some cases, that might come up too. So we'll get into that right after Giant Mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from me. I have mail for the nice ANA agents who messed up an earlier booking I made for my round the world award. See, here's the story. I had wanted really badly to go to Norway to see the fjords. I wanted to go on a fjord trip as part of this round the world adventure, but I just couldn't make it work with award availability and with the requirement of my ANA round the world award.

I could only fly 14,000 miles. So I had to have pretty direct routings and everything. Couldn't make it work. So I'd picked a whole nother plan that didn't involve that. Sorry about that. And as we've talked about on a previous show, ANA kind of messed up the booking and the awards that I had thought I had booked

to go to Southern Spain and across the Strait of Gibraltar. All of that no longer available. So I had to come up with plan B. And when I looked for what was available for plan B, wouldn't you know it, I could easily get to Bergen, Norway, and I could easily get to, you know, back to North America, which was, is my next stop. And for two people, which is what I've been doing, two people all around the world. And so, ANA, thank you. You made my dreams come true. And if you've seen the pictures, if you were on Instagram and you've seen the pictures from Bergen, then you know why Greg is so excited about that mess up because my goodness, it was the, those pictures were stunning between Bergen and the fjords. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I mean, Bergen is what really surprised me. I, I expected the

fjords to be absolutely stunning and they were, I mean, no question. It's, it's, it's worth going way out of your way to see them. Absolutely. What surprised me is I didn't really know much about Bergen. And Bergen itself is stunning and has so much going on. So I just totally fell in love with that city. And I'm already talking to my wife about going back. She didn't get to come on this trip. So got to bring her back for that. Yeah.

Well, you know, and I think that there obviously are some people who were put off by the pace of our trips, right? That we went to these places very quickly, at least a few people anyway, that said, I wouldn't want to go all the way here or there and only stay for one night or two nights, which I totally get that, you know, obviously most people take a vacation and go somewhere for a while. But the nice thing about this trip is that you could check out a place like that for a day or two and then say, okay, you know what, now we're going to plan a trip back there because that's the place that stands out. Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly.

So, um, yeah, uh, I guess we should mention that what, why we traveling right right yeah let's back up let's back up and give a little bit of background so if you haven't been listening why not uh but but if you haven't been listening they're new they're new to the show welcome welcome welcome into the vault welcome into the vault uh so we've been we've been traveling this last week and a half we obviously we've alluded to that a few times already in the last couple of minutes because we were working on our Three Cards, Three Continents Challenge, which we do an annual challenge here at Frequent Miler in normal times anyway, where we try to find some way to find some new stuff

and test out some of this theoretical stuff we write about. So this time around, what we did is each one of us took three new credit card signup bonuses. So the points from three bonuses from opening cards and $1,000 and plan the most incredible trip we could to at least three continents with that budget covering all the travel, all the flights, all the hotels, et cetera, all the annual fees on the cards. And at least in my case, I flew almost entirely in business class, but not quite. I'm sure Greg probably has been entirely in business class and stayed at some nice places along the way. So it's been an exciting couple of weeks. I don't know. Steven Pepper went a number of places. You obviously could talk about what you did. I went to Egypt and Turkey and Oman and

Singapore and Thailand and the Philippines and Dubai and sort of Budapest for a night and then northern Finland before coming home. So all of that in just over a week and a half. The border person was a little surprised when I came back in. Yeah. And I went to people. I brought along the Maisie, the culinary concierge, and we went to Vietnam. We went to Doha. We went to Sofia, Bulgaria.

We went to Istanbul. We went to Stockholm. We went to Bergen. And while we're recording this, I still have one more stop to go. I can't wait to see what it is. I can't wait to see. I'm excited about this last stop, but by the time you listen, I'll be done.

And so you can check out our website and our Instagram feed and see where we've, where I was for my last stop. Right, yeah. So excited. It's been an exciting couple of weeks here. Lots of great Instagram content. If you haven't been following us on Instagram,

it's not necessarily too late. You can hop on Instagram because we've got reels for a bunch of the stuff we did. And then also there's a little highlight right underneath our logo. There's highlight reels for each of us that show what we did. So if you're curious about seeing some of this stuff and what it's like, because we're going to talk about some of this stuff. And if you're like, wow, I wonder what that looks like or what it sounds like or whatever else, you can go and check out those reels and stories to get a

better sense for the places and things that we're talking about. Now, I know that we were going to skip over what crazy thing this week, but I realized that I made a promise because I mentioned in passing that if you wanted to hear this story, you'd have to listen to the podcast this weekend. So I'm going to give a very short what crazy thing. What crazy thing did Nick do this week? The crazy thing, if it picked up on this in a post I wrote this week, is in Doha, when I arrived in Doha during this trip, which we'll talk more about trips in a few minutes here. But when I arrived in Doha, I went through security because that's what you do when you arrive from an international flight. They put you through security again. And of course, it's an expedited

security when you're flying in a premium cabin. So very short line. But when I was grabbing my stuff, they went to swab one of my bags and I grabbed a little too much. I grabbed somebody else's cell phone out of one of the bins. And I didn't realize until I had already taken the train to the next, you know, main terminal area. And I'm coming down the escalator on my way to the lounge. And I realized, oh, my goodness, have a phone in my pocket. That's not mine. So, so I immediately feel bad for whoever's phone I took, but also feel like, oh my goodness, I look like a thief, right? I have somebody else's phone in the airport. So not the ideal situation brought it right immediately to the info desk, first info desk I saw. And they seemed a little confused.

But I explained, you know, it was just an accident. I picked up the wrong thing. They took my passport and my boarding pass and recorded my details and took the phone and sent me off to the lounge. Said, OK, you know, we're all set. So I'm off in the lounge for a while there. And somebody comes up actually and asked me where I'm flying to. So you're flying to Beirut. And I said, no, Dubai. And they walk away. And then like two minutes later, another person comes around and holds out his hand and introduces himself.

And so I was a little, I don't know, confused until I realized he had an airport police uniform on. And then I was like, what's going on? He started asking me questions about a phone that I picked up. And so I explained that, oh, yeah, it was a mistake, blah, blah, blah. And he said, OK, well, the other person's not trying to press charges, but we may need you both to sign something explaining that it was just an accident. I said, OK, fine. And so the airport police left and I figured they would come back and

eventually they did. But then they asked me to come with them. So they took me started to take me out of the lounge. And it was a couple of police officers and a couple other people at this point. And it became clear to me that he thought I still had the phone and that I didn't realize I had turned it in. I had no knowledge of that. He thought we were going to go so I could turn it into lost and found with him. And he seemed a little annoyed because the passenger, the other passenger was already on their plane, blah, blah, blah. And so I explained, I handed it in. And so he brought me out to the information desk. And so now there's like six or seven people and me, and we're at the info desk and the info desk doesn't have the phone. And so I'm like, what do I even do? How do I prove this?

And there must be a camera, right? But eventually they called around and figured out that the info desk had already turned it into lost and found. Turned out to be okay. All's well that ends well. The police profusely apologized, said it was embarrassing that they didn't realize they already had it and sent me on my way. So it all worked out fine. But there was definitely a few minutes where I was like, what's going to happen here? They tell me they don't have the phone.

And, you know, it was a little weird for a few minutes, but, you know, we got through it. It was okay. A little fun adventure in the middle to just to keep, you know, keep you on your toes. Well, you know, the worst part of that was that, okay, so like, I think I'm done at this point. He's like, yeah, okay, you can go back to the lounge. And like, this is already the second time the police have talked to me. So I'm a little like, are we done? Are we sure we're done? Kind of a thing, but okay, I go to the lounge, I get a room, I take a nap. have talked to me. So I'm a little like, are we done? Are we sure we're done kind of a thing? But okay, I go to the lounge, I get a room, I take a nap. And then I come back and I'm sitting down eating or something.

And somebody comes up to me to ask me where I'm flying to. And I'm like, oh, no, not again. Last time somebody asked me that, police came and took me away. So luckily that time, nothing else happened. So I don't know. But they just were curious. I guess they were just curious where I was going. A random sleeping person. Right. Right. Well, I mean, I was awake and eating at that point. So I was like, what now? What now? I already slept

my six hours anyway. Yeah. So don't do that. Maybe they need to know where you're going so they can be sure to let you know if you're if your flight is ready. I suppose so. Maybe that's what it is. But at any rate, don't pick up somebody else's phone when you go through security. That's my tip. All right? That's a great safety tip.

So, all right. Well, that concludes today's show. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That just brings us to the main event. The main event. today's main event sweet spots realized we're going to go over some of the sweet spots we realized on the three cards three continents trip we're gonna start with nick who took the aeroplane award chart to the greatest length so you stretched it beyond what it was intended to do, I think.

Well, maybe, although it's funny because you say that. And I think Araplan is pretty well aware of how awesome their award chart is. I've been impressed with how familiar agents seem with it when I've called because I called a number of times to try to price out different awards. I booked one, I changed one, et cetera. And so I'm pretty impressed because what makes Aeroplan interesting is A, they've got this award chart that has not great prices, but pretty good prices if you want to go a really long distance. And it gets better if you're interested in a stopover because you can add a stopover for just 5,000 points. And then those two things become better because Aeroplan has so many airline partners. I think it's 40 something. They've got more than any other airline in the

world and you can mix and match. So that enables some really crazy stuff. And in fact, some of the itineraries I considered were even longer than what I did. For instance, my itinerary, I started out in Washington, DC, I flew to Cairo, Egypt, and I had a 15 or 16 hour layover in Cairo. So I went to see the pyramids and Memphis and Sacra. And then from there, I flew to Istanbul, Turkey, and I had again, about a 15 hour layover or so. So I was able to get a hotel for the night and then get up and get on a yacht across the Bosphorus to visit both the European and Asian sides of Istanbul before I had to get back to the airport. And then I flew on from there to Oman, spent a night in Oman, because again, it was about another 16-ish hour layover or something like that. So I spent a night

in Oman at the Grand Hyatt there and went snorkeling and was surrounded by whale sharks and sea turtles. It was amazing. And just a short time there in Oman. And then from Oman, I continued on to Bangkok, Thailand. And so I had a day where I was able to walk around and see the Grand Palace and some sites and then continued that evening into Singapore and spent a night in Singapore and got to get some delicious food

at a hawker stand there. And then from Singapore on to Cebu, Philippines, which was actually my destination. So that was all a single one way award and actually no stopover, just long layovers of anywhere between 10 and 20 hours or so in each city, which gave me a chance to do something in each place that was interesting. And in fact, I considered I could have continued on from Bangkok instead of going to Singapore and the Philippines. I could have gone to Australia. And I very seriously considered going to Perth because the Hyatt Regency there is on not fine hotels and resorts, but the hotel collection.

And so two nights there would have been just a little bit more than what would have been covered with my annual prepaid fine hotels and resorts or hotel collection booking with the platinum card. So I considered going on to Australia because I thought that that would be also a pretty interesting story in the sense that, you know, I'd get to visit all those places and get to, you know, like the most far flung continent. I ended up deciding not to do that because I've been to Perth before and I hadn't been to Cebu, Philippines. So that was a big motivator. And then also because I knew that I would need a rental car in Perth because I've been there before. And so everything's so spread out. And I figured that the cost between the car and the gas would start to get to be more than I wanted it to be for a stop that I was less excited

about because I've been. But the amazing thing to me is that you can put together something like that. Now, in my case, I paid 105,000 miles one way for all of that, including all those chances to stop in each city and $66 in taxes. That's it. No additional surcharges or anything. So it was a pretty amazing price, I thought, for all of that flying. And then you could add a stopover for 5,000 miles. Now, unfortunately, they did increase the redemption rate on that a little bit on September

1st. So now it'd be 115,000 miles one way to replicate that. But still, that's a pretty incredible value when you consider that I flew Egypt Air business class. I flew Turkish Airlines business class. I flew Oman Air on their 787 business class. They flew Gulf Air on their 787 business class. They flew Singapore Airlines on a 737 MAX in a flatbed throne seat. I mean, pretty incredible for a service. So would you agree? I think the key to really stretching the type of award you're talking about is that your travel goes beyond the distance of their award chart, basically.

Right. Because they have bands of distances. As you go further distance, the award price increases. But once you get over a certain distance, it stops increasing because that's just the top of the award chart or the bottom, depending on which way you look at it. Yes. Yes. That's absolutely the top of the word chart or the bottom, depending on which way you look at it. Yes, yes. That's absolutely the sweet spot, I think, in any of the regions. It's when you get beyond the maximum distance.

So Greg is totally right. Aeroplan has a really weird award chart. If you're not used to award charts or even if you are used to award charts, it's the most unique one because they have an award chart between two zones. And so between, for instance, North America and the Pacific zone, which is where I was ending up at the end of my award. And then they determine the number of miles based on the distance, total distance flown on your way there. Now, I could have gone because I was going to the Pacific. I could have gone westward and gone through California

and out to Asia that way. Instead, I went eastward because I knew that, like Greg said, the best value would be exceeding the maximum distance band on that award chart because I'd get as much flying as I wanted and the chance to be able to plan those long layovers, which is, again, a big advantage. A lot of programs will allow you up to a 24-hour layover without paying additional miles. But the thing with Air Canada is because they have so many partners, it's really easy to find ways to stretch that. Whereas with other airlines, the flights match up, right? I mean, you know, if you fly United to Germany, there's, you know, a number of connections

probably that are much shorter, whereas, you know, or there may not be as long a connection option because the flights are planned out in order to feed those local flights. Whereas with these totally mismatched airlines, you can really connect some long layovers. And I think that makes the airplane program more interesting. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I was totally jealous because, you know, I was working with an ANA Star Alliance around the world award where I could only book Star Alliance for the flights within that award. And I would have loved to there were certain things I wanted to do around the Middle East. And there are just no Star Alliance carriers that go, that hop around the Middle East.

So I was just, you know, had to just take out that, those ideas basically. And yeah, I mean, I could have used other miles to do that, but it just wasn't practical within the budget constraints. Well, the other nice thing about Aeroplan is that there are no surcharges. So you don't have to worry about avoiding any particular airlines. Whereas with ANA, of course, you're going to have to avoid some airlines that charge high surcharges. Right. That's another thing. I had to avoid a number of airlines just because I wouldn't have been able to afford it with the cash part of my budget. Do you know how many miles you flew total on that ANA ticket? Uh, I did. It was, uh, no, I can't remember now I had looked into some. So the longest one I think I looked at on ANA was about 14,000 miles flown. Uh, this one was over the

11,000 was the upper band, right? So it was more than that. I want to say maybe it was the 12, five, 13,000, something. It wasn't the longest that I looked at, but it was a decent number of miles. I think I took quite a distance. Altogether on my trip, I think I did enough miles to have circumnavigated the world in the middle part anyway, between all of my flights together. But that wasn't, of course, I booked just my way out with AeroPlan right back was booked. Right, right, right. All right. So that's AeroPlan. Next one we'll talk about is ANA around the world awards. We've talked about it a million times on the show that ANA, which is a transfer partner from American express membership rewards. You can transfer your points from Amex to ANA one-to-one, and they have this

distance-based round-the-world award chart where the more miles you travel around the world, the more the award costs. But what's so amazing about it is how cheap it turns out to be. So a very reasonable itinerary where you could go lots of places would cost maybe 125,000 or 145,000 ANA miles to go around the world. When you compare that to most airlines would charge more than that, or at least that much to just fly business. Oh, and that's business class. What I was talking about around the world and business class, most airlines would charge about that just to, you know, fly from East coast, US to Europe and back for, for, for that much or more. So, or, I mean, I paid almost that much one way to Asia, right. You can get around the world theoretically for just a little bit more.

Right, right, right, right. So that's what I used to go for most of my trip. And one of the things that intrigued me was the idea of doing it entirely with one credit card signup bonus. And I knew I wouldn't have the 150K bonus because of how we did the card draft. So the question was, could I actually book an around the world award for 105,000 or fewer points, which were my options for doing it all in one, in one go. And as it, as it turned out, I had, I, I had picked the gold card with the 90,000 point offer.

And so then my goal was, can I do this with 90,000 points? So the ANA around the world, the word chart says you can go a distance of 14,000 miles flown on Star Alliance carriers in business class for 90,000 points on the dot. I had done some pre-work before the card draft and believed it could be done, but it was still a little unsure. And just to see, you know, to get an idea why I was unsure about this, you know. Yeah, this is impressive. Really, this is the thing that impressed me most about your trip. So please explain why.

Well, there's a few reasons why it's hard to believe that it can be done. One is that the circumference of the Earth, if you were to go along the equator, is about 25,000 miles. So we're talking about doing, you know, that I'm constrained to just a little over half of that in total miles flown to book and round the world award. But I knew, you know, from the get-go that you could do things like depart from the far west coast of the United states and return to the far east coast of the united states and and they wouldn't count the middle parts um i also knew that even though they have some rules about which like continents you touch in your flights that it's possible to leave a, a sort of an open segment, an unflown segment, and they don't count that towards the award. So, um, to make it concrete, uh, what I did was I flew the round the world award to, from San Francisco to Saigon, Vietnam, via Tokyo, and didn't have anything going on between there and Sofia,

Bulgaria. So the whole distance from there to Sofia, Bulgaria. From Vietnam, that is from Vietnam to Sofia. That you had to do on your own. I booked separately with a different program. And so, and I didn't count that as miles flown. And so then I was able to piece together the rest of it under 14,000 and, and really barely, I mean, like I'm within, you know, 50 or a hundred miles, uh, by the time I'm all said and done, I'm sure. So I'm sure I've been sitting here doing the math, trying to figure it out. Okay. Where's he going to go? Which way is he going to take? Yeah. It was kind of, I mean, it's kind of fun, right? It's, it's a, it's a puzzle, like, you know, knowing which, where Star Alliance

airlines fly, which ones you can't do because they have too big a fuel surcharge is, and finding award availability and then tying in other things like I had picked a, you know, a credit card that had five Marriott free nights. So I better stay in some places that have Marriott's available or else, you know, what am I going to do? So, so, so those are all kinds of the kinds of constraints. And then and then I did it for two people. So I wouldn't recommend that the average person try to take advantage of this round the world award for 90,000 points. Right. Like that's a ridiculous constraint.

Not the way that you. Right. It's just that restraint. You don't really need to take on. I mean, just by just by bumping it up to about 125,000 points, you can literally go around the world and and it'd be just much easier to book and you could pay a little more and you can even have some like, you know, not go in a straight line. So you might be able to go to Australia or you might be able to go to South Africa and things like that for a bit more. And especially when there's these 150K MX Platinum card offers still floating around, a couple could each sign

up for one of those cards, make one of the two people an authorized user on the other so that after 90 days, the points can all transfer to one person's ANA account, book the two people. And I was pleasantly surprised that despite I had a number of issues, but that had to do with a lot of weirdnesses of the competition, I think more than a and a, I, I, I was surprised at how easy it was to book straightforward things, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's amazing. It's that's really good to hear because you do have to book these over the phone. So the, you know, that could be an intimidation point for some people that you have to call and talk

to an agent, but the agents were pretty good. It sounds like. Agents were great. And they were, they were so friendly and helpful and yeah. And, you know, and just some, as I said, some, some of the problems I had just had to do with very unnatural constraints of this competition. If I was doing a real, you know, let's say six week round the world trip and the agent said, you know, I'm sorry, there's no longer availability on Monday. Can you fly Tuesday? I'd be like, sure. You know, in the real world, it wouldn't be that big of a deal in this competition.

It just wouldn't work at all. So, yeah. Yeah. So and the competition's fun because we set these parameters and say, okay, well, you have to work within these parameters. And so that forces creativity and forces us to find ways to solve problems. And so Greg had no problem adapting from going to Spain to going to Bergen or something like that, which I think makes for something more interesting. But at the same time, when it comes to applying it to your life, like Greg said, use a few more miles and have a little bit more flexibility and you'll be great. Yeah.

And I need to mention one of the big advantages, we talked earlier about advantages of Aeroplan, Air Canada Aeroplan Awards. But one of the big advantages here is that you really could stop and take your time at each of the stops. I mean, you could spend days, you don't have to keep your stop to under 24 hours and do, you know, maybe pay extra for a stopover like Air Canada would charge. You can just do up to, I think it's eight or nine. I forget exactly how many full on stopovers. And, and so you could really, you know, just use that many points and, and build really,

really a dream around the world business class trip. So great. We, we, we always said it was a great deal. Now I've done it and I still believe it's a smoking great deal. So which carriers have you flown at this point? I've flown United twice and I've been pleasantly surprised by, I didn't expect much from United. And honestly, I wasn't like blown away by United, but it was very good. And the seats were more comfortable than I expected.

They have these great little memory foam pillows, like an extra pillow that I really like. You could either use it to support your back or, you know, whatever you need it for. And so there's a little, you know, little extras there. I flew them. I flew ANA business class. I flew Turkish twice. And Turkish is great. If you're flying around Europe, most carriers, even in business class, will give you basically an economy seat and will usually just block the middle seat. So if you're flying with someone else, one person will be on the window and one on the aisle. And other than that, they don't really do anything special for business class passengers. You get better baggage.

You know, if you're checking bags, you get more free checks bags and things like that. And you might get, you know, an extra snack box or something. But Turkish is a whole nother level. I mean, their business class, it blew me away from Sofia, Bulgaria to Istanbul. The flight was one hour. And we were in these luxurious business class seats. I mean, really nice seats. uh, seats and they brought out the full, uh, big catering that you'd expect on an international, you know, eight hour flight. I mean, they, they had a, they brought out the menus, uh, first that

they, uh, poured champagne and all of that. They, uh, brought out a sort of starter course and then, and then they followed with whatever we ordered and both the sort of main and as a array and everything. And it was all delicious. This is a one hour flight. It's amazing. It's amazing. I can't get a pack of peanuts on Southwest these days. You know, like I can't tell you how many times I've taken a one hour flight and they've been like, no, we can't do drink service because it's going to be bumpy today. Of course, it wasn't bumpy at all. In an hour, you get a full meal.

It's insane. We're talking about sweet spot awards, but I feel like Turkish has to be praised as being sort of a sweet spot carrier for European flights. There are other carriers that do similar things in other parts of the world, but for flights within europe i don't think you could be turkish well that's good to know i think that's

interesting because you know they're a little bit out of the way if you're flying between two european cities to it's a little bit out of the way usually to fly to istanbul but it might be worth going out of your way a little bit for a much more comfortable business class experience than what you'll get on any other European carrier. That's for sure. Yeah. And then the only other carrier I've flown so far is Scandinavian. And that was such a short flight. It barely counts. It was from Stockholm to Bergen, which was, well, I guess it was probably the full hour of the Sofia one, but this was a little tiny plane. It didn't even have a business class, so I can't really fault them for not doing anything there. It wasn't intended to be anything special, and it wasn't, but it was perfectly fine for an hour, whatever. And I really liked the airports in Scandinavia. So that I was, you know, it's funny you say that. Cause I was just in Finland and I thought the same thing. It was just very distinct. Yeah. The design of everything, very distinct designs. There's a lot of wood flooring, which, which really like surprised and pleased me. And yeah,

anyway that's, that was, that's been great, great but but time to move on we're taking too long on this on the sweet spots let's try to march through the next ones a little bit quicker the next one on tap for us to talk about is american airlines and what you did with that for getting to the middle east yeah so american airlines has a couple of really nice sweet spots in their award chart, but I think a standout value is flying between the Middle East and Asia because they charge just 40,000 miles in business class or 50,000 miles in first class. Whether you're going to Asia 1 or Asia 2, they have Asia split into two groups, but the price is the same when you're flying between the Middle East and anywhere in Asia.

So that's a great value because you're covering quite long distances there. And because American partners with two pretty glitzy carriers and Qatar Airways and Etihad in the Middle East. So you get a couple of great options. So that already on its own is, I think, a pretty good sweet spot. You can fly from Cairo, Egypt, all the way to, say, Tokyo or wherever else in Asia for 40,000 miles in business class or 50 in first. That's a standout value to begin with. But it can get even a little bit better because Cutter is known for their lounges. I mean, you visited the business class lounge. It was great. In Doha. And I've been there before yeah it's amazing it really is so huge so big and beautiful

ceilings like a million feet tall and and um two different like restaurants basically where you sit down and get menu service it was really something special yeah so and i've been to the business class lounge there once before and thought the same felt very much the same way. But this time around, what I did was I learned, I realized that the flights within the Middle East, many of them, not all of them, but many of their flights within the Middle East are marketed as having a first-class cabin, even though there are two cabin plane, much the same as what carriers do in the United States, how, you know, Delta or American, they'll call it first class, even though there's only one forward cabin. Same thing in the Middle East. So for instance,

you can fly Q suites between Doha and Dubai. Yes. In a one hour flight, you can fly Q suites and they market the Q suites as first class on that short one hour flight. But because it's only a two cabin plane, you only pay a business class award price. Well, the nice thing there is because they market that as a first class flight, taking one of those short flights gets you access to the first class lounge in Doha. So what I did was I booked an award from Asia to the Middle East, a business class award for 40,000 miles. So I flew from Manila to Doha to Dubai.

And I picked that specifically because I knew that the Doha to Dubai leg was Dubai that would give me 15 hours in the Qatar Airways first class lounge because I know that they have good food and they, you know, pour nice champagne and you get a private room for six hours. You didn't have free night certificates to spend. So getting basically a hotel room for free is a great deal. I thought so. You know, between the flight being an overnight flight and I knew I would have six hours in a, in a room there. Yeah. I thought that that, that would come in really handy in the sense that it wouldn't cost me

anything for a hotel and I would basically get one. So better than a hotel really. Right. Cause the food was all free and the drink was all free. I mean, it was a fantastic little hotel stay in the sense that I got my 15 hours in the lounge. Most hotel rooms don't have people coming in to try to arrest you for stealing someone's phone, though. Well, that's true. That's true.

So you want to avoid that part, okay? So then word to the wise, don't pick up anybody else's phone and you'll be just fine. Aside from that, I do want to back up just a second and say, even though those flights are marketed as first class, the award price is priced as if it's business class. And that's why Nick was able to do this. Right, right. And that's what I was saying when I said that because it's a two cabin plane, you still pay a business class award price. And this trick with getting first class lounge access actually right now anyway, works in both directions. Generally speaking, you need to be departing in first class in order to get access to the first class lounge. So that's why I booked

at Manila to Doha to Dubai, because then I was departing Doha in first class for Dubai. And so that would get me first class lounge access. However, since the pandemic, Qatar has been giving first class lounge access if you arrive in first class as well. So if your award were to start in Dubai, and you're flying from Dubai to Asia, let's say, then because you would land in Qatar in first class on that Dubai to Doha leg, you would also get first class lounge access. And again, you'd be paying a business class award price for that. So that's a pretty amazing value. Now, there are lots of other destinations within the Middle East where

that happens, though there are some destinations in the Middle East where it's still marketed as business class. So you do kind of have to look at it and see what does it say? Does it say first or business? Because if it says first, then you're good to go to get yourself first class lounge access. So that was fun. It's a great sweet spot just for the sense that you get really long flights. You're talking about eight, nine, 10 hour flights potentially to some places in Asia in what is normally a nice business class. So that's already a standout value. Then if you add this trick on top to get yourself a nice lounge experience, well, all the better. Yeah. No, that's a great one. All right. So the next one up today is one that unfortunately might not be replicable.

As I was doing all my research for my trip, I stumbled upon a award price anomaly, which was that British Airways only wanted to charge me 6,000 avios, 6,000 points to fly business class on Qatar from Doha to Sofia, Bulgaria. And that's approximately a five-hour flight. And any other five-hour flight or even four-hour flight on Qatar booked with British Airways costs like four times as much as that, sometimes more than four times as much. And so it was probably a pricing mistake. But I was able to book both myself and maizey on this route and in fact i booked maizey weeks after i had booked myself so it wasn't like a one-time sh you know very short-lived glitch but um right now i can't get it to um uh it errors out when i try to when i try to uh reproduce it it's possible that it's bookable over the phone.

I mean, because I can't get it to price one way or another. So I think if someone wanted to fly that route, I think it's worth calling British Airways, asking them what's the price to fly this leg individually. Don't try to tack it onto multiple other legs because I did try pricing it that way back when, when this was alive and it didn't didn't retain that pricing when when you combine i was curious yeah so like if i flew um from saigon to doha to um sofia all on one ticket it didn't retain the

good pricing okay well okay so that that's a bummer i was hoping that maybe that was the case but it does make me feel like okay well if you found one there might be others somebody said yeah somebody said to me that i just recently in one of my posts i think they said when you see one cockroach you know there's more that's right that's right i mean it does seem unlikely, right? That there aren't more things like this. So happy hunting, everybody. Right. I think so. I found that really intriguing because I figured there might be some good opportunities there. I mean, because my goodness, just flying between Doha and Dubai, that would cost you more than that for a business class flight. So all the way to Sofia, hats off to you for a great find on that one. Even if it was only short-lived, we know at least to look for that life elsewhere.

Yes. Yes. All right. That brings us to the next sweet spot we want to talk about, which again, I have to thank ANA's mess up for this one. When I was originally going to go to Southern Spain, I didn't have any good uses for my city thank you points for staying at hotels. And even though I had five nights or six nights, depending on how you want to count it with my Marriott card, the way I planned the trip, I had eight nights in hotels and the switch to go up to Stockholm and Bergen made it possible to use the Nordic choice sweet spot. So even before city thank you points were transferable one to two to choice privileges, the Nordic choice properties have been known as a sweet spot in the choice privileges program where you can get some really nice, pretty expensive

hotels for very few points. And often they come with free breakfast and usually they come with free breakfast. Sometimes they also come with free dinner. Anyway, with the ability to transfer city thank you points one to two to choice i found in bergen we stayed two nights in bergen i found a great hotel it cost 12 000 choice points per night so that instead so 24 000 total points for the two nights but only 12 000 city thank you points for two nights great sweet spot i'm so glad to finally be able to take advantage of it oh that's right and how was the hotel the hotel was really nice it was it was very quirky um it's like uh it was very small but right in the middle of town i mean you can't get more in the midst of things than this and the staff were incredibly nice um some things i didn't

love like it it wouldn't be great for um if you're traveling with another person in the same room i think they're they didn't have any real much place to put stuff so um if you want to unpack and there's two people unpacking, you're going to be fighting for the little bit of shelf space that's there. I see. Well, you know, Nordic choice properties are such a good value in part because Scandinavia is really expensive in general. It's an expensive destination to visit. So being able to put your city thank you points to good use for Nordic choice, I think is worth shining a light on anytime we get a chance to, because that's a way to save significantly because any kind of hotel costs quite a bit usually in Scandinavia. Right. Right. All right.

I want to wrap up with one last thing, which is it's not really a sweet spot. It's sort of build your own sweet spot, which is when there are big transfer bonuses, which the transferable points programs often have these 25%, 30%, even 40% transfer bonuses where instead of points transferring one to one, they transfer one to let's say three or one to, sorry, one to 1.3 or one to 1.4. And that makes like regular everyday awards a great value. So, you know, I was able to fly, Nick talked about American Airlines. It's only 40,000 miles to fly business class from Asia to the Middle East. Well, I booked with Avios, I booked for 50,000 points from Asia to the Middle East, but it cost me fewer than 40,000 points because there was a 40% transfer bonus when I took advantage of it. watch for the transfer bonuses and look for things like that because whatever your award plans are, you might not have to worry about, oh, I'm going to find exactly that sweet spot I heard about. You could book almost anything and it's likely to be a good deal after a transfer bonus like that. So

worth keeping an eye out for that. Very true. And, and Aeroplan is the one that I used heavily, obviously, and we just talked about, and there's a 15% transfer bonus right now for MX membership rewards. So even though they've increased the redemption rate of that option, it would cost you fewer miles than what I paid fewer points anyway, than what I paid with the bonus right now, you'd pay only a hundred thousand, even though the redemption rate's gone up right now. You'd pay only a hundred thousand, even though the redemption rates gone up to 115, you'd pay only a hundred for the same award that I bought. So,

so, you know, there are definitely opportunities still with all of those worth keeping your eye out. And when we've written about additional things, when we talked about a few things here, but we've also written about some additional stuff this week at the blog, and there's going to continue to probably be some more in terms of reviews and information about what we did. So keep your eye on the blog,

keep your eye on Instagram, because we'll obviously not only finish up this trip there, but our future stuff will surely be better documented on Instagram. No doubt. No doubt at all. All right. So for those watching on YouTube, please pardon the weird lighting. I'm actually coming to you from an airport lounge as I wait my next flight in this trip. Well, thank you very much for taking the time there to do that. It was nice that we were able to connect on this because Greg is in a lounge. I'm in a hotel. We both just got back to the US literally from this trip. So it was great

that we were both able to connect and do that today. So, uh, so good stuff. If you've enjoyed what you've been listening to, and you'd like to get some of this stuff in your inbox each day, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe to get on our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media. Like I said, you should check out our Instagram because we've certainly been heavily focusing on that for this trip. But you can find us on Twitter. You can join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. You can find us all over the place.

So thank you very much for listening with us today. And we will see you guys all again next week. Bye, everybody.