Frequent Miler on the Air - The travel rewards we want most | Ep233 | 12-16-23

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

It's fun to daydream about the flights and hotels we'd love to book with miles and points. This week, Greg and Nick discuss the redemptions they would most like to make if the stars aligned. 00:00 Intro 01:33 Giant Mailbag 06:38 Card Talk: Air France / KLM Flying Blue World Elite Mastercard https://frequentmiler.com/afklm/ 15:45 Main Event: The rewards we want the most 16:35 Greg: Air France La Premier (first class) 18:54 Emirates "new" First Class 19:30 Lufthansa New First Class (if it ever comes to be) 20:04 New Singapore Suites 22:13 Turkish business class nonstop Detroit to Istanbul 23:56 Nick: New Singapore Suites (on a long route!) 25:01 Etihad Apartments 27:18 Qatar Qsuites 28:29 NOT Air France La Premier 39:49 Hotel awards we want 39:54 Mr. & Mrs. Smith 40:32 Post Ranch Inn 41:29 Virgin Limited luxury safari camps -- via Mr. & Mrs. Smith 47:28 Intercontinental Khao Yai 48:20 Ritz-Carlton Al Bustan Palace 49:36 Am SLH property in Santorini 51:02 A luxury safari camp 53:46 A Celebrity or Norwegian cruise 56:24 I wasn't aware that there is a way to book American Airlines with Membership Rewards points. What are the options?

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. Today's main event, the travel rewards we want most. Last week, we talked about our favorite rewards from 2023. And this week, we're going our favorite rewards from 2023. And this week, we're going to be talking about the rewards that we're sort of most interested in taking advantage of in the future. Just can't wait. We just can't wait there.

I mean, there's always something new and coming around the corner. So these things will change. But these are the things that we were excited about doing at some point or hope to do at some point. There'll be new things, I'm sure, that will come along and maybe we'll never get to do these, but we can dream, right? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Don't forget, wherever you're listening to the show, make sure you comment, give us a like, a thumbs up if you enjoy the content and share it with your family and friends and all the rest of that. And remember, we always have the show notes, or excuse me, we always have the timestamps in the show notes. So check the show notes for those timestamps. If you want to skip around to different segments, or you want to come back and revisit something, listen to it again, you can easily find the different sections. Again, that'll be in the show notes. If you're listening in a podcast platform, or if you're

watching on YouTube, expand the description box and you'll find links to all of the various sections. And of course, also, when there are relevant posts, I also include links to all of the various sections and of course also when there are relevant posts i also include links to those posts so you can read even more about what we've been talking about speaking about more let's drag out that giant mailbag i'm dragging it out i almost dragged it on top of your little show before sorry about that that would have hurt so i didn't drag it all that way luckily um but now i've got it and this week's giant mail comes from Phil. So Phil sent me an email. In there he said, like you, which he's talking to me, I still have my old City Prestige card.

So that's a card that you can't get anymore, but if you have it from way back when, you can still keep it. And he talks about in his email that he has a big trip that he's booking through a travel agent. And he says, I looked through all of my cards and saw that the City Prestige card offers 5X on airfare. But if you dig down to their terms and conditions, the 5X applies to airlines and travel agencies. I gave it a shot and it worked. The charge came out of pending status today and shows that I'm getting 90,000 thank you points. Yeah, it's pretty good.

And he goes on to say, I don't have the city premier card, but that card shows 3X for airlines. And I'm wondering if premier expands the 3x to include travel agencies as well interesting i don't know off the top of my head do you happen to know greg i happen to know and in fact uh if you look at uh the freak miler website have you heard of that nick you know this it's one of my favorites actually your favorite i read it closely check all the details so if you look at at every credit card that we talk about has its own page. And if you look at the page for the prestige card, look under a section called earning rate, and you'll see it says 5X airfare, dining, and travel agencies.

Ooh, it's right there. Yeah, it goes on to 3X hotels and cruise line and 1X everywhere else. Now the premier card answering that question. Again, go to our website, earning rate, 3x grocery. We knew that. 3x dining. We knew that. 3x gas stations. We knew that. 3x flights, hotels, travel agencies. So yes. Yes, indeed, Phil. The premier does give you 3x for travel agencies. That's not something we talk about much. I think people on the show that are hosting the show, me and Nick, don't tend to use travel agencies much ever. But if you do, that's really good to know. Yeah, it is. It's not something I ever really think about talking about, like I said, because we don't use them. In fact,

just last week, I saw somebody posted a question about something in Frequent Mer Insiders and somebody responded and said, oh, well, you should definitely talk to a travel agent to plan out this trip. And I thought to myself, should you? But then I was like, well, I don't know. Maybe you should. I mean, it depends on how you plan your trips. They can certainly add value for the right person. So if that's you, then definitely want to keep that in mind. Now,

question time, Greg, does that include online travel agencies? If you book with Expedia or hotels.com or something like that? Are you going to get the three X with the premier or five X with the city prestige card? I think so. But I don't know. I don't think so also. But again, I don't book through those sites either very often. So so I don't know the answer to that either. But at any rate, yes, travel agencies will be included. So certainly if you're booking a big trip, you want to make sure you're using a card that includes that. Now, correct me if I'm wrong.

Wouldn't you also get 3X with, for example, the Chase Sapphire Reserve that earns 3X on all travel, basically? You would. And if you have the Sapphire Reserve, that would be a better pick because you'd also get the travel protections that the Sapphire Reserve offers, which the city premier does not. Right. And so, you know, reverse engineering here, 90,000 divided by five points per dollar.

We're talking about a pretty, pretty expensive trip and it's something less than 20,000, but not much less than 20,000 or $18,000 or so. And so with a trip that big, I would probably, you know, I would probably sacrifice a couple of points per dollar and go with the Sapphire Reserve because that does cover you. I think it's $20,000 a trip. Right. So with the cancellation and protection and blah, blah, blah. I don't remember offhand what the what the total is, but but, you, but a lot of people are going to buy trip protection anyway. And so if you're buying that, then using the city prestige card makes a lot of

sense. Five points per dollar. Pretty nice. And I continue to use my prestige card mostly for dining because I'm not as worried that they don't cover dining accidents. I mean, food poisoning can get pretty serious. There's no coverage for that at all, but I'll take my five points per dollar and take that risk. There's no coverage for that. Sapphire Reserve has emergency medical protection. You get $2,500 in emergency medical protection. You got to go to the hospital for some fluids, Craig. As long as you're dining while traveling, that's true. You don't get that medical coverage at home. Nor would that amount of money cover much of anything at home. But internationally,

that could go a long way. Very good. Okay. So that's our giant mailbag. Let's talk about a card here. Card talk. For this week's card talk, we've got the Air France KLM World Elite MasterCard from Bank of America. Let's talk about this. What's up with this card? That was a mouthful, wasn't it? It was. I was like, am I going to make it through in one breath or am I going to have to take a breath halfway through? Can I make it sound like a musician? Air France KLM World Elite Mastercard. All right. Let's talk about this card. It is $ a year so that's that's interesting because most cards of this type are 95 or 99 so they're breaking the mold by being a few dollars cheaper no foreign transaction fees earning rate three points per dollar on air france klm and sky team

purchases i'm not really sure what qualifies as a sky team purchase do you get 3x when booking through delta i don't know it's a question i would have asked right the frequent miler right ask him and yeah i don't know um and but here's where it gets kind of interesting one and a half points per dollar everywhere else so you're not going to be stuck with that 1x everywhere else earning rate that most cards offer okay um, perks. You get 5,000 points after your anniversary when you spend $50 or more the previous year. So as long as you've spent $50 on the card, they give you 5,000 points every anniversary. So you can think of this as kind of counterbalancing that $89 annual fee with 5,000 points. It's pretty close in value.

Milestone expire as long as you make a purchase once every two years. And you'll get up to 60 experience points, XP, per year. Those are points that get you closer to elite status. So you'll get 20 XP every year on your account anniversary automatically, and another 40 if you've spent $15,000 within your card member year. So again, total of 60 experience points by spending on this card $50,000 each year. 15, right? on this card $50,000 each year. $15,000 each year. And just to give you an idea of what that gives you, 60 experience points gets you 60% of the way to silver status

because silver status requires 100 experience points. So, yeah. So there you go. What do you think? It's a little something. I mean, thumbs down. I think that one and a half points per dollar everywhere sounds okay on the surface.

But then when you look at the fact that there's lots of other cards out there that offer one and a half or two transferable points per dollar that transfer to Air France. So there's not really a reason to put any kind of purchases on this card in particular. You'd probably want to use a different card for 3X on travel, like one of the ones we just talked about a few minutes ago, rather than using this for Air France, KLM and Sky Team purchases. And again, you know, you could use a Chase Freedom Unlimited at a base level and earn one and a half points

everywhere that could transfer to Air France, KLM, Flying Blue if you have a Sapphire preferred or Inc. Business preferred or whatever, or two points per dollar, of course, with a Citi Double Cash or an Amex Blue Business Plus on up to 50,000 spend per year anyway. And then in bonus categories, you can do much better with transferable points. So I don't see any reason to use the card apart from the $50 a year. I'd probably spend the $50 for the 5,000 miles because that's pretty low hanging fruit. Maybe if you did the 15,000 spend for status because that's going to get you to a meaningful level of status.

Well, OK, at least you're not losing too much because you're earning one and a half miles per dollar spent. So I think that's maybe where this card becomes most useful. If you're somebody who's thinking about crediting your Delta flights to Air France, KLM, and you want to try to earn elite status with Flying Blue, then maybe this card does make sense and you're not sacrificing a ton by spending on this over some other transferable currency card. Yeah, totally. I think this card really only makes sense to invest in with spend if you are interested in elite status. For someone who's sort of a geeky credit card collector like me, it might make sense to get the card and just spend

$50 a year on it just because I'm not really losing much because I'm getting the 5,000 points each year and just spending $89. But I mean, that's such an edge case. But no, if you're really interested in elite status, then it obviously does make sense to have this card. The thing I should point out is that Air France first class is really, really exclusive and they don't let people use miles to book it unless they have platinum status. That's their top tier status, which requires 300 XP each year to get and keep that status. And so if your heart's set on spending way too many miles to book Air France First Class, this card can get you a little bit closer to that requirement. I do want to point out one other negative, which is that they only release one reward ticket per flight in first class.

So if you're hoping to do this with someone else, you're out of luck. Yeah, you know, and it's probably worth mentioning. I don't know if this might come up later on, but if you really want to fly a lot of Premier. And I wouldn't stretch to get platinum status, both because A, like you said, you're limited to one seat. B, they're going to charge a ton of miles for it. And C, at least, I don't know, the situations where I have flown in business class on Air France, there's been an opportunity to upgrade to La Premier for a reasonable enough amount of dollars that I wouldn't waste a lot of effort going after platinum status to use tons of miles. 100%. That's the right answer. If you want to fly

La Premier, which is what Air France's first class is called, the way to do it, book business class on a flight that includes first class and wait for a offer to upgrade. And I mean, I guess there's a chance you won't get that offer to upgrade. But, you know, flying business class shouldn't be like the worst thing that ever happened to you. Probably won't be the most awful consolation prize. And just given the prices I've seen for it, I wouldn't want to waste the miles that they would require for first class because you could, you know, if you look at miles as being worth even

just a penny each to keep math simple, I think you'll probably do much better with that strategy, booking business class and upgrading than booking with miles. I think anyway. Yeah. One last thing to say about that. So last I looked, Air France was charging in the range of like over 200,000 to over 300,000 for like a one-way flight across the Atlantic in first class. That's if you have platinum status and if the award seat is available. And that's a lot. Now, what I don't know is, has that changed since they lowered the business class pricing and the economy pricing? Have they lowered that first class pricing? I don't know. Their online calculator no longer shows, at least for me, it doesn't show the't. So that's a good point. We don't know necessarily what they're charging for the awards now, and you won't see them show up. I don't think if you don't have platinum status, right?

I think that's true. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's one of those things that's more unattainable than other things. So it's got some allure for that. So, all right, we'll talk more about that probably in a few minutes, but I think that wraps up card talk. So I think our overall verdict here is if you really want to chase a level of elite status, if that'll make sense to you for some reason, then it would make sense to have

this card. Otherwise it's kind of a mixed bag as to whether you want it. The other thing we didn't harp on is the ability to keep miles alive. And the reason I think we probably should have mentioned that is because what you discovered a while back that if you credit paid flights to Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, then it's hard to keep your miles alive. And so if you've credited your paid Delta flights to Air France, then it might make sense to get this card to keep your miles alive. If you've only ever earned miles by transferring

from, say, Amex Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards, then experience has shown that just transferring over more if you've only ever earned miles by transferring from say amex membership rewards or chase ultimate rewards then experience has shown that just transferring over more will keep the miles alive that's not true if you've credited paid flights but it is true if your points are all transferred right right it's so weird but yeah yeah so there you go there's the other edge case there all right so we're gonna skip over a bunch of regular segments here. And we're gonna move, I think right into the main event, right? Yeah, yeah, right into the main event, main event time, the travel rewards we want most. So this this week, we don't care

what you the audience wants, right? We're talking about we want what you speak for yourself, Greg, I would love to hear from people as to what it is you would like to book. Yes, yes, we would. But i can't hear them well we aren't going to be today you could be shouting in your car and and we can't hear you unless we happen to be i guess walking next to your car all right all right all right so i guess what we're going to do is I'm going to start with the flight awards. I'm most excited to try someday and then Nick at a Time describes their ground service as being one of the best in the world. And I've talked before about how I've loved my experience with Lufthansa first class, their ground experience in the lounge, getting driven to the airplane, just all kinds of amazing things there. Just in the past,

I also had amazing experience with Thai first class. Their ground experience in Bangkok was just extraordinary. And so when One Mile Time describes this as one of the best, if not the best in the world for this type of thing. I want to try it. As we said early in the show, it probably isn't practical to expect to use miles to book first class because of all these restrictions. You have to have platinum status with Air France KLM, and it costs a lot of miles. But what you can do is book business class with miles and hope to get a upgrade offer. And those upgrade offers, like it's not like super cheap, but it's also not like paying outright for first class. It's not in that range. So I think that's a good way to do it yeah i mean a few years ago i think when you and i flew from dubai to europe i think i if i remember correctly i don't know if you remember but i i think i remember it was about 1200 or something like that that they had offered and that was i think it was

a seven or eight hour flight i think dubai to paris so yeah yeah so it certainly wasn't but wasn't cheap for that length of a flight, but I feel like it was somewhere in that range as well. And yeah. I mean, it's way less than what they charge for a cash price for the ticket. It's not, like you said,

not cheap, but way less than what you would pay if you were to book a first class ticket for sure. So, so there's that. So, okay. Air France lot from here.

So are we going to go back and forth you're going to go through all of your your your wants here should we go back and what are we doing you're gonna go through all the whole wish let's go through them all all right next is emirates a new first class so i've flown their their old but still awesome first class with nick uh and uh that was terrific but they have a newer one that it's not all that new anymore, but it's only available on a handful of airplanes. And it's looks extraordinary, a lot like Eddie had apartments. It's like a whole room, but it's even more beautiful and I don't know, spacious. So, so that looks like definitely worth trying out.

I think that would be a lot of fun. Similarly, Lufthansa has teased about coming out with their new seats and that includes an amazing looking new first class. Who knows when they've been talking about a new business class for, it seems like 15 years or something. It definitely seems like their current business class product is about that out of date. So yeah, at least we just haven't seen that come out yet. And so when will this new first class come? I have no idea, but I'd love to try it when it does.

Next up, the new Singapore Suites. You know, it does. Next up, the new Singapore Suites. Oh, that's awesome. It does. Nick and I have both flown the old Singapore Suites, which was awesome, absolutely. And the new one is even more so. And you were booked on this at some point, weren't you? Yeah, I was. We had to cancel, which was so sad. But one of the coolest things about this is if you can book this with your significant other, you can get suites that are side by side.

So rooms that are side by side, they open the partition between them and it becomes like what looks like in the picture is almost the size of a hotel room with what appears to be like a king sized bed in the middle because they have the two beds lined up next to each other. And that just seems wild, doesn't it? I mean, it's so wild because it does look like a room because your chair is separate from your bed. Right. I mean, they're two separate things. Right. There's a there's a chair that swivels and sits by like the fact that you have a chair on an airplane that swivels first of all is just pretty wild and i know that's not totally unprecedented american airlines first class which they're getting rid of eventually has a chair that swivels but it's not in its own little room

so singapore's got it in its own little room, the chair. So you've got space around your chair that swivels. And oh, yeah, there's also a bed in there next to it somewhere. I mean, that's yeah. So you have two of those swiveling chairs and the bed in the middle and like this whole looks like you said, like a hotel room in the sky. That just seems nuts. Right, right, right. And you know, when when we had it booked temporarily,

it was the flight JFK to Frankfurt when they were flying the new product on that route. And that's a fairly short flight. I really want to try this on a like flight to Australia or something like that. You know, I want to really have the time to enjoy it. It would be the ideal, you know, and I don't know how likely that is. I'm just saying this is, that's what I want with something like that. Okay. Last on my list is a different, a totally different type of thing. Turkish is now flying out of Detroit to Istanbul and I want to fly it. I, I, um, I love, uh, flying nonstop flights. Um, I love flying business class to Europe, but usually those, those flights are too short to really take advantage of the live flat seats and get a good night's sleep and everything. But this is just long enough that, that you should be able to enjoy the catering and then get a good night's sleep and get up and everything. And so I'm really looking forward to that. They're flying. I can't remember which aircraft, but it's the one that's in that one-to-one configuration, not in the older style that Nick flew recently.

So I think that should be great. Yeah. Yeah, no, that is excellent. I think that the length of the flight, like you said, makes it a more luxurious experience because you can enjoy all that stuff. The last couple of transatlantic business class flights I've taken, I didn't even eat dinner. That's going from the United States to Europe. I ate in the lounge specifically so that I could maximize my sleep time on the plane because the flights from New York are relatively short. So there's only so much time to sleep. So yeah, I think this is a great opportunity. And I just spent a couple of days in Istanbul. I know you spent a couple of days in Istanbul during the Three Cards, Three Continents trip, and I really liked it. It was an enjoyable place to visit. So I'm interested in going back again for sure.

Yeah. And I'm looking forward to bringing my wife. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Excellent. All right. Well, my list has some overlap with yours because the new Singapore suites has been at the top of mine for a long time. And I totally agree. I'd rather do it on a really long flight. So it doesn't even have to be from the US. I wouldn't be opposed to something like Europe to Singapore if they've got it on one of those routes. I'm sure those are relatively long flights. So I would look to piece that into some other bigger trip because, yeah, I would want that to be as long as possible to enjoy that. And the problem for me is that we always travel with our

kids. So four seats, I, this seems like a pipe dream to me, like something that I'll probably not actually do anytime soon, if ever. Uh, but I would love to, it seems like it'd be a lot of fun. I think you should just book your kids into the, into the first suites and you and your wife sit, sit in a business class. Let the first class flight attendants handle that. Good luck. They're in first class. They're your responsibility today. Oh my goodness. We're going to get some angry comments from people on that one. Don't worry. Not going to do that. Totally a joke. So that's probably at the top of my list. Etihad Apartments though is right up there with it. I've never flown Etihad Apartments. And again, this is one that I'm unlikely to get four seats in. So it also seems relatively unlikely that I will get to do this probably anytime soon. But you never know. We have seen

a number of seats become available through Aeroplan at least once in the last year. So you never know. But that's one that I would love to check out. I would love to try. Those seats look so spacious and nice. So your experience with it seemed fantastic. So I'd like to do it. And again, on a long flight, which of course, flying to Abu Dhabi is quite a decently long flight from anywhere in the US. Though, if I were to be able to find it, I would probably look to do something like flying from the Middle East to Asia because of the American Airlines sweet spot, 50,000 miles one way in first class. That's really pretty good. So if I get one of their routes to Asia, I get both a decently long first class flight and a really good price on the award.

So that's probably how I would look to do it either from Asia to Middle East or Middle East to Asia for the 50,000 American Airlines. Yeah. As things stand now though, the only route that's I think currently running is between Abu Dhabi and London, which is not a very long flight. And that's the one I did and it was not long enough for sure. They are planning to bring the A380 aircraft which has the suites to new york uh if i remember right so that's that's coming up soon and uh i don't know i haven't heard anything about them adding it to flights to asia but it certainly would make sense that they should do so hopefully hopefully if they do then i'll keep my eye out on that also because we've mentioned

before that it is often easier to find award availability on routes that don't touch the United States because you're just competing with fewer people that have the miles to be able to book those seats and probably fewer people that are paying for them in a lot of cases. So it tends to be easier to find award availability. Now, I don't know that it'd be easier to find for a Tejada apartment seats necessarily, but I would bet that I would have an easier time finding that on a route other than New York to Abu Dhabi anyway. So, uh, so, you know, we'll hope we'll hope someday that happens. Uh, I asked my wife what, if there was anything that she would have, and I didn't expect that she would give me an answer at all because my wife loves to travel, but hates the flying thing altogether.

Like she just hates to fly. Obviously, flying in business and first makes it a lot easier for her, but still doesn't enjoy it typically. So I didn't expect her to give me an answer at all. But much to my surprise, she said Q suites. She actually didn't really hesitate at all. She said she hasn't flown that. It looks really awesome. So that was her pick. So and that's one that is relatively accessible. You can find it now and

then you can use American Airlines miles. It's a reasonable number of miles from the United States to get to either Doha or beyond, really. So so that's one that I think is somewhat likely. I booked business class from Africa to Europe, but then I realized after I booked it that the flights I booked didn't have or aren't scheduled to be operated by planes with Q Suite. So I made alternate plans actually in the end. But yeah, so that's one that's been on the list for a while. And I feel like there's a good chance eventually I'll find an opportunity for four of us to fly that together. So we'll keep an eye out on that one. For me, though, I wanted to have one more, and that's a not.

And so for me, one that's not on my most wanted list is Air France La Premiere. And I mentioned this because Greg had it on his list. So I added it to my not list. I've never been that intrigued with this. Now, the ground game, you make a great point there, Greg, because ground game does sound like it's on point. And that really can make the airport experience pretty cool. I mentioned recently, I think that we did the VIP one lounge at JFK Terminal One. It's a priority pass lounge now that lets you skip to the front of the security line. And that was one of those types of VIP airport services that if you

get an escort from the first class agent to the front of security, for instance, that would feel very similar and be a cool experience to be able to get skipped to the front of the line. So I could see where the ground game would be interesting. But I've looked at the pictures of Air France La Premiere, and I know everybody makes a big deal out of it and says that it's awesome. The seats just don't appeal to me that much. They look big, but they've got like a curtain. There's not even a door. It's a curtain, which I don't know. I mean, it seems a little strange to me. And the seats look relatively big, but not much nicer than other great first class seats. I don't know. Like when I look at them, I don't say, wow, it looks nicer than ANA, for instance.

I agree with you. When I talk about wanting to fly La Premier, there's nothing about the in-flight seat that looks amazing. Although I think that the service in flight and I'm sure it's amazing, but the seat itself doesn't, to me, look amazing in the pictures.

Maybe it'd be different in real life. The idea of a curtain, I guess it's supposed to be classy, but it reminds me of a hospital where they have curtain dividers between. I don't want anybody harvesting a kidney on my way to Europe. You know what I mean? Give me a door. Rather a door rather door that, you know, and, and all of this is silly when you look at the pictures and you're going to look at them and be like, oh my goodness, that looks incredible. It does. It does look very nice. It's not it's first class. So it obviously

looks like it's pretty cool, but I look at it and I've never been that drawn to it when I've looked at reviews and I know that it's very exclusive. And so I know that appeals to a lot of people in our hobby because it's something you can't easily get. So I get the exclusivity of it and I get the ground experience being quite good. But I've never been that intrigued beyond the fact that you can't do it. And of course, we all want to do the things that we can't do. So there's part of me that wants it for that, I guess. But I've just never been all that interested. So that's one that's not been on my list that i feel like is on the list of of many people who are into this hobby anyway so i don't think greg's alone and having that in his list but it's never really been on mine so i totally get it yeah all right hey uh before we

move on to hotels i think we were remiss and not talking about how to book each of these things yeah just just real quickly like what's your first uh skipping over air france lab premiere I think we were remiss in not talking about how to book each of these things. Just real quickly, what's your first? Skipping over Air France Lab Premier, because we talked about book business class and then look for an upgrade. Emirates first class. The options for booking that with a reasonable price have kind of gone away, haven't they? Yeah, they have because they've added such incredible surcharges and taken away the ability for partner miles to book them.

So really your only option for without paying ridiculous surcharges is Air Canada Aeroplan, but then you're going to pay a ridiculous number of miles. So it's kind of a trade-off. If you book via Emirates, you can pay an unreasonable

but not totally unreasonable number of miles to fly in first class. But the really unreasonable part is the surcharges because it's out of $1,200 one way or something from New York to Milan, for instance, I think, in first class. So that's just not particularly appealing to me. Air Canada Aeroplan, again, doesn't have the surcharges, but they do have a totally separate award chart for Emirates. So it's not close to what their usual award pricing is. And if you have one segment on Emirates, you're going to pay the Emirates price for the entire itinerary. So, yeah, I don't know what your best option would be there anymore. Maybe a really short Emirates first class itinerary if there is one. Maybe, maybe they have flights that departing from countries that limit the surcharges. And

so you can look that way with Emirates miles. All right. Anyway, Lufthansa, Lufthansa new first class. Well, I mean, you need a time machine, first of all, to, you need a DeLorean in order to get into the future, whenever it is that those actually happen. Because like you said, we mentioned that the business class has been forever, but like literally it's been years that they've been saying, okay, well, it's going to be next year. It's going to be next year. It's going to be next year. Just keeps getting pushed out. So it was going to be this year. Now it's going to be next year. And who knows whether it'll be actually next year or the year after or never. So, but to book Lufthansa first class in general, your best two options, I guess, would be Avianca LifeMiles. If you're going to fly from the US to

Europe, it's going to be 87,000 LifeMiles, no surcharges, just Avianca's $25 partner booking fee or whatever, and the taxes, of course, but 87K in first class. It'll cost you more with Air Canada Aeroplan, 100,000 from the East Coast. It's distance-based, so it depends on where you're starting, 100,000, 110,000 from most of the country. The West Coast is going to be more. And again, no surcharges,

so another potentially good option. And of course, you can piece together with some other interesting partners or things and go a longer distance for a bit more. But that'll be your other main option for booking. The thing to know, though, is, of course, that Lufthansa typically does not release any first class availability until within 14 days of departure. And it's not like it's T minus 14 days every time. As you get closer to the day of, like the day before or the day of, you'll often see more seats

open up. So it's worth keeping an eye on that. And in fact, I have a couple of times now tried booking a flexible award home from Europe, hoping to look for Lufthansa First Class at the last minute. And on this last trip, I might have done that if I hadn't booked with Avianca Life Miles and had a high cancellation fee that I would have been facing to change because I did find five seats in Lufthansa First Class to get back to the US within a couple of days of departure. That would have been amazing. Yeah. And that's probably the best, most reasonable way to book First Classes. Lufthansa First Classes have some other flight already planned that you're happy to fly on, but then, you know, cancel it if you find and book the Lufthansa first class.

One other thing I want to say about it is to really get the most out of Lufthansa first class today, you want the ground service stuff, which happens in Germany, which if you're just flying from the US to Germany, you're not going to get any of the good stuff. The good stuff will happen if you're flying past Germany. So like you're flying through Frankfurt or through Munich to somewhere else. Or if you're flying from Germany away in first class, then you get the good ground services there. So either fly through Germany in L Lufthansa First or fly from Germany, but don't end in Germany or else it's all going to be about the onboard product,

which with the current Lufthansa First Class is good, but it doesn't make my top five or so. Right. Yeah. I've never flown it myself. You have. I haven't. But just from looking at the pictures anyway, it looks very nice but not extraordinary compared to the other options that are out there these days. But the Lufthansa, they have an entire first class terminal in Frankfurt, right? So it's like an entirely separate building

that you go into. Like if you're in Frankfurt and you go to check in, it's a separate building at the airport, right? Right, right. And I actually haven't done it in that way because I've always been connecting through either Munich or Frankfurt when I've done it. And when you're connecting through, you don't go to the first class terminal, but you go to a first class lounge. And the pictures look the same to me like they're amazing those those first class lounges so yeah it's great stuff looks great okay um singapore well we we've

got to use singapore miles right transfer from anyone to singapore to book singapore suites and turkish what do you think i should use to go from Detroit to Istanbul on Turkish? I mean, your best bet's got to be either Turkish miles or Avianca life miles, depending on how much you value your miles at. And the reason I say that is because if you book via Turkish, you'll pay fewer miles, but you'll pay more in surcharges. So you'll pay 45,000 miles, but your surcharges are going to come to around 300 bucks or so one way, your surcharges and taxes. Whereas if you use Avianca Life Miles, you'd pay 63,000 miles, but none of the surcharges. Of course, then you also have to compare the cancellation fees. It'll be $70 to cancel a Turkish award. It'll cost you probably $200 to cancel an Avianca

Life Miles award. So there's that consideration too. So a number of different things there. Of course, if you find round trip availability, you could save a little bit through ANA paying 88,000 miles round trip, but you'll still pay the surcharges that you would through Turkish. So not a huge advantage to booking round trip through ANA. You're going to save a thousand miles each way. Yeah.

So I'll probably book with turkish i would transfer from um city in my case or from capital one i guess is the other oh and built are the other options yeah um what are we missing edihad so how are you going to book edihad apartments when you find those four seats available for your family i mean probably with American Airlines miles, although if Air Canada Aeroplan and Etihad work out whatever the squabble is that's been going on there, maybe Air Canada Aeroplan and probably American Airlines because their award chart is becoming more and more competitive as everybody else increases their prices a little bit. And Americans have stayed the same for a number of years now.

So probably American Airlines miles. Also because of the ability to freely change or cancel. With Air Canada Aeroplane, you can pay more miles to get a cancelable ticket, but that's not, in my opinion, always a good deal unless you kind of have a pretty good indication that you're likely going to cancel yeah booking a backup flight i would i would do that and and don't forget if if you have any problems booking with american airlines miles uh another new option is is uh air france klm flying blue all right i

can book can book eddie hod as well yeah and if you get a transfer bonus maybe that's a good deal although uh at least I just remembered they don't yet have the ability to book first class. They can book business class, but not first. Good point. So never mind. All right. And QSuite's same answer, I guess.

American Airlines. American Airlines, probably. All right. At least you get a good transfer bonus to Avios. In which case, then Avios may be a good option. All right. She had a good transfer bonus to Avios, in which case the Avios may be a good option. All right. Let's move on to the hotel awards that we're most excited about. First up for me, almost everything on my list is contingent upon Hyatt buying Mr. and Mrs. Smith and integrating them. So the purchase already happened, but the integration is expected early 2024. And what we don't know is which particular properties that are in Mr. and Mrs. Smith's collection today, which ones will be available to book with Hyatt Points once integration happens. But assuming these are,

these are just a few that are on my radar that I'm really excited about. First up, Post Ranch Inn, which is in Big Sur, California. It is right across the street from my beloved Ventana Big Sur, and it's on the ocean side of the street. So it should have more spectacular views, at least of the ocean. And it just seemed, I don't know. I first heard about Post Ranch Inn a long time ago when the road was washed out and I read about how the Post Ranch Inn was flying their guests in and out by helicopter rather than canceling all the reservations. And so it's always sounded to me like one of those places that, oh, well, I'll never go to because that's only for the rich people. And now here's a chance to try it out. So

that's fun for me to try out something like that. Another thing, two properties on my list, they're lumped together because they're both virgin group properties in Africa that have safari camps basically, or they are luxury safari camps. One is in Kenya, one is in South Africa, and it's long been true that you could book these properties with Virgin Atlantic points, now with Virgin Red points, but they cost a ton of points to book that way. When I've looked it up in the past, it's hardly made sense. You don't get great value from your virgin points by booking most of the time that way. However, both of these properties are also listed in Mr. and Mrs. Smith's catalog. So it's potential

that they'll be bookable with Hyatt points, which would be pretty darn amazing. So really excited about those possibilities. And finally, this is more of a catch-all that if you look at Mr. and Mrs. Smith, they have a lot of properties from these super high-end luxury brands like Amman and Belmond and Rosewood and probably 12 others I've never heard of. And so again, just the chance to book all these with a reasonable number of Hyatt points is what I'm looking forward to. I don't predict that every single thing in the catalog will be bookable. I'm sure that it won't be. There's things in there right now like Mosquito Island where you like Mosquito Island, where you can book a house for like $18,000 a night. I just don't see Hyatt making that available unless they, I guess, charge per bedroom or something. But I think a lot of them will be. And so I don't think it's out of... I think we'll be

seeing at least some of these that I mentioned becoming available. So I'm very excited. Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting because all of yours rely on the Mr. and Mrs. Smith thing and none of mine do. So but and also interesting because when we talked about our favorite awards of 2023, basically all of mine were Hyatt.

And mine, well, first of all, none of yours are Hyatt for the awards that you most want. And most of mine are not either, which is, I think, also going to be an interesting takeaway here. But I did not realize that the Virgin Limited properties are in the Mr. and Mrs. Smith catalog. So that's intriguing to me because that one in Kenya, I've also looked at a few times and been like, oh, that would be cool. But like you said, it's not been an amazing deal with Virgin Red Points. So that would be pretty cool. And actually, as you said that, I was like, oh, I'm planning a trip to Africa next year. I should look and see if there are any of these safari lodges that would fit for my plans.

And so I actually looked while you were talking a second ago, and I don't think they will for at least nothing that fit into where I'll be. But nonetheless, it's a good reminder because I don't have a very firm grip on where there are Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties yet. So I haven't dug that far into it or how extensive their catalog is. I did find it kind of interesting because each of the properties, when I just looked up all the properties in Africa

and I scrolled a bunch. And so they all have like a listing of what the style of the property is and the setting of the property. So like one of them here, the style says desert block party and the setting says between Sahara and Red Sea. This is for a place

somewhere in egypt uh and there's another one that i saw and the style was boho bolt hole and the setting is funky cold medina and i'm not really sure what any of that means so yeah yeah you know i i saw that on on mr mrs smith and not that particular one, but I saw how they had those kind of descriptions and it doesn't help me at all to know what I'm going to get with these things. That's my problem with Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The name Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I've said before, it doesn't mean anything to me. Because I don't partly because I don't have experience with the properties. It doesn't have a, like, it doesn't resonate with me at all. And then, yeah, like if that, is that what you have to tell me about that hotel? Like, what does that tell me? I have no idea. I'm going to scroll past it. I'm not going to stay there. Like, what does that

mean to me? So Mr. And Mrs. Smith, you've got a branding problem. I've said it before. I'm going to say it again. So I, but I'm, I'm now I'm curious because I'm like, oh, well, maybe I can fit one of these in. And if I can, then I need to consider the whole Hyatt gift card angle. Should I buy gift cards then maybe instead of waiting for a property to become available with points? I don't know. Good, good questions to consider. So. All right. So and since all of yours are Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties that you could book, are you going to buy some gift cards with the current Hyatt opportunity to buy gift cards and earn elite nights and all that? I think there's a good chance that I will buy gift cards, but not till January,

because I already have enough nights for globalist status this year in 2023. And so buying gift cards in January will give me a leg up on next year's status. So yeah, I probably will. Makes sense. Very good. All right. So mine, I had a hard time coming up with a list because I just right now didn't have a lot of specific properties. My trips for 2024 have been more centered around places, I think, and award availability. When I say places, I mean destinations and award availability to get to places than specific hotels. Sometimes I'll book trips around specific hotels. So it's not that I don't do it that way. Sometimes just my 2024 travels weren't that way. So it hasn't been top of mind. But when I thought back on it, there were a couple of places that stood out to me that I would love to stay at.

One of them is the Intercontinental, I believe it's pronounced Khao Yai. This is in Thailand. And it's in like what, like, I guess they converted an old train or they made a bunch of the rooms look like they're train cars anyway, into this luxury hotel. And it looks really cool. It's like a theme thing. And so maybe that's some people view that as cheesy or kind of kitschy. And other people will be like, Oh, that's pretty cool. I looked at it and thought, Oh, that looks really cool to me. So I think I would like to check that place out. And it is sometimes reasonable, either with cash or with points, depending on the season time of year. So that's a place that's interesting to me. I like Thailand, I love Thai food. And so I would love to get there. I haven't gone there with my kids

yet. We've actually been talking about how we'd like to get our young sons to experience Asia. So that's a place that'll be on my list eventually, probably not next year, but eventually, hopefully. Next up, Al Bustan Palace, which is aitz carlton property uh in oman just outside of muscat i guess oman and that looks really cool the pictures of the setting look really pretty with the mountains in the background and it's of course an old palace and so it looks very palatial so that place jumped out at me during our planning for three cards three continents because it's often relatively reasonably priced through imx fine hotels and res, or of course through Marriott stars. So, uh, so that seemed like a good use of an, of a, an FHR credit to me.

And it looks like a really cool place. So I'd like to check. I had actually almost booked it for three cards, three continents. It was one of the places that I was looking at. Cause if you remember, I had, um, I had five Marriott free night certificates. I think this one was within the range. So yeah, that would have been awesome, but it just didn't work out that I could get there. Yeah. And I'd love to go back because the snorkeling I did in Oman was amazing. I snorkeled

with whale sharks and the sea turtles were everywhere. And it was just a cool experience that I wouldn't have associated with Oman before. I wouldn't have known to associate any of that with Oman. And now I'm really curious to see more. So I'd like to get back there. And that seems like a really luxurious place to be fun to stay at. So that's been on my list. One of the SLH properties, here's my Hyatt entry.

One of the SLH properties in Santorini, and I don't know which one. I've seen mixed reviews on some of them, and I haven't spent the time to pour through reviews because I'm not planning a trip to Santorini in the near future but I love Santorini it's beautiful yeah I think looks gorgeous I know some people would say it's overrated but I think it's overrated because it's really pretty so to stay in one of those you know white buildings and you know with the cliff view and all that I think that would be cool. I would enjoy that and be able to do that with points would be fun. So I don't know which of those SLH properties would be the best bet, but that would be something that I would love to do and hope that maybe I'll get an opportunity to get on the books while I can.

So there's also a new Hyatt on Santorini, if I'm remembering right. There is, but that's like over on the other side of the island, which is also worth exploring and seeing, but I probably wouldn't go out of my way to use Hyatt points. I mean, if it worked out, great. But what appeals to me about the SLH properties that are kind of in those neat buildings is the scenic views, particularly from those buildings in the towns like IA, that just, they seem like a cool thing to live in, to be part of for a day or two. Sure. So I'd like to check out one of those and I wouldn't be opposed to also checking out the

new Hyatt property there. But again, that's on the Eastern side of the island, if I remember correctly. So not the same kind of view. And then finally, a luxury safari camp. And this is one that I didn't really have on my list for years because I went to South Africa, stayed within Kruger National Park because you can rent cabins in the national park that are very reasonably priced. They're basic and simple, but they're very reasonably priced. And once I did that, I was kind of like, do I really need a luxury safari camp? Because I enjoyed staying inside the park and getting up in the morning and being right there in the park and inside before the gates open to people on the outside. So I wondered if I really even ever needed to have that experience. But I think I've just become curious enough that

I'd like to try it out, check it out, see what that experience is like, and at least be able to compare it rather than just, you know, guessing whether I would be interested or not. So I don't know which one yet. I haven't figured that out. I'm in the beginning stages of planning something to Chobay National Park in Botswana for next year. So I have not yet looked into what's available and what's around. I don't think that there's much of anything available with points in that area or anything at all really in that area with points.

So of course, I didn't look up Mr. and Mrs. Smith until just now, and it doesn't look like they have any properties in Botswana, but I'm going to have to keep my eye out and see what opportunities may arise as things get added and things change. So that's one that's kind of on my list that I, just because I love seeing the animals. I mean, in Africa, it's amazing and I want to see more and I'd love to see the great migration someday. And there are tons of different places within Africa that I would love to go see that stuff. And as our kids get a little bit older here, I think we'll probably focus a little bit more on that type of trip for a lot of reasons,

but the educational aspects for sure. So I look forward to that eventually. And that's not necessarily a miles and points thing because there aren't a ton of great opportunities for that. There is that one lodge in Kenya, the JW Marria, but that requires a bush plane flight. Right. And that's that. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

so does, so does the, the, the, the necker or Virgin group one in, in Kenya. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So that could be a limiting factor for my family, but we'll, we'll have to look around and see what we can find. So those are like, I think the dreams. And of course they're not the only ones. There are lots of other places I'd love to go see.

But as far as award redemptions or dream trip type places on my list, I think those are the things I have in mind. What other stuff do you have? Do you have anything that's like not hotel or flight related? Not really. At least not that I can think of. So what about you? Yeah. So I've been wanting to book a cruise. I've been wanting to book a cruise. That sounds like a pretty ridiculous statement if you've seen my travels over the last year. I've been

wanting to book a cruise specifically through a website called You Are Comped that I haven't talked about because I haven't had the experience of actually booking with them yet, but it's spelled like the letters, U-R-C-O-M-P-E-D.com. And my understanding of this is it's essentially like a casino hosting company that matches up gamblers with cruise lines. And so they'll match your offers. So if you have an offer for a free cruise from cruise line A, then they can match you up with a free cruise offer from cruise line B. And so I looked at a number of cruises through them over time. And what's appealed to me is they seem to have access or at least potential access to like a really wide range of cruises. One of the things that jumped out to me early on was a cruise to Antarctica. And I was on a big ship, so it didn't

actually make landfall in Antarctica, which I know half the people listening are now probably like, oh, that's not really an Antarctica cruise. But once I looked up videos of the Drake Passage, I decided two things. Number one, that I'm never taking a cruise to Antarctica. And number two, that anybody who doesn't count something that crosses the Drake Passage is really going to Antarctica is off your rocker because that's crazy. If you're going to actually do the Drake Passage, you get credit in my mind for having gone to antarctica so uh so anyway you get credit but what what what a shame to to suffer through the drake stuff through that and not make that fall not make land yeah true good good point perhaps but anyway they seem to have access to a wide range so we've been trying to fit one in

to figure one out that would work and just haven't yet because we had so many other travel plans. And specifically, I want to cruise with a line that I can't get otherwise through other matches and things. So the two I've been looking at through there are Celebrity and Norwegian. And so there have been chances to book either, and I haven't yet picked one or the other to book, but that's something that's on my mind to try to get one of those in order to compare the experience on one of those lines with what I've traveled on over the last year, because I've now been on Carnival a couple of times and been on Royal Caribbean a couple of times and will be on MSC a couple of times. So it on MSC a couple of times.

So it'd be nice to compare that to a slightly higher end cruise line, I guess. So check that out. I would love to hear your take on it once you manage that. We'll see. So that's on my mind as well. All right, I think that wraps up the awards that we're excited about trying to book, right? So I think that brings us

to this week's question of the week. Let's do it. This week's question of the week. Let's do it. This week's question of the week came in via email from Emmanuel. And Emmanuel said, love your show. Learned a lot from both of you. I recently did a points search that led me to Qantas Airlines to book American Airlines domestically with membership rewards points. I was surprised since I wasn't aware that there was a way

to book American Airlines with membership rewards points. Do you have any experience with Qantas Airlines? It's not a name I hear very often and I'm a little hesitant to book. Now, I included this for a few reasons. Number one, so you could address the basic question. But number two, so we can talk about the ways to book American Airlines with membership rewards points because surprise, surprise, Emmanuel, Qantas is not the only, you know, the only show in town with your membership rewards points necessarily anyway. But go ahead. Would you be hesitant to book with Qantas, Greg? No, not at all.

If they show it as available, go ahead and book it as long as it's a good deal. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as far as that goes, yeah. I mean, Qantas is a major carrier. It's the flight carrier of Australia. So it's not like a small time airline or something. It's a major world airline.

And oftentimes, no, I shouldn't say oftentimes, they have a decent award chart for shorter flights. The longer the flight is, they have a distance based award chart. So the longer your cumulative flight distance is, the less of a deal they're going to be compared to other options for booking the same flight. But for particularly short itineraries, especially short connecting itineraries, they are a good use. And I specify that because we'll talk about Avios in a second and why calculating your cumulative distance will be advantageous with Qantas miles versus booking with obvious.

But anyway, so that could be good for short, short flights, short connecting. Let me just say, you said verse booking with obvious. What you mean is first booking with British airways obvious because the, the, or, or cutter or okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So because okay. So because, okay, so the difference is when you book with Avios, you're going to be paying the distance for each flight. So, you know, they'll take the difference of each or the distance of each flight separately, right? And add.

So you pay basically for two or three awards. If you have two or three segments, you're going to pay for each of those sort of separately. Whereas Qantas will add up the overall distance you're flying and put you into a single distance band then for your. I gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. So so basically the big picture here is that there are tons of airlines that partner with American Airlines. In this case, we're talking about all one world carriers. They're all part of the One World alliance and Qantas is part of one world. So is British Airways and Qatar and many other airlines. And you can use almost any of their programs points to book an American Airlines flight as long as American Airlines

has released award space as savor award space available to partners. And that's the key. You're not always going to see American Airlines flights available to their partners to book, whereas you can always book with American Airlines miles itself. But when those flights are available, it's often a better deal to book with partner miles than with American Airlines itself. That's often true better deal to book with partner miles than with American airlines itself.

That's often true with other airlines too. It's not just American where you could do that. You could do that with Delta. You could do that with United. You could do that with a lot of them where you use the partner miles to book. And in I don't know, I lost my train of thought,

but anyway, the, the, the point is, Oh yeah. Back to membership rewards. So that's where I was my train of thought. But anyway, the point is, oh, yeah, back to membership rewards. So that's what I was going to bring it back to. Any of membership rewards transfer partners that are partners with American, you should be able to use those points that way.

So let's go over a couple. Yeah. So you can transfer to British Airways or Iberia or Qatar or Cathay Pacific. Cathay Pacific. Oh, yeah. So I was just starting with the obvious programs first. So you book through one of the obvious programs. You book American Airlines. Yes, you can book American Airlines through Cathay Pacific Asia Miles. That's another membership rewards transfer partner. You can book American Airlines through Etihad.

Etihad uses what is effectively American Airlines old award chart for American Airlines flights, right? So, oh, no, I take that back. I guess they ended that, didn't they? I right? So, or no, I take that back. I guess they ended that, didn't they? I think they changed that. Yeah. I take that back. But still, they're partners. And so you can book with Etihad Miles. Yeah. So all of these are options with your membership rewards points. The trick is to figure out what each program is going to charge you for that flight, figure out which one you should transfer to, to book it. Yeah. So the short version is there's a lot of ways to use your membership rewards points to

book American Airlines miles. The other thing to keep in mind too, of course, is that if you have a business platinum card and you choose American Airlines as your chosen airline, then you could use the 35% rebate with the business platinum card. And sometimes that'll work out to be a better deal booking a cash ticket with membership rewards points than transferring to a partner. So that's another thing to consider. But yeah, there are quite a few different ways to use membership rewards points to book American Airlines flights. But like Greg said, the key is they have to release that availability to partners and

they don't release tons of their flights to partners. So that could be your challenge. So what's kind of cool about this question is he said he was using PointsYeah, which is a tool which is free at the base level to use and it lets you search for flights just like you would use any website to search for paid flights, but it searches for award flights and it'll show you when there's deals like this to use Qantas points to book American Airlines flight. The reason he didn't see like use this many British Airways Avios is Pointia, at least at this time, doesn't support that program. So that's probably why he didn't

see that as an option. And I don't think they support Cathay Pacific or some of the others that we mentioned either. So he saw the Qantas option, which might be the best option. I just don't know. Yeah. And so there are other tools which might be the best option. I just don't know. Yeah. And so there are other tools that you could use, like point.me searches, the Avios programs, or at least searches British Airways, I think, right? So there are some other tools like that, WordLogic, Mail, so I don't know off the top of my head. Or you can just go to BritishAirways.com and log in and search there to see what the price is with your British Airways obvious. And you do the same thing with Asia Miles. So you have other ways to search. But yeah, so you want to check all the different partners and which partner programs partner with

your transferable currencies. And that was all just membership rewards points. You've got similar options with other transferable currencies, too. So keep all of that in mind. But that is definitely the value for a beginner, particularly or even an intermediate user of using these free tools like points. Yeah, that you're going to find things like that that you may not have found otherwise. Now, keep in mind differences in cancellation policies, by the way, Qantas, to my memory, the cancellation fee is 3000 points. So if you're going to cancel that American Airlines award, you're going to lose some points, though that may be a better deal than the cancellation fee in some other instances. Although if you booked with Avios and it's a domestic flight, you're just going to have to forfeit the $5.60 in taxes. That's a better

deal than paying 3,000 points. So it depends on what your best option is will vary. Your mileage may vary there. Okay. That brings us, I think, to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed this 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 all the various social media, join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group so you can ask and answer questions about this stuff all the time. And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for a giant mailbag you can send that to send it to mailbag frequentmiler.com bye everybody