Frequent Miler on the Air - Virgin Atlantic releases award floodgates | Ep157 | 7-2-22

Episode Date: July 2, 2022

Virgin Atlantic has promised to open up at least 12 award seats on every flight. This has led to unprecedented award availability. Here's how to make the most of it. 1:27 Giant Mailbag: How to log into hotel wi-fi with a Chromebook 4:44 3 Cards 3 Continents 3 Updates Stephen cashes out 50K Membership Rewards Greg exchanges 40K ThankYou points for 56K Avios Nick needs to cancel his first booking 14:59 Mattress Running the Numbers: Biltmore Arizona 18:35 Awards we booked this week (St Pancras, London) 23:07 Main Event: Virgin Atlantic releases award floodgates 45:53 Question of the week: Are Marriott SNAs worth anything anymore?

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, Virgin Atlantic releases award floodgates. Let the bookings begin.

Indeed. What first? Let the bookings begin. Indeed. But first. Now, Virgin Atlantic had big news this week, and we will get into the details, but short version is that awards are wide open. So we'll get into how best to take advantage of that. The miles are in your favor. Nick's on vacation this week and is, is a little, you know, Yoda ish,

I guess. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I'm a little off time zone. The lighting's a little rough. If you're watching on YouTube,

cause you know, I'm making do with what I got and, you know, 10 to one, the, the battery pack that I just plugged into my phone. Won't have enough charge to maintain the light on my face for the entire show. So we'll see.

Yeah. I mean, even as it is, Nick's looking a little bit like one of those videos where someone is coming forward to report something but doesn't really want to be known. I definitely feel like I have the questioning suspect lighting going on me. Yes, you do. Okay, let's get into the giant mailbag. Okay.

So what do we have this week? Today's giant mail comes from Todd. Todd says, I've seen a few articles here and there about Chromebook users not being able to log into some hotel's Wi-Fi. It's super frustrating. When connecting to some hotel's Wi-Fi systems, the systems redirect a person to a login page to typically input name and room number before you could get onto the Wi-Fi. You've seen this in a million places. Just a few minutes ago. Yep. And what he's saying is that with Chrome, like a Chromebook, not a Chrome browser on a regular laptop, but with a Chromebook, it thinks that you're going to a site that's trying to hijack your browser.

And so it stops it from doing that because it thinks it's a security risk. Whether or not he's right about the cause, the issue is that he's not able to get on, and a lot of people apparently aren't able to get on hotel internet because of this happening. And he stumbled upon a solution. He said, open an incognito browser window and go to the hotel's own website. And then it will bring up the thing asking for your room number or whatever else it asks for. Sometimes all it is is a button, you know, a gray. And it's so frustrating if you can't get to that one.

Can't get there. No, it is. It is. And I think that this is a true story because, so when I, a couple of years ago, a few years ago now, I guess almost five years ago, I think, I bought a Chromebook intending for that to be like my main work computer. Maybe it wasn't five years. Maybe it was three. I don't know what it was, but I intended for that to be like my main blogging

computer because it's easier to travel with. It boots up quickly. It was pretty small and thin, but still had everything I needed. And then I just became really attached to a couple of Windows programs. And so I had started kind of using it a bunch and then I like kind of abruptly stopped and bought a new laptop. And so I had kind of forgotten about this, but I had the same issue. I remembered after I saw Todd's message that I had that same issue with the Chromebook over and over again. So yeah. So I think this is a real frustration for Chromebook users and Hey, if that does it amazing. And he was pretty adamant that, you know, he had tested it a couple of times, I think, and that seems to be what does the trick. So if you're a Chromebook user, give that a shot. It's a nice tip. And I think we should mention that we've written separately in the past how

if you're on a regular laptop and that page doesn't come up, which is a constant frustration too, that sometimes it comes up, sometimes it doesn't and um you you could just type into the address bar of your browser never ssl.com and boom it'll come up in the comments there people wrote a whole bunch of other things you could also try typing in this or that or the other thing but you know i got used to using never ssl so i just use that and i use it works it works every time so now Todd says that didn't work for a Chromebook. So, uh, that's kind of interesting. I wonder if he tested it in Chromebook in incognito mode. I don't know if he tested that combination, but it sort of doesn't

matter if you could go to the hotel's website. It sounds like easy and that'll work. So there you go. All right. Well done. All right. So so then next up we've got to talk about what crazy thing wait do we have a crazy thing this week what crazy thing did nick do by going off script no we have no crazy thing this week we are going to our newish segment new temporary segment three cards three continents three updates there you go okay. Okay. Right. Totally. Sorry about that. I will, I will get into the first two updates and Nick will, will do the third. The first one, Steven is out of the gate. He's the first one on the team to cash in points and he did it already cashed out some points. He did it in an interesting way. So he cashed out 50,000 membership rewards points for $450.

Now, if you remember, he doesn't have the Schwab platinum card, so he can't cash out for 1.1 cent each. He doesn't have the Merrill card so that he can't, not Merrill, sorry, Morgan Stanley. So he can't cash out for one cent each. So it doesn't, doesn't mean he's going to cash out for six tenths of a cent each. Shouldn't that be $300?

That's what I thought it meant. So I thought, Oh, there's no way he's going to do that. What he did is he, he found that that he could redeem 50, points for a 500 um home depot i think it was gift card and he found that through a gift card reselling site he could sell that gift card for um 91 cents to the dollar and that's what added it it came out to 450 bucks. So, you know, I don't know. We, before, when we designed the challenge, we kind of were trying to get away from that type of thing, but. I respect the hustle, Craig. I respect the hustle. really okay based on the rules of the game i obviously it's okay if someone an individual does it that's that's uh much better than way way better than redeeming for 0.6 cents each right so um yeah no i think we should allow it and uh it's pretty cool little tip on how to

yeah you know get close to your money's worth i guess um. But wow, 50,000 points. It's a good example of thinking outside the box. Yeah. Well, 50,000 points. Yes, yes. No, 50,000. He just spent 50,000 points for cash back for 450 bucks. And he's already got a bunch of cash back with his Inc. Business Unlimited, right? Yeah.

That's all cash. Yeah. That's all the cash. It made me wonder, could he not have signed up for the, remember the business gold card, there was 130K offer and signed up for that and had cash left over because that adds a lower annual fee instead of cashing out 50,000 points. I don't know, but he's got something going on there. But he does, something. You're right. I have to imagine that might've been part of his backup

plan. If I had taken the 150,000 point offer and then he just couldn't refuse it. Although, yeah, I agree. There might've been a better way to do that, Mr. Steven Pepper, but you could have left that platinum 150K offer to come back around to my turn. Well, that actually might be it. He might have been playing a little defense and making sure that neither of us grabbed it. Well, so when I didn't take the platinum 150K, I talked this out ahead of time with my wife and I said, I don't think Greg is going to take it. You laid out your plans and your plans worked pretty well with the gold card. So I was pretty confident you weren't going to take it, even if it were

available because of the annual fee. And so I said, so it's really whether or not Steven's going to take it. Now he assumes I'm going to take it. So he's already created a contingency plan that doesn't involve getting the platinum 150 K and Steven's a budget shopper. So I could see him like turning away from the $700 card. So I thought there was a chance that if I didn't take it first, it would end up being there later on. So I did, that was part of my gamble and going for the venture card first. I knew there would be a platinum card and I thought there's a shot at it being the 150K offer still. So I think that probably came into play. I bet he would have done things differently, obviously, had I taken that card first. So we'll see how it works out.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And meanwhile, I transferred 40,000 Citi points to Qatar because there was a 40% transfer bonus from Citi to Qatar Avios. And Avios transfer between, you know, Qatar and British Airways and Iberia and everything. So, you know, I could use them in any of those programs. I, I was very stressed out about this whole situation because I only had, yeah, I only had until June 30th to pull the trigger on this. And I don't have the rest of my, like I had to, so I had to figure out exactly what am I going to do with Avios before I knew the bigger picture of my trip? Cause that's not sad. And I, the reason I had to know exactly what I was going to do with Avios is because I needed to know how many Avios I need. Cause I don't want to transfer more than I need. That would be

really bad because I really want to use thank you points for other things. Nor do you want to transfer fewer than you need because you don't really want to dip back in at one-to-one, especially, I mean, you've only got so much money to work with here. And I know that part of the draw of the thank you points is that they can also be cashed out at one cent each and you might have some surcharges to cover. So you need to keep some cash on hand, right? That is correct. That's correct. I'm lucky that, you know, my picks didn't eat into that far into my thousand dollars starting. Like,000 starting. I still have over $500 to work with, but I will likely need to cash out at least some of those premier points. And so, yeah, I definitely couldn't spend too many. But anyway, I pulled the trigger, 56,000 Avios. What a weird number of Avios. It makes me wonder

what you're doing with it. It's an odd number of obvious. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I posted this week that I found two flights that would, I believe, meet my needs. One I thought was, and the $56,000 is enough for both of those flights. It's not for a single flight. Right. So, you know, and you know, one I believe is, is decent value, not spectacular or anything. And the other one is actually truly spectacular value. I'm looking forward to revealing it, but I don't want to reveal it until, uh, well, till all my plans are set. So no one, you know, snags up the award space. And I also want to wait till, uh, Nick and Steven are stuck. So in case snags up the award space. And I also want to wait till Nick and Steven are stuck. So in case they could have used this find, I don't want to reveal it too early.

Understood. Understood. All right. Very good. Well, for my own update for the three cards, three continents, I transferred 110,000 points to Aeroplan and I made a booking. However, I need to change my booking. So I don't have it set yet. Exactly. It needs to be changed. And luckily for me until July 5th, they're allowing unlimited free changes. So I will have a chance to do that. Yeah. So, but, but that's my update so far, 110,000 to Aeroplan and we'll see where it goes from there. Oh boy. And you have to actually call AeroPlan to make that change or can you do it? I sure do. No, this is definitely a call. I need to call kind of a change. Yeah. It's going to be like trying to book a preferred hotel through choice. I'm afraid for you. I'll foreshadow this much. I obviously,

I made a booking already and the booking was the type of booking that needs to be done over the phone. So I already had to call Aeroplan and it was a bit of a long call. So I know what it's like. I know what I'm getting into. Of course, now I need to do it while I'm on vacation because it needs to be done by July 5th. At least that's when you get free. I think you get one free change after July 5th, but I, what I'm not sure about, I haven't clarified yet is if I change it before July 5th, do I get another free change after July 5th. But I, I'm, what I'm not sure about, I haven't clarified yet is if I change it before July 5th, do I get another free change after July 5th or like, or not? Cause I, if that's the case, I definitely want to get a change in now so that I can readjust later. If I, well, you'll ask the call rep and of course, whatever they tell you will be a fact.

And like when they told me six times that the flight I wanted wasn't available and I was like, okay, you know what? Throw away the rest of the itinerary. Just look up this one segment for me. And I booked just this. And they're like, oh, so you don't want to start here and go there. And I knew just looking up this one segment and it took me three or four times. She looked it up and she said, okay, well, I have this. And I was like, yep, that's the flat.

I was just asking you for a couple of seconds ago. It looks like you got it available. Can we sneak that into the award? I was trying to book a few minutes later. She did. But yeah, exactly. So actually that's a good lesson right there of, you know, don't take their word for it. If you think there's a word space, keep trying. So that kind of wraps up the three cards, three continents, three updates segment.

But I just realized we never even mentioned it in brief what that's all about. Oh my goodness. If you're just listening for the first time, you'd have no idea, right? You'd be like, what are these guys talking about? In two sentences, what we're doing is we're all competing to see who could take three credit card signup bonuses. That's our budget to travel to three continents and build as big, as amazing of a trip as possible. Like for example, I've, I've declared that I'm doing like a luxury trip, but, but others might have other things in mind that as long as the, you know, people would look at it and consider it a fantastic trip in the end voters will readers will vote on who, who won. And that's how we'll decide who is, who had the most fantastic trip. So, uh,

look for that, look for us to actually travel in September, but until then we'll be giving these updates, um, about what we're doing, uh, to get ready for this thing. All right. So then that brings us to mattress running the numbers. And for this week's mattress running the numbers, we have a quick hit fine hotels and resorts deal at, what is it, Biltmore, Arizona. So Biltmore, Arizona, you book a fine hotels and resorts booking and you get a $250 resort credit. But it's not clear whether that's $250 in addition to the $100 you normally get or whether it's 250 instead of the hundred you normally get, right? Right. I'm not sure, but either way, that's the heck of a resort credit. And it's worth pointing out the personal platinum cards come with this annual $200 fine hotel and resort credit. And that's a real statement credit. So theoretically, you know, Stephen in his post about this mentioned that he found some nights bookable for about $250. So if you booked with a platinum card, you could theoretically get $250 back right off the top. So you paid $50 for the stay, have $250 credit to spend. You'd get all the fine hotels and resorts benefits like the free

full breakfast, 4 p.m. late checkout, early check-in, or a room upgrade. And if you have gold or higher elite status, which you should have gold status at least because the platinum card gives you that with Hilton, you get the gold food benefit, which in the U.S. you get $25 per person per day towards any food charges so that's on top of the $250 credit so you could go pretty wild with this I mean I'm gonna be looking like this was news to me because the last couple days have kind of been a blur so I only just heard about this before we started recording and I was like, well, I need to plan a trip to Arizona. So Arizona was already kind of on my mind.

So now I'm like, okay, well, we got to make that happen because that seems like a mattress run worthy deal to me. Yeah. Now I think I need to mention a small little detail that might make you a little less enthusiastic. The, the deal ends, uh, for stays ending by October 5th. Um, so that means that, you know, be prepared for weather of, you know, about 130 degrees outside. Well, I mean, I see, I like 130 degrees though. And I'm in my wife doesn't, so maybe that won't work out, but, but I, I'd be happy with a little 130 degree weather in my life. Uh, but the cool deal anyway. So if you're, you know, if you've got a fine hotels and resorts credit, another thing we

should highlight there, uh, I think you can infer from that, but I think a lot of people are still unfamiliar with is that you can make a one night booking when it's a fine hotels and resorts booking. So if you've got a personal platinum card and you're looking to use your annual $200 credit, fine hotels and resorts bookings can be one night. If you're going to book the hotel collection, which is a separate collection of hotels with a separate set of benefits, those bookings need to be a two-night minimum, but fine hotels and resorts bookings are one-night minimum. So if you found a $250 night, you could, just as Greg said, end up with $250, $300 worth of resort credit and end up with very little out-of-pocket expense. So now I don't know

if there's a resort fee there or parking fee, et cetera. So maybe there's a couple of other things that could add on top, but at the end of the day, this is a pretty good deal. Yeah. And I should have mentioned at the outset, this is a Hilton Waldorf Astoria property. And that's why I mentioned how you have the Hilton gold status that would get you extra benefits. All right. Very good. Well, I think so, but good. No, one more segment before the main event, which is awards we booked this week. I know you have, you have an award that, uh, you might not have booked this week, but you, you got to enjoy. So you want to tell us about that? So I used one of my Marriott free night certificates. I had a couple expiring on June 30th from my Ritz-Carlton card that had been extended during the pandemic. So these

certificates were certificates good for a night up to 50,000 points. And so the nice thing is, of course, this year, Marriott started allowing you to top off those certificates with up to 15,000 additional points. And so I'm on vacation right now as we record this. And I was flying into London just for one night. So since I was going to be in London for one night and hotel prices in London are notoriously high, and believe it or not, they get quite a bit higher during Wimbledon. So it was a very expensive week to have been staying one night in London. And luckily for me, I found availability at Greg's, I would say favorite. I don't know if it's your favorite. Maybe that's not true. But one of Greg's favorite.

Beloved, maybe. Beloved. There you go. Greg's beloved St. Pancras Renaissance in London. So he has gushed over this hotel in the past. And so I was curious about it. It was available for 60,000 points. So I booked it with a free night certificate for 60,000 points. So I booked it

with a free night certificate and 10,000 points. And I applied one of my suite upgrades. And if you have used Marriott suite upgrades before, you know, you can choose which rooms you would like to be upgraded to. And so there were a few options. And the only one I picked was the chambers junior suite, because as you would know, if you've read Greg's posts about the St. Pancras, the Chambers wing is extra special at the St. Pancras. And in fact, if you don't have titanium status, you need to get upgraded to the Chambers wing in order to get access to the club lounge, the Chambers club. Is that correct, Greg? I got all that so far. All right. So I applied one of those suite upgrades and Marriott only starts looking for availability five days in advance. So I didn't know whether or not I would get the suite upgrade, but sure enough, this week, a few days before my stay,

actually in five days, exactly before my stay, I got the email from Marriott saying, congratulations, we've been able to confirm your suite upgrade, which was amazing to me because the hotel was sold out, which is probably also why I got the upgrade because probably they had oversold the number of base rooms. But I was very happy to have gotten my upgrade to a Chambers Junior Suite. So I was thrilled with that, took a couple of screenshots in the app. And then a couple of days later, as we approached check-in, I noticed that my room type had changed and it was no longer a Chambers Junior Suite. It was now a Grand Junior Suite. And I was like, oh, did they move me out of the Chambers wing? I wanted that Chambers Club Lounge access, but I looked it up and then sure enough, no, the grand junior suite is still in the chambers wing. So I was pretty excited about

that. I looked it up and it looked a little bit bigger, blah, blah, blah. But I wasn't really excited until I got to check in. And I, of course I arrived early in the morning and so rooms weren't available. I didn't expect it would be, but they did even, even though I arrived way ahead of check-in, I got there like nine o'clock in the morning. They gave me access to the Chambers Club and the spa. So we can go in and have breakfast in the Chambers Club. We can go take a shower if we wanted to, walk around, et cetera, which all came in very handy, I should say. Service was excellent at the St. Pancras. And so when I went to check in, she said, well, I see we've upgraded you to a grand staircase suite and it's not going to be ready yet, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, staircase? I didn't see anything about staircase in the app.

What is this about a staircase? And so sure enough, later that day, my room type changed yet again, and now it was not a grand junior suite, but a grand staircase suite. And so if you have seen the Instagram, I did post a little reel on our Frequent Miler. Actually, I sent the videos to Carrie. Carrie posted the reel on the frequent miler Instagram for me of the video of the room. So it had a pretty grand staircase in the room, three stories, three stories. I loved watching that video and, you know, and I was jealous. I've never, I've never gotten an upgrade anywhere near that at St. Pancras. But it was pretty incredible. It was pretty incredible.

No, it really was. And I got to say, you know, I had seen your pictures of the St. Pancras and I've seen you describe how nice it is. And I've looked at the pictures and honestly, I've looked at them and been a little bit like, is it that nice? It's got tall ceilings, but it didn't blow me away in pictures. And then I saw it and I was like, oh yeah, it is as nice as Greg said. It's really, really nice.

Yeah. Glad you found it that way. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not that the pictures were bad. They just don't convey the, like the luxury. I don't think, well, I don't think a picture could convey the luxury. It's definitely a little jury.

Yeah, that's true. Yes. Yes. All right. All right. Great. That's awesome. I think that brings us to the main event. the main event. This week's main event. So we're talking every Virgin Atlantic flight is going to have 12 reward seats open. Now, this doesn't mean, yeah, it doesn't mean at all times will always be open.

Like, like once people book them, they won't be available anymore unless they release more. But but at least at the start of schedule, they will initially have 12 award seats open, eight of them in economy, but two premium economy and two upper class. So that's the bulk of the news. timing for this because we're in this situation today where of sort of an unprecedented travel boom. And I know a lot of it has been within the U S but, but now that the U S isn't requiring, um, testing to return from, you know, international flights, uh, you know, it seems like flights to Europe, for example, are just as impossible to get these days as within the US. And in that environment, they're saying, even though we know we can sell out all these flights, we're going to, we're going to reserve a pretty big set of seats for our frequent flyers. And I think that's great. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah. Two thumbs up for

Virgin Atlantic for doing that. I mean, very few airlines, if any, does anybody else guarantee a set number of seats? Maybe they do, but if they do, it would certainly be as notable because I mean, 12, that's, it might not seem like a lot, but it is when you consider like Greg said, how sold out things are. I mean, and it's not just the economy classes sold out. It's like business and first class is sold out too, in ways that, on routes that you wouldn't expect. And- Yeah. It looks like people are actually buying these crazy priced business class flights and stuff. Which is all the more incredible considering that business travel is still down.

So I think these are individuals who have the money and are actually buying these things. Right. I don't know. Crazy. It's kind of mind-boggling. Is this 12 seats? No, go ahead. Go ahead. It's two business class seats, two premium economy and an 80 economy.

But that's not a limit to how many. That's the floor. That's the least that are available. And I've looked at a lot of routes, a lot of dates, and it's very common to find four or more sometimes upper class. So that's business class seats available. I've been using Seatspy because it shows me for Virgin Atlantic a whole year of award availability for any given route, all at once visually. And when I put in two adults and I restricted it to business class nearly, and just a couple routes that I looked at, I'll mention, um, New York to London, I looked at and Las Vegas to London are

two routes that I looked at particularly. And, um, almost every single day had availability on at least one flight, um, for two adults in business class. So that's, I mean, I can't think, you know, remember ever seeing anything like that before. No. And not only remembering anything like that before, but I mean, anybody who's been searching award availability lately knows that that is not indicative of the overall like trends right now, because finding award availability is much harder. And I know we're in the summer and summer to Europe is always kind of a tough time to find awards, but it is tougher than normal. And not just the US to Europe routes, even the routes

connecting different parts of the world, there's just less availability than I'm used to seeing when I look at things like this. And I'm not'm not the only one, you know, we've seen lots of other bloggers post about it. So I think that makes this extra notable because not only are they doing something that other airlines aren't, but they're doing it at a time when nobody else is releasing much space at all. So that's pretty awesome. That's pretty cool. But of course it's, it comes with a couple of potential problems here, right? Because I mean, absolutely. Big issue that stands out to me is, okay, well, I've never booked a Virgin Atlantic award, not because I couldn't find one. Maybe I couldn't, I don't know.

I didn't usually look because the surcharges are so high, right? I mean, they are, they're insane. Round trip, New York to London, business class, The number of miles, not that much. It depends on whether you're looking peak season or standard. But even at peak, I think it's like 59,000 or 57,000. I don't know, somewhere in that range points one way. So 115-ish thousand, 117,000, something like that. Not unreasonable on profit for other people charged in terms of the number of miles.

Well, to be able to get that any day of the week, that's fantastic. True. Except, as you said, taxes and fees for that round trip, about $2,000. That's insane. That's insane. That's crazy. $2,000. That's crazy.

That does not feel like a free ticket by any stretch at that point. And keep in mind, I think it's also important to mention here that there have been times where I've probably been out of touch with what most people pay to go to Europe for a ticket to Europe, because living in the East Coast and looking out of New York and always being able to travel based on when prices are low, I have in my mind that a round trip economy class ticket to Europe costs, you know, four or five or $600. And I know many people pay far more than that. However, in this case, you're only talking about flying out of a few major markets, right? Like, I mean, it's like New York and Boston and like Houston, Virginia, like doesn't serve that many us cities, right? Chicago. It's basically just the big cities, right? I mean, they, they, they fly to, I want to say something like 12

different ones. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know off the top of my head, but it's better than I realized. Cause my thought was the, it's not even like, you know, like if you live somewhere small, you're still going to have to position on top of that. So it's not even like you're going to be able to book that together is one thing. It's like you're booking a very expensive ticket to me at that point. You're right. You're right. But let me say, before we talk about how to get around those huge fees, let me say that if you are in one of those cities served by Virgin Atlantic and you're thinking about paying the full cash rate for a business class round trip ticket, it probably is a good idea to pay, instead of paying the, let's say $5,000 round trip,

pay $2,000 and use your Virgin Atlantic miles to sort of upgrade. Yeah, certainly that's the case if tickets are $5,000 or $10,000 round trip. But we've seen, I don't know, I've seen business class round trips to Europe in the two to $3,000 range plenty of times before out of New York anyway, for round trips. No, no, no. And so I don't know what that is. Well, I mean, I looked in the opposite direction from Europe to the US and I saw plenty that were under $2,000 starting in Europe. And in this case, if you value the miles just at a penny, you're paying over $3,000 round trip, which to me is just not a deal on a business

class ticket. It might be a deal on that specific ticket, but it's not a deal on the general product of a business class ticket to Europe. Gotcha. Gotcha. So, you know, unlike British Airways. So British Airways has almost exactly the same situation in fees. In fact, I checked the price for a round trip business class from New York to London to try to do apples to apples. And it also came to about $2,000 in fees and similar amount of points. So it was kind of like, well, you know, tomato, tomato, um, uh, with, with either one of them, you can reduce those fees a little bit by booking two one ways. So it's actually cheaper in fees to book one way, New York to London, and then book one way, London to New York, um, with Virgin Atlantic, it came to about $1,600 in fees. It's still not cheap. I'm not saying that.

But that's a significant difference. It is. And so, yeah, I mean, that's a very good tip. I mean, that's a great tip. Now, with British Airways, booking through a partner, booking the same flights through a partner doesn't solve the problem. It can help a little bit. Cathay Pacific charges a bit less in the fuel surcharges, but you're still going to be spending a lot. Virgin Atlantic, that's where they differ. It does change the game when you book through a partner.

For example, Delta doesn't charge hardly any fees when you book Virgin Atlantic round trip. I have to caveat to say, as long as the trip starts in the US, if you start in Europe, it's a whole different ballgame how Delta prices things. But start in the US, the round trip to London only has $300 in change and fees. The vast majority of that you're going to pay with any airline program because London flying out of England with a premium cabin, they impose these taxes that every airline has to pay. So you're going to pay that no matter what. So, so Delta, look at that. You could just use your Delta miles and avoid all those fees. So how about that? Yeah, that's a great deal, except it probably isn't. How many miles does Delta charge on that, Craig? Yeah. You know, I don't remember exactly off the top of my head, but it's

something like 390,000 for that round trip. Yeah. Yeah. No Delta. Not going to happen. Nice try. Nice try. But no, I mean, that's not the way to go. No. I mean, especially, you know, when you look at things like, like the pricing on really just about any other star Alliance carrier, right? If you look at awards, I mean, United charges, what 77,000 round trip, or I'm sorry, 77,000 each way on partners rather. So 150, 160 round trip. And that's about the most expensive Star Alliance carrier to and from Europe in terms of the number of miles, I guess, aeroplane might come out to more depending on where you're going. But you know, a and a 88,000 round trip, now you'll pay some fees on Lufthansa, you know, and Lufthansa group airlines, but not as much in fees. And there are airlines where you would pay no fees.

So paying 300,000 plus or 400,000 miles round trip, that's just like a non-starter for me. Right, right. Luckily, they have another partner that I do like, which is the Air France K-Line Flying Blue program. You look up award prices for the same routes through Air France's website and the award price in miles, just a tiny bit more than Virgin Atlantic charges. So, you know, let's say Virgin Atlantic was $57,000. Air France was like $58,000 one way. Total taxes and fees for the round trip, $700 and change. So still not cheap, cheap, but it's compared to Virgin Atlantic. Yes.

A better option. Way, way better, way better, way better option. Yeah. I mean, and that, that's a great tip because that's an easy program to use and it's an easy program to transfer to from other programs. Now Virgin Atlantic, of course, is also, but Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, my point is the points aren't any harder to come by. If you have any transferable points, then they basically transfer to Air France, Flying

Blue, right? Is there anybody that doesn't transfer to Air France? No, no. Air France, I believe, has them all. There's one that doesn't have Virgin Atlantic. I can't remember. Yeah, I believe, has them all. And there's one that doesn't have Virgin Atlantic. I can't remember who either. Yeah, everyone's got Air France as a transfer partner. So it's very easy to get those Air France miles.

Let me sweeten the pot a little bit. Okay, you're going to need to. No, I'm not. You're still not thrilled about spending $700 and change. And let me explain why I'm not. Because I just made that comment about my idea of the business class price round trip to Europe. So I looked up a random week in August, just a few minutes ago, and the cheapest round trip business class, New York to London was Tap Air Portugal

at just about 2000 euros because I'm in Europe right now is what it's showing me. So I don't know, less than 2200 US dollars anyway, because it was less than 2000 euros. So the cheapest option is around 2000 ish, a little over 2000 bucks. So the cheapest option is around 2000-ish, a little over 2000 bucks. Now the Virgin Atlantic flights that week in August of this year, so we're talking summer 2022, those were like 5,000 euros. So okay, you'd be better off booking it any of the ways we've talked about so far. But then I picked a random fall week in October and Iceland Air has business class as I am speaking right now, at 750 euros round trip. So round, and of course they don't have a live flight seat, so it's not comparable.

But Virgin Atlantic is 2,349 euros. So we're talking about 25, 2,600 US dollars. So it's just not worth using miles to me through Virgin Atlantic or Delta. But in Air France, I'm like, eh, that's not great value. But it is important to recognize most of our audience is US-based and it's going to be flying the other direction, US to Europe. No, I'm looking US to Europe. I'm just getting your prices because of my IP location.

Yeah, no, I'm looking New York to London. Yeah. So I'm talking, you're talking $2,500, $2,600 round trip on just the first random set of fall dates that I checked because that seems like about what I normally see out of New York and that's on Virgin Atlantic and you would earn miles, whether you're crediting to Virgin Atlantic or you're crediting to Delta, you'd earn MQMs if you're crediting Delta based on distance flown instead of based on the actual amount. It just wouldn't be worth it to me still to use those Air France miles. So you got to sweeten the pot for me. All right. Well, first of all, let me say

I was finding these rates in peak summer, like mid-July, whenever you want it almost. So, you know, that's a whole different ballgame right there. And the other thing is if you can find a better deal for the return, the outbound has much, much lower fees. So one way on Air France, booking Virgin Atlantic is about 200 bucks in fees. So that's getting down to where I think you would agree. That's a good deal to be able to find that any day of the week, almost, from almost any Virgin Atlantic served Gateway. And yeah, and you can, this isn't limited to between the US and London. Virgin Atlantic has flights to South Africa. They have flights to Hong Kong. They have flights to Tel Aviv. So you can take advantage of that expanded award space in those cases.

I don't know off the top of my head what the tricks are to avoiding the high fees when you're going past London, I guess. But yeah, I found it pretty easy, for example, to find a midsummer, peak season availability to fly with about $200 in fees to London. And then to come home, this is again, using Air France miles on Air France itself for again, well, in that case, about $300 in fees. So it's not great, but it's not- It's acceptable. It's not unexpected to spend that much coming out of Europe. Yeah, true.

And award prices are always, or I should say the fees are always higher leaving Europe because you're paying a departure tax somewhere. So you're going to pay a little bit more just in the taxes. And that would be baked into your cash ticket if you bought a cash ticket. So that's why it may not be intuitive to you that it would cost more, but it does. The flight home costs more just because of the way the taxes work. Because the US doesn't charge a departure tax, at least not that I know of, not for US residents at the very least, but I don't think that they do for anybody because

award taxes leaving the US are typically with most carriers, the $5.60 that we always pay for flights, maybe a few dollars more, but there's no big departure tax like many countries have. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Okay. So I'm sold that. That's not bad. Right. Right. So the ideal thing is to, if you're going to London, is to book your outbound to London and book the return a different way back. It's not a terrible thing, depending, as Nick was saying, depending on current rates for just buying the tickets outright. It's not terrible, I think, to book round trip with Air France, using Air France miles to book Virgin Atlantic. And the experience, I don't know. I've

always wanted to fly Virgin Atlantic upper classes because the experience looks kind of cool. Here's what I find exciting about this. It's all about the availability, the any day a week type of availability, you know, that's just not something you see. Like, so like, you know, I looked at, for example,ondon and um south africa and i and awards were wide open in the middle of our winter their summer and you know those are usually so hard to get right so um so yes you're gonna have to figure out the best uh fees but you know best way to book those if you're going, like I said, beyond London. But I think that's pretty darn cool. One other piece of news out of Virgin Atlantic that I'll mention

is for those who have gold elite status with Virgin Atlantic, you can now book any seat for double the usual mile. So let's say there isn't award availability when you want to fly. You have to fly on that day. You can still book it for double the miles, same taxes and fees. They don't double the taxes and fees, but you can't use the Air France trick there because you have to do it Virgin Atlantic miles. You also have to book 60 or more days in advance so that that's kind of a damper on that little benefit so i'm not that excited about that benefit but you know if you have gold status and you have to travel on that particular day and yeah i don't know you know i could see it maybe for like special event times like i was just in london during london so that that comes to mind as a time when there's an event like that or an Olympics or a World

Cup or whatever else, and you're trying to get somewhere and there's no award availability because nobody's releasing any at all. Well, I mean, and then I could see where you are planning more than 60 days in advance to attend the event and you just want to be able to book a seat using your miles. So I mean, I guess I could see the situation where that may be appealing. It's not what I would typically prefer to do, but I can see where that might appeal to somebody. I think it'd be much more useful if you could do it even at the last minute, because then if you like, if an emergency comes up or something and you need it to me, that's, that's the time when I'm okay using more miles,

when it's like an emergency type of situation, I have to get somewhere for something. And so it's too bad that they didn't make it that way here, especially because the last minute it's like, that's a spoiling inventory, right? I mean, it's like, it's too bad that they didn't make it that way here, especially because at the last minute, it's like, that's a spoiling inventory, right? I mean, it's like, it's going to go, going to go unsold at some point. I don't know. Maybe they know it's not going to go unsold, but I guess is the thing. They seem to think that it's not, so they don't need to make this available. I wish they would.

I agree. I agree. So, so that, that news is kind of, yeah. Yeah. But overall, this is probably good for a lot of situations. I think it's really good. And, and there's a chance that this might, you know, mean that, that it'll relieve some pressure on finding awards with other airlines as well. If it means people are finding these easily and booking these instead of whatever else, maybe we'll see some more availability elsewhere. Even better would be if some other airlines would copy

this, uh this technique. Right. Well, and you know, I mean, obviously Delta has some tie-in here with Virgin Atlantic. Maybe other people have Virgin Atlantic and, you know, chatter a little bit to the Delta people. Virgin Atlantic, if you're listening, hey, talk to your friends at Delta. Yeah. I don't know what it would mean with Delta though. So it would mean they would release two seats that cost 390,000 round trip. They already do release two seats on every flight. Right. Not good value, but they release them all. They're all available for award book. And,

you know, I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of people that do spend 390,000. Otherwise they wouldn't continue charging 390,000 points, right? Unless there were people that were paying it. So, you know, I certainly for people who are used to just using however many miles it takes, cause they just want to go on vacation when they have time to go on vacation. I think today's news from Virgin Atlantic is very good. So I've picked out it a little bit because there are things that don't appeal to me about it, but I recognize that this is very good for a lot of people. If you live in a city served by Virgin Atlantic or it's easy enough to get to one, then this could certainly be a good tool to keep in your belt. And these kinds of sweet spots are always good to know about

so that when you are trying to plan something, you've got that extra knowledge that, oh, you know what? I bet Virgin Atlantic has a seat available. So it's a good thing to know. Preston Pysh, MD, MP know. Yep. Yep. And don't dismiss a premium economy as well. And that would save on fees as well. If you have to book through Virgin Atlantic itself. There you go. So would it not save on fees if you're booking through a premium economy through Virgin or through Air France rather? It's more that I have no idea because I did not see Virgin Atlantic premium economy space available through Air France's website.

So I don't know whether they have it set up to be able to book that way. All right. Good point. Maybe not because Air France Flying Blue doesn't seem to want to release any of their premium economy space to Virgin Atlantic anymore either. Right, right. Greg had written about that a long time ago about how they have good rates for premium economy on virgin or rather how virgin atlantic has good rates for premium economy on air france and klm right but then they just took it all away but but all that award space was gone

uh yeah so it's worth rechecking that i haven't looked at that for a while but um yeah hopefully that'll come back too all right all. All right. So that moves us into, let's see, do we have a question of the week is the next thing in my mind. Is that the next thing? Is that where we are? Okay. So it moves us into the question of the week. So this week's question of the week is a timely one that's on my mind.

So this one comes from me, but it's one that I've heard from a lot of people. Are Marriott Sweet Night Awards worth anything anymore? Now, obviously I talked earlier about how I used one successfully this week, but what do you think? I mean, like in general, are these things worth aspiring to and going after not what's your take on the sweet awards? Oh my gosh. They're so frustrating. And then, and then you hear a story like yours with, with your incredible sweet, but, um, over and over again, I've over and over again, the times when I've been booking Marriott stays in the past year or two, the hotels just don't even accept them in the first place. So let alone the problems with using them where they can't clear until five days before, but

if you can't apply them, then of course they can't clear. And so, yeah, I think that's a great question. I certainly value them way, way less than I used to because I haven't been able to use them. Have you used any this year? I mean, you probably had some that were expiring June 30th, right? Were you able to use any of those? Yeah, no, I don't think I have. Bummer, bummer. Yeah, because I'm not going to go out of my way to find a no, I don't think I have. Bummer. Bummer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

because I'm not going to go out of my way to find a hotel that I don't want to stay in just so I could use a suite upgrade. That would be silly. Yeah. You know what it is? It's really annoying though. It's a bothersome that time and time again, I'll look at the possibility of booking a Marriott and yeah, they just don't even take the suite upgrade awards. And the thing is like, I look at that and I say, well, if they can get away with that, how long before the properties that do take them, you know, take notice and say, you know why? Well, nobody else is honoring these things or allowing them. Why should we? Uh, so right, right, right. Yeah. Well, at the, in at Bay Harbor and in Northern Michigan that I stay at often, um, they used to accept them

in the past few years. They haven't anymore. And so, you know, how frustrating is that to be stuck with whatever room you booked usually because then they do tend to sell out often last minute. And maybe, maybe if I had a suite upgrade, you know, maybe I would have gotten upgraded before people bought up those higher level rooms. Right, right. Well, the other thing that annoys me lately about the Marriott suite upgrades is that you can choose which types of rooms you're willing to be upgraded to. And they say, you know, picking more increases the likelihood of you getting upgraded to something. But in many cases, the upgrades are very small upgrades. They're like an upgrade to a slightly better view or a slightly better, you know, a slightly larger room, you know, deluxe versus a superior versus a whatever the other catchphrase word is. So it's often hard to know how much value you're going to get out of that. Are you just going to get a slightly better room? Would you not have gotten that better room anyway, if it was unsold when you

went to check in? So, you know, it's kind of difficult and murky. Now I had great success at St. Pancras this week. So that was a one night stay. And I've heard from a lot of people before that their suite upgrades tend to clear more often on those one night stay type situations than on the multi-night stays. And funny enough, now, as we record this, I am at another Marriott property and I actually had two separate reservations. I had booked the first night using one of my 50,000 point suite up or one of my 50,000 point free night certificates rather. And then I booked a second separate reservation. It was actually a cash reservation because the rates had dropped pretty low. So I wanted to use cash instead of points and there's some play there that I'll get into it

another time. But anyway, so I had two separate reservations. I applied suite upgrades because I had enough to cover the entire stay. And five days before the first night, the one night reservation did in fact clear. And I had only picked one type of suite because there were lots of other types of rooms I could have picked for an upgrade, but I only picked the one Seaview suite that I was interested in taking. And that cleared five days in advance. Of course, the multi-night stay didn't clear and wasn't available when I got here and it truly wasn't available to book. So that was sort of expected. And in the end, they did help me find a suite that would work that had some of what I wanted and enough space and everything else. So they were really great about working with me on it. And that's a great start to stay. And I don't know, we'll see because I

just got here today. So I'll talk about the place and all of those types of things later on, but it's been on my mind because I know people have often complained about how difficult they are to use. And it's true. They are really hard to use, but when they come in, like, man, that room at St. Pancras was pretty incredible. So when they come through, like, man, that room at St. Pancras was pretty incredible. So when they come through, it's nice. And I think going forward, I'm going to look at these and say, okay, these are really like one night suite upgrades that I might get sometime. So if I'm interested in doing that, okay, then maybe I would put it forth a little bit of extra effort to get them. But if you're planning to use them for, you know, a five night stay somewhere,

know that your options for that are going to be really limited. Yes. Yes. Very good point. All right. All right. Unfortunately, I think we're just about out of time for today. So if you've been enjoying what you've been hearing today, and you'd like to get more of this in your inbox each day, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again, that's frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media. You can catch the reel of my suite at the St. Pancras Renaissance. Bye, everybody. mailbag at frequentmiler.com we'll see you guys again next week bye everybody