Frequent Miler on the Air - Where to find hidden award flights | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep246 | 3-15-24

Starting point is 00:00:00 Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, where to find hidden award flights. Sometimes you're looking for those award flights. Maybe you want to fly international live flat with your family to Europe or Asia or somewhere, and you just can't find anything. We're going to tell you where to look that you might not have thought of because there are ways out there to get awards that are pretty well hidden. Like a lot of people don't know about these opportunities. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, a lot of times it's just a matter of knowing where to look. You know, if you don't have a map, it's hard to find

Starting point is 00:00:47 something. But hopefully today we'll give you at least a little bit of a map to find that hidden treasure. But before we do, remember that you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to find a specific section of the show, you can always scroll into those show notes and skip around or ahead or behind or go back to something later on. And wherever you're listening to this or watching the show, don't forget to like it. Give us a thumbs up. Leave us a comment, some feedback. We always appreciate all of those things.

Starting point is 00:01:12 Let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. Yeah, today's giant mail. We've got two pieces of giant mail. First in is from Larry in NYC. Hey, Larry, it's been a while. Larry says, in last week's question of the week segment, you discussed whether hotels booked via Advantage Hotels, which is AA's booking platform that gives miles and loyalty points, sometimes lots of them when you book hotels through that platform, that you discussed whether hotels booked via advantage hotels for would post on the purchase date or the checkout date of

Starting point is 00:01:50 the stay you had both guessed that they would post on the checkout date but we're surprised that they post on the purchase date but that's not correct advantage hotels credit with an activity date of the check-in date at the hotel. A stay that begins in February and ends in March would post in February and count towards the previous year's loyalty point total. And another person chimed in So, yeah, we're talking about two different things because Larry's talking about the Advantage Hotels. And I responded to this in our Facebook group, but not on the blog. And I should have done it there as well. Larry's talking about Advantage Hotels, which is not what post about a bunch of different ways to book hotels and earn American Airlines points, miles and loyalty points. And so we were talking about the Advantage Shopping Portal, where you go to advantageeshopping.com and you click through and you go to Marriott, for instance, and you book directly with Marriott after clicking through the link from the Advantage Shopping Portal for, say, three miles per dollar or directly with IHG, et cetera. And so when you do that, we've discovered that you get the miles based on the booking

Starting point is 00:03:09 date. However, what Larry's talking about is booking via Advantage Hotels, which is like Americans' third-party online travel agency where you're booking through them. And so it's not a direct booking with Marriott or IHG or whatever. It's a booking through, I guess, Rocket Miles, right? It's like a white labeled Rocket Miles or something. I think so, yeah. So that's a different situation.

Starting point is 00:03:31 And it was really interesting to know that it's handled differently that way. Because Larry wasn't the only person who reached out with this piece of feedback. There were a couple other people that said the same thing, that it was actually the check out date that they got their miles credited. But again, I think that's true. Check-in date. Sorry, check-in date. But again, that I think was contention on booking through Advantage Hotels rather than

Starting point is 00:03:56 booking through the shopping portal, which is what we were talking about. So it is confusing and it's interesting to know that they credit in different times. And I guess you might want to keep that in mind, depending on when you're booking your hotel stay, you know, which year you want to earn your points in or which time period you want to earn your points in, you know, pick the right way to book your hotel to fit your needs. Right, right. You know, I find this fascinating because it opens up a brand new way that I would have never thought of to do a last minute mileage run. So let's say you get to the end of American Airlines elite status year, which ends at the end of February each year for the following 12 months. And so you're near the very end of February, you realize you're,

Starting point is 00:04:41 I don't make up a number, 3000 loyalty points short of whatever your target is for elite status, you could then go find a hotel where you check in on the last day of February. So you could literally do this probably on the very last day of February if you had to, as long as you could actually go check in or whatever. And book a stay that's either expensive enough or long enough to get you the needed points. So anyway, I find that really fascinating. Yeah, yeah, it is. It absolutely is fascinating. And it was interesting because I didn't even cross my mind that there were multiple ways to book hotels and earn advantage, loyalty points and miles at the time we were talking about it. But it totally makes sense that there are different ways. And so they might credit differently.

Starting point is 00:05:34 But that's not the only piece of giant mail this week, right? No, no. We also have some giant mail from Divium who wrote, Hi, Greg, Nick and FM team. I'm a big fan of all that you do. Always appreciate your analysis, insightful posts, and my favorite, the frequent miler on the air podcast that I watch on YouTube, literally the moment it drops. On the last couple of episodes, I noticed that you are not doing the mattress running the numbers segment. Any particular reason? That and card talk are my two favorite segments as I

Starting point is 00:06:05 get to learn which deals are hot, juicy, and worth taking advantage of and which ones are lemons to stay away from. Please bring back that segment. Thanks for all you do. Well, that's an interesting piece of feedback. I'm happy to hear that you enjoy that segment. And we enjoy that segment too. Why haven't we done it, Craig? Yeah, so each week, it's not that we discontinued it. It's just that each week we look at what's happening in the Points and Miles world. And if there are hotel opportunities that look like they would be a good fit for the mattress running segment, then we slot it in. If we don't see anything particularly exciting, then we skip it.

Starting point is 00:06:54 And so, yes, we will bring it back just for you, Divyash. Divyam, sorry. As soon as some loyalty program brings back a promotion that's worth discussing, because that's been the problem. Like, there just hasn't been anything that has even looked good enough to talk about. I mean, there have been some promotions, like Wyndham had the minor league baseball thing this week that Steven Pepper wrote about. Great use of Wyndham points if you're interested in minor league baseball.

Starting point is 00:07:20 I booked one where you could become the announcer for the, you know, play ball announcer for one of the minor league games. So there were definitely some cool things in there, but that's not really a mattress running the numbers because it's not something you're doing to earn points. And the mattress running the numbers, the idea is, you know, is this promotion so good that you should do it even if you don't need to do it? So we haven't seen anything quite like that lately. And so on that note, let's move on to Mattress Running the Numbers. Yeah. So this week for Mattress Running the Numbers, we're going to skip it.

Starting point is 00:07:50 We didn't see anything that interesting this week. Sorry about that. So sad. All right. So then let's jump right forward into this week's Card Talk. So for Card Talk this week, what do you have up, Greg? All right. First up, and I'm going to let you talk about this one, Nick,

Starting point is 00:08:08 is there's a change to the Platinum Consumer Cards coming up. What's going on there? Yeah. Sadly for a lot of people, the Platinum Consumer Card, well, this isn't the sad part. As you hopefully know, the Consumer Amex Platinum Card, I'm not talking about the Delta Platinum, but just the Amex Platinum or the Schwab Platinum or Morgan Stanley Platinum,

Starting point is 00:08:28 which we've talked about on previous shows, has a digital entertainment credit up to $240 per year. You have to enroll in it and then it's still about $20 a month if you're spending on eligible services. And so they have a list of eligible services that includes a bunch of stuff that a lot of people like. One of those things has been SiriusXM. But unfortunately, thanks to an eagle-eyed reader named Whitney, we found that on the

Starting point is 00:08:51 most recent statement, it shows that Amex is dropping SiriusXM from the digital entertainment credit on May 8th. So any charges for SiriusXM on or after May 8th will no longer qualify to trigger that digital entertainment credit. So if you've been charging your SiriusXM to your Amex Platinum card, know that you're not going to get it credited after May 8th. Yeah, so that's a bummer for SiriusXM fans. I'm hoping that this means that they'll bring something else in that's interesting to a

Starting point is 00:09:22 lot of people, maybe to more people than SiriusXM was. Who knows if that'll actually happen, but that's my to a lot of people maybe to more people than sears xm was i you know who knows if that'll actually happen but that's that's my hope there um as an aside this is such an aside but i'm so sick of the fact that when we talk about the platinum card we have to constantly explain that we're not talking about the delta platinum card and i'm just realizing that delta and amex had an opportunity recently they overhauled their cards they could have renamed their gold and platinum cards and here's why they should have besides besides the confusion with the amex platinum cards being named the same as the

Starting point is 00:09:56 delta amex platinum card besides that confusion those names gold and platinum also overlap with delta's elite status thresholds gold and platinum and also overlap with Delta's elite status thresholds, gold and platinum. And I've actually seen, I've witnessed at the airport, someone being told, oh, sorry, you can't do this for free unless you have gold status. And then someone whipping out their gold Delta cards, I do have gold status, look. And so why Delta didn't see this as an opportunity to get out of that, you know, confusion, rename those dumb cards. I don't understand. But all right. So doesn't make a lot of sense. Doesn't make a lot of sense. You know, the one other point I want to make about serious, bring it back serious for a second. Seriously, is at least one reader commented.

Starting point is 00:10:40 And this one I thought was worth a highlight. At least one reader commented to say they recently gave up the chance for a good deal on an annual renewal in order to switch to monthly billing because of this credit, because the credit is a $20 a month credit. And so they switched to monthly billing for this credit. And now, of course, obviously, they're not going to get that credit anymore. And so that's annoying because a lot of these, you know, all the various services got to be on monthly billing for them to in order to get the credits from Amex. But then, of course, you know, you're giving up a better deal. You could get an annual.

Starting point is 00:11:15 And so it is kind of annoying to have to do that with service and switch back and forth because who knows what they're going to drop next. I mean, I don't imagine Disney is going to go next. But if it did, I could see people being annoyed that oh man i could have renewed it such and such a price and instead i'm now on this monthly deal and i gotta re-up it you know the annual and blah blah it's annoying it's annoying mx keep it consistent really annoying uh i i expect that if you called sirius xm and said that you wanted to cancel they'd offer you a deal least as good as what you saw that you gave up but that's just my expectation i haven't tried yeah right all right but that's not it for this week's card talk no for this week's card talk there is a huge offer that's

Starting point is 00:11:55 maybe still out there right sort of still out there in a way um so we had posted on the blog a link uh about a week or so ago uh a business Platinum card an Amex business Platinum card 250 000 point bonus offer it does it requires fifteen thousand dollars spend in three months so that's hefty but still 250 000 is also huge. Well, it's not that big after all. Also huge. But let's be clear, MX is not giving you $250,000 before the compliance team comes at me, Greg. I totally, why did I try so hard for this offer? No, yes, I misspoke, obviously. $250,000 points after a $15,000 spend in three months. The link that was available briefly died pretty quickly. But a blog called Miles, Earn, and Burn has reported on several ways to try to get that offer to show up. And a number of people have reported, including in our Frequent Miler Insiders group, success in getting the 250,000 point offer to show up. And

Starting point is 00:13:12 the basic steps I'm going to go over real quickly is to connect your VPN as if you're in Dallas or Denver. I have no idea why those two cities, but there you go. To put your browser in private or incognito mode, then to search within that incognito browser for American Express Business Platinum, and then click on the resulting link to Amex. And if you're lucky, you'll see 190,000 point offer come up when you do those steps. I tried this before the show and first time through, 190,000 point offer showed up, which is pretty darn good in its own right. And then the instructions are to wait for that offer to expire and then automatically reload. And sometimes when that happens,

Starting point is 00:14:06 you'll see the 250,000 point offer. It's possible even before that to see the 250,000 point offer apparently, but that's the sequence that some people have had success with. I did not, in my brief experiment, I did not see the 250,000 point offer, but I believe it's worth

Starting point is 00:14:26 trying again and again. When we've had other things like this, sometimes you have to try many, many times. Sometimes you have to try with different browsers for some reason. I've only tried with one browser so far with the Chrome browser, but it's probably worth trying with the Brave browser, with the Firefox, with edge and so on. And, uh, yeah, and keep trying. I've, I've had things like this work where in one browser, even though whatever I was looking for didn't come up, I just hit refresh and refresh and refresh and eventually did.

Starting point is 00:14:56 So it's worth a try. And when Greg says to wait for it to expire, it takes about 20 minutes for the page to expire. So you have to bring it up and then wait. And eventually it'll pop up a message saying it's going to expire soon. Do you want to let it expire kind of a thing or you want to continue and just leave it alone? And then after about 20 minutes, it'll shape it'll come up with a message that says this page is expired. And I think you actually have to click it, at least in my experience in order to get it to excuse me to reload. But but yeah, and the whole VPN thing,

Starting point is 00:15:25 for some odd reason, that's also, you know, done wonders now and then before. So, you know, all good tips there. And in terms of browsers, by the way, Greg mentioned a few, there are so many web browsers, I didn't even realize how many web browsers that there still are that, you know, different people produce. So I mean, most people probably probably know Chrome and Edge because it comes on your computer. I'm guessing a lot of people know Firefox and Safari because it comes on Mac. But then you mentioned Brave and there's Cake and there's, I think, DuckDuckGo or something.

Starting point is 00:15:57 There's Opera, there's Vivaldi. I mean, there's tons of different browsers. So you can go look up different web browsers and try some new ones because some of them seem to be more helpful for these things it seems yeah yeah all right so that's card talk i think and that brings us to something really crazy what crazy thing did today's today's crazy thing is brought to you by anita formerly the Frequent Miler Laboratory Manager. So people might not know on our blog, we used to have a page called the Frequent Miler Laboratory

Starting point is 00:16:34 where we would collate experiments people would do mostly with buying gift cards through portals and things like that. And over time, like fewer and fewer of those opportunities worked. And so we, we, we let that go away, but for a while, Anita was doing the work of, of actually keeping that up to date. And so a belated thanks to her for, for that work in the past. Yeah. Thank you for me, too, because I that really was helpful for years when I first got into this before I worked for Craig. I use that laboratory all the time. So thank you, Anita.

Starting point is 00:17:14 Yeah. OK, so Anita had a crazy experience. She says, I've been splitting time between San Francisco and Kansas City for the last six months and have been flying back and forth mostly on United flights booked with Turkish miles and smiles. So we've talked about that on the show many times. She says, no issues other than the occasional weird 4 a.m. phone call from Turkish to go over baggage rules. Always fun. Always fun when you're dealing with Turkishkish you never know what you're gonna get today i was checked in for my san francisco to uh mci flight yep uh checked my bags at i'm sorry you said kansas city is that what you said yeah that's what mI is. Yep. She just checked in for her San Francisco to Kansas City flight.

Starting point is 00:18:08 Checked my bags at airport with no issue. Alright, so just to recap, she'd already checked in. She had a boarding pass. She checked her bags, no problem, but at boarding was denied because a problem with

Starting point is 00:18:23 my ticket. The gate agent could not explain the problem other than saying repeatedly, it says it is supposed to be a paper ticket. What? She made me wait until everyone else had boarded, closed the doors, and then started working on fixing, and she put that in quotes, whatever was wrong with the ticket. Eventually, she rebooked me for the same flight the next day. I asked how come this issue wasn't caught at check-in or when I was checking bags, and she said that it can't be seen except at the gate. What? She couldn't simply print me a paper ticket, she said. She didn't explain how she resolved the issue. I asked her how I could be sure the next day's rebooked flight or any future flights are without issue. And she said, I can call United and ask if my ticket is okay. Can you even imagine that?

Starting point is 00:19:19 As if any United agent would be like- Right, would have any idea? Right, would have any idea at all. I mean, clearly, if United agents could tell, they wouldn't have checked her bags. Right, right. Anyway, she says, it was surreal. My bags are on their way to Kansas City right now. Remember, she had already checked her bags. I hope I catch up with them eventually.

Starting point is 00:19:41 And then the next day, she emailed me. Luckily, the second flight worked and my bags were waiting for me in Kansas City. It was one of the weirdest travel experiences I've ever had. And then a later follow-up from Anita says, United told me earlier this evening they were giving me $150 credit. I explained my loss of income and my expenses were at least $220 and asked for $450. They said $250 is the maximum they can offer and deposited that into my account. So just as an aside, I think that's interesting that they have a set maximum for how

Starting point is 00:20:13 much they can offer when a weird Turkish Airlines book gets denied at boarding. But anyway, they have that. They have the manual for that. And she says there was no explanation offered about what happened, but they're they're quite apologetic. So United was apologetic. So, yeah, it's crazy. Crazy. That's definitely crazy. I haven't heard anything. I've heard lots of stories of various things that have gone wrong with Turkish booked tickets.

Starting point is 00:20:42 It's obviously, as we've talked about before, not a perfect program. I've had success with all of the United flights I've taken. And it sounds like Anita has taken quite a few that have been fine. But I have heard occasional issues, nothing like this. This is the weirdest thing by far. The thing that strikes me as particularly weird is that if this was entirely on Turkish, I can't imagine United would have given her any credit, right? Like, would United be extending, being apologetic and offering the credit rather than just telling her to pound sand and go call Turkish? I have to feel like something went wrong on United's end here and they know it. Well, I think it definitely went wrong on United's side because, yeah, I mean, Turkish might have done something wrong, but United accepted whatever they did enough to check her bags and to give her a boarding pass.

Starting point is 00:21:31 Yeah. So those two things, you know, it's unexcusable to let someone into the airport, check their bags and then not let them on the flight. And be like, oh, no, you don't have a ticket for this. I mean, I would think that that's a security issue, sending somebody's bags without them without them right like that doesn't have a valid ticket for the flight right on them i mean yeah come on that's uh it seems crazy seems crazy that united uh would get themselves into that i don't like there are things that can go wrong like for instance if there's a schedule change i think the ticket needs to get reissued and you know getting turkish to reissue to issue a ticket is hard enough reissuing it yeah that could be a problem so um so like something like that could have gone wrong but then i would not expect her to be able to check in and drop bags like that's just that's

Starting point is 00:22:15 nuts sorry you had to deal with that anita that's too bad but uh but also good to know that united was able to fix it i guess and yeah and thanks for providing us a great What Crazy Thinks segment. Right, right. That was entertaining for all of us. We appreciate it, Anita. Thanks for taking on for the team. All right, next up is award talk. Let's talk about awards this week.

Starting point is 00:22:35 So first up, we've got some bad news, although we all knew it was coming, so it's not necessarily surprising bad news. Now we finally know that Hyatt is losing SLH, Small Luxury Hotels of the World, as of May 15th. Although that's almost a little misleading in the sense that they've kind of already lost them for all intents and purposes, because I think you can't book them anymore for stays beyond May 15th. So if you have an SLH stay that you'd like to book between now and May 15th, you can book that using your points or your money through Hyatt. But after May 15th, I don't think you can book anything anymore with SLH. Your stays that are already booked will be honored, but you're not going to get free breakfast and the upgrade and all the benefits that you would have expected by booking through Hyatt.

Starting point is 00:23:20 And you won't get any Hyatt Elite Night credit. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to mention that. Sorry. So, yeah, I would not suggest um i i canceled some i had some reservations post may 15th i canceled those already um you know it's just not something um that yes i mean if it's an incredible deal that you know i could see keeping, and in my case, it was sort of

Starting point is 00:23:45 borderline good use of Hyatt points. But if I'm not going to get the benefits that were guaranteed with Hyatt and not going to get elite credit, it wasn't worth it for me in this case. But in some cases where it's such a great deal, you might want to keep that reservation. Why not? Yeah, I think that SLH has some properties that are so terrific that, you know, if you book to the place, because it's a fantastic hotel, and you're getting an amazing deal on points, well, I mean, why wouldn't you keep that, I guess? You know, if you have to

Starting point is 00:24:14 pay for breakfast, but you didn't pay for anything else, it's, you know, not the end of the world. So I have some that I haven't canceled yet. But, you know, like Greg said, in at least one of those cases, it's marginal as to whether that's going to be a much better deal than my other options. So I may look to cancel that too. And if you want to cancel one of these, I would recommend canceling it before May 15th, because before May 15th, you should be able to cancel through Hyatt and get your points back. It should be very easy. After May 15th, you're going to have to call SLH or email a special email address. And so probably canceling the stay itself will be smooth and frictionless.

Starting point is 00:24:53 But getting your points back, I assume, will not be smooth and quick and frictionless. So if you're going to want to be able to use your points immediately for something else and consider making a decision before May 15th. yeah that's a really good point all right all right yeah so next up we have a lot of word talk to talk about today um next up the uh new alaska award chart has started slowly rolling out. Pieces of it have gone live already, and it's expected to be complete by March 31st. As a reminder about what's happening, Alaska used to have separate award charts for each of their partners, and some were incredible deals and some were incredibly bad deals. Now what they're going to is a single collection of award charts. And for booking with partners, the new award charts are very, very similar to Air Canada Aeroplanes award charts, where they're a combination of zone-based awards, meaning like you go to a different award chart if you want to fly to Europe than if you want to fly to Asia, for example.

Starting point is 00:26:18 But a combination of those zone-based awards and distance-based. So within each of those Europe or Asia or whatever award charts, you're going to pay more the further distance your awards are for, your flights are for. There are some key differences from Aeroplan. For one, just like Aeroplan, you can add a stopover on a one-way award, but unlike Aeroplan, you don't have to pay more for it. Aeroplane charges 5,000 more points for that. So that's a really nice feature of Alaska's award charts. Also with Alaska, actually let me put it another way. With Aeroplane, you do have the option if you want refundable, freely changeable awards, you can pay more points to get that award.

Starting point is 00:27:08 But Alaska, you get that ability just with the regular award chart. When you book an award, there's no change fees. There's only about a $15 fee that's non-refundable if you cancel. So the bad news is people are going to be losing out on some smoking hot, incredible deals that used to be there for certain partners. The good news is this should be more broadly applicable to booking awards in general across the world, wherever you're going. The bad news, or the other bad news, is that we don't yet have the ability to book mixed partner awards. So you can't book a flight where you're flying, let's say, American Airlines to LA and then Japan Airlines to Japan. And until we have that, I think it's going to continue to be of sort of limited use in a lot of ways. But once we get that, this is going to be a really solid general purpose program for booking awards, I think. Yeah, I agree. I think it's much more broadly useful. You know, I enjoyed the theoretical sweet spots that Alaska always had. And I was able to take advantage of a couple

Starting point is 00:28:32 of them. But I say theoretical because over time, they really became so difficult to find that they sounded awesome on paper, but in practice, they weren't useful for very many people anymore. So I totally agree with you. I think that this is a much more broadly useful chart in general. It's certainly somewhat disappointing to the people that had the flexibility and ability to hunt out those unicorn sort of awards. But overall, I think this is a much better deal. But like you said, exactly what you said about it's so limited until

Starting point is 00:29:05 you can book those multi-partner awards so hopefully that comes sooner rather than later right but that's not all the alaska news is it what else is going on it isn't get ready for this built is adding alaska or has added alaska i should say alaska mileage plan as a transfer partner so you can now transfer your built rewards points to Alaska mileage plan one to one, just like all of their other partners. So that's an awesome development for people that have built rewards points and, you know, or, and, or earn built rewards points. That's, I think that's good news to pick, pick up another major partner like that.

Starting point is 00:29:42 Another one world partner, major US program, all awesome stuff there. And our program. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, I was just going to add in and it's notable that no other transfer roll points program that does one to one transfers, transfers to Alaska. Yes, absolutely. That was yes. That's the last key part of that. This week, we also found out that Bilt is going to be losing American Airlines as a transfer partner in June. And so that's a hit in the sense that they were the only transferable currency that transferred one to one to American Airlines.

Starting point is 00:30:14 So they had that as a unique partnership for a long time. And American Airlines is obviously useful for a lot of people. So certainly it had its usefulness, particularly for people who weren't able to get American Airlines credit cards. This is a great way to earn American Airlines miles. And unfortunately, that's going away in June. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really sad to see that. I mean, it probably doesn't impact me personally too much because with the great transfer bonuses they've been running every couple months, I would rather use built points for those big transfer bonuses. And I didn't expect to ever see a big transfer bonus to American Airlines. So it's not that much of a loss in that way.

Starting point is 00:30:58 But I think for a lot of people who care a lot about American Airlines miles and who have been using built as like the best way to earn them. They're going to be really disappointed. And, you know, I think that probably a big motivator for from American Airlines side is probably the fact that they might have realized that people were finding that the built card was a better way to earn American Airlines miles than an American Airlines credit card. And of course, they would rather people use American Airlines credit cards. So I suspect that that's a big factor there. Another possibility. You think there's enough people using built over American Airlines credit cards to be a blip on the radar for American? Well, I guess that's a good question. It might be more the optics of it, of people saying,

Starting point is 00:31:50 well, no, why should I spend over on that card than this card? But the other, another, and this is all speculation, but another possibility is that it's simply, you know, when built added American, they may have done so despite American charging an unbelievable amount for the miles when they do those transfers. And they might have done that because they knew they had to do something really special to get on people's radar. Alaska. Maybe they feel like, okay, we don't keep having to have to keep bleeding that money for people transferring to American because there's another one world alternative. That's pretty good. I have to imagine that American is renegotiating their contracts for their credit cards. And like you said, wanted too much for their miles and or wanted to have some leverage in order to further discussions, who knows, maybe they're looking to get into a transferable currency

Starting point is 00:32:49 situation with Citi. Everybody's always speculated about that. And so, you know, maybe this exiting this was something they had to do in order to protect their bigger interests. So, you know, all of those things make sense to me. I think, yes, it was a good way to earn American Airlines miles or maybe, like you said, better than their credit cards for somebody who doesn't also like doesn't value American Airlines miles and also value American Airlines elite status. Cause if you value both of those things and you probably want the American Airlines credit cards, presuming you can get them. So I feel like it's pretty niche to narrow that down to the people who value American Airlines miles enough and none of the rest of

Starting point is 00:33:25 Bilt's partners to be transferring to American only and not care about earning status. Yeah. And sort of as you alluded to, another possibility of what's behind this is simply that Citi might be trying to get into the transfer old points thing and might be demanding exclusive transfer and might say, you have to stop doing build if we're going to sign this big deal. Yeah. And surely the city has the leverage for that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. A lot of money there. So yeah, I think that kind of makes some sense, but it's less of a big deal to me now because they've got so many different good partners and it's the Alaska thing I think is pretty hot, but hopefully we don't see more partners lost. I mean, I think I'm surprised that things have, I guess, nobody would have thought that

Starting point is 00:34:09 American Airlines would have signed on to be a transferable points currency partner like at all to begin with, probably if you'd floated this idea before the whole thing happened. So the fact that it's lasted as long as it did is somewhat surprising. I feel like, you know, hopefully though, the majority of partners stick with it. And, you know, we don't lose too many more. Yeah, yeah, I still maintain that the big picture is that I think this is a net loss for, for built because the especially for the, you know, they're a U.S. based company advertising U.S. consumers who are who are going to look at, you know, the transfer partners that were American, United, Hyatt, Marriott, you know, IHG. Yeah. And and, you know, that's appealing that it's these brands they know. And now a very significant one of them is gone.

Starting point is 00:35:06 And I think that's a big hit. That's true. All right. Very good. Next up, I just quickly wanted to mention, we talked, I don't know, last year, a while back about me upgrading a Marriott card to a Ritz card. It was actually my wife's card.

Starting point is 00:35:20 And I wanted to mention that I did this again. So I had an old Marriott card, no longer available, $85 Marriott card that I wanted to upgrade to a Ritz card in the same timeline that I did before worked again. So what I did was I looked back at my Marriott account and I saw when my free night certificates had posted in the past. In the past couple of years, I took the date that they had posted and seven days before that date. So they had posted in previous years on, I don't know, March 13th. And so seven days before that, March 6th, I called in to upgrade to the Ritz card. And the reason I did that was

Starting point is 00:35:57 because this worked out once before. So I upgraded that Marriott card to the Ritz card. And then a few days later, both the 25K certificate from the old card and the 85K certificate from the new Ritz card posted to my account. That's significant because normally when you upgrade, I think you have to wait a year until you see the first 85K certificate. But both times I've done this, I've been seven days before the new Freenight certificate has historically hit that account. And both times I got both certificates. So that was a nice little added bonus on upgrading to the Ritz card. It sure is.

Starting point is 00:36:30 That's great. Great news there. Okay. And I've got a couple small Delta updates. First up, if you have the Delta Platinum card, which I ranted about earlier, or the Delta Reserve card, then each year upon before, which is that now instead of being limited to working in the contiguous US 48 states, now you can use these companion tickets to add a free companion plus taxes to anywhere in North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, or Central America. And so that's such a huge upgrade. But I was disappointed to find that my companion tickets that were issued to me

Starting point is 00:37:34 before February, when these changes happened, were not upgraded. They were still limited the old way. And I finally, just the other day from when we're recording this, got a new certificate, a post-January 31st certificate. And I can confirm very happily that I did a search for a round trip to Hawaii and that showed up right away. I did a search for round trip to the Caribbean and that showed up right away. So I was very excited to see that it's actually working as advertised. So just wanted to point that out. Very nice. Awesome. Yeah. I mean, the value of those things have just shot up so much higher than before. It's amazing.

Starting point is 00:38:16 Okay. is some people might remember that there was one last chance last year to earn MQMs, which is an old way of measuring your elite status progress and having those roll over to this year. Last time ever, Delta will do anything like a rollover of elite earnings, or at least that's what they say now. Who knows what they'll do in the future. And that if you had multiple hundreds of thousands of MQMs rolled over, as my wife and I did, you can take each hundred thousand MQMs rolled over and extend your current status for that many years, for one year per 100,000 MQMs that you rolled over. So I'm just bringing this up because there's a nuance that I didn't know or understand before, and that is it has to do with your choice benefits. When you reach delta platinum status,

Starting point is 00:39:24 you get to pick one choice benefit, like regional upgrade certificates, for example. And when you get to Diamond status, you get to pick three choice benefits, like global upgrade certificates, where there's multiple opportunities for getting about $500, just sort of straight up. And the thing is, I thought I'd be eligible for both those sets if I roll over my diamond to multiple years. And it turns out that not exactly. What I'm going to get for rolling over diamond to multiple years is I'm going to get the three diamond choice benefits each year, but not the platinum ones. Cause I won't have, so it's sort of like it, it considers that I've earned diamond in a way, but not that I earned platinum along the way, which I guess makes some

Starting point is 00:40:16 sense. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, true. Right. Isn't that, that's actually what's happening. That is kind of what's happening. Yeah. So anyway, so just a detail there. I mean, it's not a not a huge bad thing. I mean, it's great that we're getting the diamond choice benefits, which are much, much more valuable than the platinum ones. I would have liked to have also gotten the platinum ones, but I won't. For sure. For sure. All right.

Starting point is 00:40:42 Is that we have some more for award talk, don't we? Yeah. I just wanted to talk about some news or information about award searching tools, tools you can use. There was news out of PointMe, which is that they partnered with American Express Membership Rewards. And there's a version of Point.me that's free to anyone who has an Amex account. And you can log in and use the point.me flight award search tool for free. And it will search all of the programs. It'll only search programs that are transfer partners with membership rewards, with Amex membership rewards. But there are a lot. So that's a lot of partners but it does mean it's not going to be searching

Starting point is 00:41:29 um what american airlines uh it will it won't search united yeah so there's some key ones that it won't search but it will search uh all those others um i did a an update to my award search, which is the best award search tool post. And in there, I have a section comparing just the free tools, including this new version of PointMe. And I found that I still prefer PointYa over PointMe by quite a bit, but there's a new one also in there called Award Tool. And both of those, their free versions are very capable and very fast. And that's one of the key things I really like above PointMe.

Starting point is 00:42:18 But also they both offer free award alerts. So you can get alerted when something shows up that wasn't there when you first did the search. So those are awesome. Another free one worth mentioning that's mentioned in there is Points Path, which is a plug-in to Chrome that when you use Google Flights, it'll just automatically show you, here's the point price for the Delta flight or the United flight or American flight flight and whether or not it suggests you should book with points or cash depending on the prices. That seems particularly convenient for somebody who needs to do any positioning, right?

Starting point is 00:42:51 Because, you know, you may just want to know, okay, well, how much would it cost me to position in Chicago in order to get that long haul flight that I just found through a word tool or points, yeah, or whatever the case might be. So I feel like that's useful because you can look up all the different programs, you know, all of those programs at once, you know, and get an idea of the cash might be. So I feel like that's useful because you can look up all the different programs, all of those programs at once, and get an idea of the cash price also. Right, right. And it also happens that all three of those programs will give you free changes and cancellations, which are especially handy when you're doing those kind of positioning flights. So yeah, it's just sort of very specific, but really nice free tool.

Starting point is 00:43:27 I also compared the paid tools, and I still liked Award Tool on Pointe. You have the paid versions of those better than the others for that. I also posted a separate post, a comparison of what I'm calling Award Discovery Tools. That's where you can do things like say i just want to fly to europe sometime this summer in business class and show me what's out there and all and there is a lot of tools that do that or try to do that but i found that points Yeah Daydream Explorer. So that's just built into Points Yeah. And it's actually, they give you full functionality from the free version of Points Yeah to the Daydream Explorer.

Starting point is 00:44:14 And that just worked really, really well. So I really like that. Seats.aero also can do those kind of things. But you need to know more what you're doing to make it work right for that. And coming up soon, hopefully, I'm going to be comparing hotel award search tools. I did that in the past with just two. I looked at in the past, max my point versus stay with points, but there's a bunch more out there. There's something called a ways there's, uh, rooms.arrow, which is brought to you by the same guy as seats.arrow. Um, and there's a award tool has a hotel section as well. Um, so those are the ones that are on my radar. If you know of others I should be looking at, please,

Starting point is 00:44:58 uh, drop us a line and let us know that, uh, I should be also looking at this other hotel award search tool. Very good. Lots of award talk today. So a lot of good stuff there for award talk. Thank goodness for the timestamps. We should, we should move on. We should move on.

Starting point is 00:45:14 We should move on to this week's main event. Main event time. Where to find hidden award flights. So this happens all the time, probably to anyone who looks for award flights. So this happens all the time probably to anyone who looks for award flights regularly that you want to go to somewhere at some certain time and you're not finding the flights that you were hoping for as available as awards or maybe they're just too expensive, which is even more common. And so what we've done is collected a bunch of opportunities where

Starting point is 00:45:49 you might not have thought to look for these flights and where you're likely to find availability more often than not. And so in some cases, you're going to have to book, you may have to book positioning flights to get to, let's say, New York before flying or whatever. But these are things to keep in your tool chest when doing award searches. For sure. So first one up off the list here that we have is Aeroplan, award space for Singapore Airlines, sometimes even better award space than via Singapore itself. And you booked something like this, right, Greg? I did. I did. I was struggling. I had a trip to Europe where we wanted to come back on a specific day. No, this was we wanted to leave on a specific day from the U.S. And I was striking out on anything good.

Starting point is 00:46:47 I mean, I was actually thinking about paying those ridiculously high surcharges to fly British Airways. But luckily, I searched from JFK and found that there was a nice flight to Frankfurt on Singapore business class. It seems to be widely available. I checked Singapore Airlines directly to see if that flight was available. It was waitlisted. It wasn't available to book through Singapore, but I could book immediately through Aeroplan, no problem at all booking it. So I separately booked a positioning flight to New York, took me to Frankfurt, and I separately booked a positioning flight to my end location. Nice, nice. That's awesome. You know, I've seen that a few times before where there are awards that, like you said, are waitlisted through Singapore, but available to

Starting point is 00:47:40 book through Air Canada Aeroplan. It's nutty. And if you look pretty far in advance, I've often found, I've been surprised at, in fact, how much availability I've been able to find at times. Now, of course, it ebbs and flows, but sometimes I'll see lots of Singapore availability on different routes, not always only within the United States either. So it's certainly worth taking a look at Aeroplan for those Singapore awards. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so moving on, another opportunity out there is that you could book JetBlue flights with Cutter Avios. So that's a sort of unique partnership. And the pricing for things like Flying Mint, which is JetBlue's business class to Europe, it's not like the cheapest award flight to Europe you can find. I think it's, what is it, 70 something thousand?

Starting point is 00:48:35 Yeah, like 74,000 or something like that. 70 something thousand. But the award availability has been pretty good. And so that's something that you just may not have thought to even look for. And most award search tools aren't going to look for that. So that's something that you might want to look at specifically. Yeah, I think that's a really important one to remember, specifically because of what Greg said, availability is pretty good. So it's one of those things that, yeah, the price isn't great. You're not going to be like, oh, my goodness, yes, I scored this amazing deal. But you might be like, oh, my goodness, I scored a business class flight to Europe in the middle of the summer. When you can't find something elsewhere, this is going to be a place to look because it doesn't

Starting point is 00:49:21 show up anywhere easy. You have to know what you're looking for. So you're competing with far fewer people for those seats. So that makes it a little bit easier to find if you know how to find it. Now, if you don't know how to find it, what you need to do is go to the show notes because we'll have a link to the video that shows you exactly how to find it because we made one of those. So go to the show notes, find that link so that you can watch the video and figure out how to find and book those. Yeah. Luckily it's, it's not obvious how to use this tool that we show in the video, Nick mentioned, but once you get set up to use it, it's actually, it's very easy to find a word space using that tool. I mean, very, very easy. So that's great because if you

Starting point is 00:49:58 just get on Cutter's website and search, if you happen to pick a day that there's availability, yes, you'll see it, but it's not going to show you like multiple days at a time. So it'll be hard to find it. Right. All right. Next up, we've got using, well, so this one, interestingly, I was just trying to re-verify and situation may have changed, but using Virgin Atlantic to book ITA. So we're talking about ITA flights, which is sort of like the new Alitalia, the new Italian national airline. You can book those flights with Virgin Atlantic miles, 75,000 miles each way from at least New York to Rome or vice versa. I can't remember. And business class.

Starting point is 00:50:43 Yes, I should qualify that. And business class. Yes, I should qualify that. And business class between New York and Rome. If you connect onward or have a Delta connection beforehand that actually shows up via Virgin Atlantic, it's going to cost you more because you'll pay by each segment. But at any rate, this was for a long time very widely available. Two seats on every flight they've been releasing. I think a lot of that has gotten booked up because I was actually taking a look just a minute ago, and I'm not seeing very much of it at all now.

Starting point is 00:51:10 But for months, this was available basically all the time. So it's worth taking a look, because I imagine when you're out at peak season and or as the memory dies down that this is such an easy thing to find, you'll probably be able to find this once again. So that's one at least worth checking. You have to know how to search for awards via Virgin Atlantic's website, which can sometimes be tricky, although JFK to Rome seems to work just fine. So again, 75,000 points, not a fantastic price, but a good price considering the fact that you do often see wider availability on that than you do on a lot of other things. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:51:47 And since Virgin is a transfer partner with everybody, it's so easy to get those points and to book. So $75,000, yeah, we're saying it's not like the best price, but it's also – that's a solid price, I think, to pay for a business class flight. For sure. All right. Let's say you want to fly to Asia or even to New Zealand. You might want to consider positioning to Hawaii. That's always something I'm willing to do, Greg. That's a heck of a long positioning flight, but it could be a very nice place to have a stopover for a few days.

Starting point is 00:52:26 And it turns out Hawaiian Airlines has very good award space to certain cities that they fly to. And I'm talking about business class award space. So I've seen a lot of good award space to Tokyo, to Seoul, and not as much but a decent amount to Auckland what I haven't seen as good a word space to Sydney I mean there's some but but not like I wouldn't call good amounts but yeah Auckland New Zealand so there's some there's some good opportunities there with wine air you can book those with Hawaiian miles for decent pricing I think it's around 60,000 points, somewhere in that range for flying, for example, to Seoul. American Airlines, actually, who partners with Hawaiian, it's a little bit cheaper if you have American Airlines miles and free to change and cancel and everything.

Starting point is 00:53:18 So if you are flush in American, I think I would look there first. Yeah, so that's a good one. Yeah, maybe you look this up. I can't remember off the top of my head how it prices via Virgin Atlantic, but that's another option. You should be able to book via Virgin Atlantic on those. So I can't remember if it's a better price or not off the top of my head. I haven't looked, no.

Starting point is 00:53:38 Worth checking that if you have points that can transfer to Virgin Atlantic and or Virgin Atlantic miles also. So that's another good potential option. But yeah, Hawaiian, I like their business class. And their newer business class looks quite nice. I've been in their older business class. And even though that's not particularly popular, I actually like it. So anyway, good flatbed opportunities there.

Starting point is 00:54:00 Next up, Emirates. So with Emirates, you can not necessarily rely on this, but you can book a lower class of service and then it's possible to upgrade to business or first class, depending on what you have your heart set on their first class, which they have a phenomenal first class product, and you manage to find business class awards or cash prices. Apparently, as long as first class is available, when you get to the airport, you should be able to use points to upgrade. And it's not a matter of, did they open upgrade award space? It's just that seats there and it hasn't been sold yet. So you can do it. And so that's, that's a great way to do it. If you're willing to, you know, in case it does fill up, if you're willing to fly in what you originally booked. Yeah. And also probably willing to have the miles on hand, ready to rock and roll when you get to the airport, because you probably don't want to be sitting there on your phone fiddling with making a transfer, like as you ask the agent whether or not they can upgrade you to that.

Starting point is 00:55:12 Maybe not. I might risk it. Yeah, I just happen to sit there waiting, ready to go. Also, because sometimes you can upgrade before departure, you can waitlist and upgrade for a little bit more in miles. So it doesn't always clear, though. So that's another opportunity. All right. Air France KLM flying blue. The tip here is just don't trust the calendar because the prices shown in the calendar are not always the low prices for the dates that they indicate.

Starting point is 00:55:43 They often have pricing that doesn't match the best price available on that specific date. So you really do kind of have to click day by day on their calendar and see what the lowest price is. Once you click on a day, the lowest price does light up in green as you're scrolling the list, but you have to find that, not trust the number up at the top of the list because that number is not always the best price. Yeah, yeah. And it's especially true that the calendar is not going to show you all their partner awards. So if Virgin Atlantic or Delta awards are available and a better price than Air France Flying Blue, the calendar is not going to show you that. But apparently sometimes it's even true

Starting point is 00:56:26 with Air France and KLM's own flights that the calendar is wrong. I don't know. And sometimes it just seems to be like a day off or something. So you do have to click around and that's frustrating. It is frustrating.

Starting point is 00:56:38 And, you know, it reminded me of something that is only tangentially related here, but I'll pop a quick mention in here is that Marriott, oddly enough, when you search for a Marriott hotel and you see the point prices in the list, it can be misleading because every now and then I've run, I just ran into this the other day again, and I forgot that it even existed, that if there's a point saver rate available, it doesn't show that rate all the time in the main search results.

Starting point is 00:57:04 And in fact, I found a St. Regis the other day that would be bookable with an 85k certificate, but you wouldn't have known it if you'd only looked at the price in the main search results. If you hadn't actually clicked through the hotel, you wouldn't have known it was actually available at a point saver rate where an 85k cert would have been usable. So, you know, just another tip that sometimes clicking around to double check that whatever you're seeing as the headline is actually accurate is, is worth a, an extra click. Right, right. At least, at least Marriott's site shows you, uh, when you, when you pick a set of dates for a city, it shows you which, uh, hotels actually have awards available or not. Whereas

Starting point is 00:57:41 Hyatt just shows you, shows you all of them as if they're available. And then you get all excited about booking a hotel and you click in and it says, sorry, there's nothing here. Nothing to see here. All right. Thanks, Hyatt. Put the IT back in Hyatt. Come on. All right. Moving on here. American Airlines, Air France, KLM, Flying Blue. There's probably some other programs that do this, but these are two that I'm particularly aware of. You often get much better pricing by flying to or from smaller airports, not the hubs. And I'm often with American. I'm often benefit from this because at Detroit, it's not even close to being a hub for American.

Starting point is 00:58:29 And so flying to or from Detroit, American often has good pricing. The main downside with American is that often the first flight is to LaGuardia and the continuing flight is through JFK, which is really annoying. But anyway, that's just the way it is. Yeah. I often find this to be the case. All the time. Yeah, yeah. And Air France, KLM Flying Blue, same thing.

Starting point is 00:58:54 Like, if I'm looking to book a flight to Paris, you know, you often see very high prices, or to Amsterdam. But then look at flying to some small airport, Gattenberg, Sweden, and all of a sudden the price drops way down. Not 100% of the time, nowhere near that, but it's just worth checking. Tools that I talked about before, the Daydream Explorer from Pointia, is a really good way of finding some of those opportunities. Like you could look, you could just say, so that example, let's say I'm looking to fly to Paris from Detroit,

Starting point is 00:59:38 but I don't mind going past Paris. So I could put into a tool like Daydream Explorer, I'm going from Detroit to Europe and put as broad of a timeline as possible because what I want to do is find, I just want to find Air France or KLM flights that are sometimes cheap priced really cheaply from Detroit. And so I'll find things, you'll find things like Gothenburg or wherever that are sometimes priced cheaply. And then you can do your search to those specific cities for the timeframe you're interested in and say, okay, how much is it for the timeframe I really want to go? Yeah. And it's also worth, you know, on the, on your home end, considering, you know, is there another airport that is a reasonable drive for me? I just literally, right before we

Starting point is 01:00:33 started recording this show, booked a flight for my sister and from an airport, a little over an hour away, an American Airlines itinerary connecting to the same exact place, right? So either airport was going to Charlotte and then New York and then London, right? And from an hour away, it was 100,000 miles less. So it's worth checking those little airports because obviously the long haul stuff was available at whatever the cheap price was. But for some reason, the little connector on her home airport just happened to be far more than the one that's a little over an hour away. And, you know, she'll be able to drive the hour and save 100000 points.

Starting point is 01:01:09 So. So, yeah, it's definitely worth checking that out because we see all sorts of wacky stuff with that, with those those programs in particular. But I'm sure there are others. All right. And we have a bunch of different airlines that offer better award availability to their own members than they do to partner programs, right? Yeah, and that might sound like a duh kind of statement because if you search like Delta or United or American, yeah, of course they have much better award availability to their own members. But the prices… Ridiculous prices. The prices are ridiculous, are ridiculous. We're not talking about that. We're talking about good award prices for their own members. And so Eva Air has got to be one of the best opportunities in this space where you want to fly business class to Asia from North

Starting point is 01:02:02 America and you're not finding award availability through all the usual programs, you're not finding it through booking Star Alliance flights using your United Miles or Air Canada Miles. Even though Eva Air is a Star Alliance partner, they don't release as much award space to their partners as they do to their own members. So you could be looking at transferring points from, for example, Citi to Eva Air and award space at reasonable prices, 70-something thousand. I can't remember exactly, but to fly to Asia is widely available. So that's a great one. Yeah. Cutter, of course, you can book with Cutter Avios

Starting point is 01:02:48 or British Airways Avios. And again, you'll find better award availability in their own business class, including Q Suites in some cases using Avios rather than using, say, American Airlines miles. So that's another one

Starting point is 01:03:00 where you'll want to look directly through Cutter or through British Airways. I don't know if the availability matches up exactly between the two. Do you see more or less or the same? I don't know if it matches up exactly, although the times I've looked, they have matched. And it's very important to note that sometimes the taxes and fees are way, way less when booking through British Airways than booking through Cutter. So if you find the award space through Cutter, always double check the pricing through British Airways as well,

Starting point is 01:03:32 because you can move the points back and forth between those two. And then you probably are going to want to book through BA. Another one is Etihad. So here it's a little bit less about the award availability in general being better for their own members, but they're actually blocking it from partners, at least for it looks like more than 30 days in the future, you just cannot book with any of Etihad's partners, their business or first class awards. And so if you want to book Etihad, you're almost stuck with booking with Etihad Miles, although be very careful because they have horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible award cancellation penalties. Yeah. You know, it's funny because I talked all about, you know, talk tough game about how I wouldn't consider transferring Etihad just. You know, it's funny because I talked all about, you know, talk tough game about how I wouldn't consider transferring to Etihad just, you know, what, last week. Right. And, and then of course I started running into a situation this week where I'm trying to plan

Starting point is 01:04:33 a trip and I'm like, oh my goodness, the only airline that's coming up, the only, I've tried everything. I'm searching all sorts of different stuff. Only way to get four people in business class on what I was trying to do is via Etihad. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you try all these things we've been talking about today? Well, all the ones that are applicable. There's no Hawaiian air, for instance, on what it is I'm trying to search, et cetera. But I'm not giving up yet. I haven't transferred to Etihad yet because those cancellation fees are ridiculous. But there is part of me that's like, oh, man, am I going to have to bite the bullet and accept that? Because they do have pretty good availability.

Starting point is 01:05:16 Boy, those cancellation fees absolutely stink. But if you need the availability, they do have plenty of flights available. It's just only to their own members more than 30 days in advance. Right, right. Lufthansa is next, right? Lufthansa, their first class awards only available. It used to be two weeks, but not anymore, right? Well, lately Lufthansa has been blocking partner award bookings that are more than three days in advance.

Starting point is 01:05:44 All partner awards or only first class? Only first class. Only first class. You can still book business further out. Lufthansa has always offered better award availability, I believe, to their members, or always, in recent years, I believe have offered better award availability in general to their own members, but there's no really good ways of getting Lufthansa miles if you're a US consumer because there's no transferable points that go to Lufthansa. They do have a credit card, but you're only going to earn so many miles with that, right? I mean, I guess you could book one ticket maybe, but you're not going to probably get multiple tickets out of that one. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:06:26 So this one isn't a great example of this category, but it still holds. Yep. Go ahead. Okay. British Airways and Virgin both not only have better award availability for loan members, but they guarantee a good amount of award space on all their flights. And I've seen that time and again. The downside is they have really, really, both have really, really high surcharges on their flights. And so at best, I think of it as getting a discount off. So if you want to book a business class flight across the ocean on one of these, you're going to be paying a lot, like think $700 or more probably in taxes and fees.

Starting point is 01:07:24 What's that? Per person. Per person. So if you think of it, though, as like using miles is giving you a discount, like $700 or $800 for a one-way business class flight. Hey, that's dirt cheap. So if you think of it as like whatever miles you have to spend is like a discount, then it feels better. You can also, in both cases, lower the fees by originating elsewhere outside of the UK, flying through the UK to the US. That'll lower the fees. There are far more opportunities to do that with British Airways than there are with Virgin. But there's a couple. So for example, flying from Amsterdam or Paris through London,

Starting point is 01:08:11 so you're flying Air France or KLM to London and then onward on Virgin, the taxes and fees are still high, but they're not as high going that way. Yeah, and I booked one from South Africa last year, and at the time it was about $300 in surcharges from South Africa to London to New York. So that was, that was reasonable. Relatively very, very good. Yeah. Right. Right. So, and that was on Virgin Atlantic. So, so yeah, that's another good one. And I know you said that was the last one, but one more I'm going to add quickly here that just popped into my mind is Turkish,

Starting point is 01:08:43 Turkish miles and smiles, which, you, which totally destroyed their award chart recently. Well, it didn't totally destroy it. They mostly destroyed their award chart recently. But one of the bright-ish spots in that is that they are releasing more availability to their own members than they are to other airlines. Well, I don't know. Is that a bright spot? Not necessarily a bright spot. But anyway, it's another example of a program where you may find awards available if you look through Turkish Miles and Smiles that you will not see through other partner programs. I gave an example in the

Starting point is 01:09:13 post I wrote of a flight from Istanbul to Seoul, for instance, and that route seemed to be widely available at 65,000 miles, their equivalent of a saver award through Turkish, but not available in either economy or business through any of the other Star Alliance programs. So there are surely going to be other situations like that where you'll find awards available via Turkish. You're going to pay surcharges with Turkish too, but they're a little lower than actually the last time I had looked, because I had looked at some flights a while back that were running in the lower to mid $300 range. But now when I looked at a bunch of them recently, just this last week, I was looking at a bunch from the US is basically $220-ish one way to Europe, to Istanbul anyway.

Starting point is 01:09:54 And on the way back, around $250. So pretty comparable with what you'd pay with Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, and slightly more availability. Now on the US routes, I didn't see a lot more availability yet, but that may have been flow and change over time. So it's worth taking a look at Turkish, which we should mention that some of these will pop up in the search tools. Like if you're using a award tool or points, yeah, certainly points. Yeah. I don't know for sure on a word tool on that. Certainly points. Yeah. They'll show the Turkish awards available. I think award tool will also. So this is one that you'll find through some of those tools. But depending on which tools you're using, it's worth keeping in mind that you

Starting point is 01:10:30 may find something directly through Turkish. Yep. Yep. Okay. So another category of things to look at are last minute awards. So if you've really struck out on finding something that you're really happy with, one option is to wait until a couple weeks before departure when award space starts to open up big when airlines realize they're not going to sell those seats. And then they start releasing them like crazy, sometimes two weeks before, sometimes days before. And so obviously, that's a bad approach to just wait and not book anything until two days before your trip, especially if you have to go wherever you want to go. But what you could do is book a suboptimal, book whatever you can find with a program that allows free or cheap cancellations, and then keep watching for the things you really want to open up. And that's something that, you know, in most cases will probably result in good results.

Starting point is 01:11:41 Yeah. Yeah, I do this all the time. And in fact, just I mentioned, I booked a flight right before we started recording this and it was for my sister and I already had a different option booked for her and it's not going to be a free cancellation, but a cheap enough cancellation of that one that when I found something a little bit better, okay, I was willing to go ahead and pay the cancellation fee on the original one. Cause now I booked through American Airlines miles and that'll be a free cancellation if I find something even better. So,

Starting point is 01:12:08 so I do that all the time and I'll, you know, kind of, you know, we talk about gardening your reservations, right? You got to attend to the garden and take a look every now and then and see if something better has opened up, but I'll do this all the time. Book the, you know, good enough refundable flights that will work if they have to, but you know, look to book something better later. And this is a big departure from the way I feel like a normal person books travel, right? Because most people just like they go and they book their flights and they're like, what do you mean? Keep looking for a better option. Like I booked my flights and

Starting point is 01:12:38 that's it. I have my flights, right? But of course, when you book award travel, it just works differently. This is the way of doing it in order to get the best results. So you got to kind of shift the way you think about trip planning. Right, right. If you want to live really on the edge, United opens up really good awards, business class awards based from Hawaii to North America day of. So let's say you're vacationing in Hawaii and you're sort of agnostic about when you want to come back. You might want to just be ready to pack up. Each morning, check the award space and then book your evening flight back to the States in lie-flat luxury. Very good. I did look for that, by the way,

Starting point is 01:13:26 when I came back from Hawaii recently. And of course, my day, there was none of that. But sorry to hear that. Yeah, but but, you know, certainly if you have the flexibility, you can enjoy some of that. But even if you're not entirely flexible, I think that this strategy

Starting point is 01:13:40 of looking for something better, booking something good enough, they often what's the saying? Perfect is the enemy of the good or something along those lines, right? Like if you're holding out for that perfect flight, don't do that. Just book the flight that's good enough.

Starting point is 01:13:53 And hopefully maybe you will get that perfect flight later on, but get something on the books that you can work to improve upon. Yep, yep, absolutely. And the last point, go ahead. Yeah. Last point is sometimes cash is the way to go. You know, sometimes there are really good cash prices available for what you want and you might not have even thought to look for it because especially if you're looking for

Starting point is 01:14:20 business class international flights, usually those are so expensive, but every now and then you could luck out. A couple examples of how, and Nick, I'll let you flesh out this first one, but often if you look for open jaw flights from Europe to North America and then back to somewhere else in Europe, the pricing is often very, very good. And so that could be like two pieces of two different trips that you book there. And I personally just did something like that recently. But also sometimes you just kind of randomly find great deals. So I think I talked before about how I was planning my trip to Cape Town, and I didn't have good award flight options for the return. And I had looked at Google Flights for paid prices. I'd looked at some other tools. And for some reason, they had a bizarrely compelling business class price to come from Cape Town to London to Detroit.

Starting point is 01:15:30 So one stop, which none of the award searches I had found, you know, had been one stop routes. And so that was great in itself. And it was at a very reasonable price. So you just never know what you're going to find. Yeah, totally, totally worth checking, taking a look now and then. And also it can sometimes open your eyes to other opportunities. I can't even remember the route I was looking at the other day, but I was looking at a route and maybe because I was comparing with the Turkish post, I don't know what it was, but I came across Mongolian. Is it Miat Mongolian? M-I-A-T. I don't know if they pronounce it Miat or some other way.

Starting point is 01:16:05 But Miat Mongolian, for whatever route this was to Mongolia, it was like $1,000 in business class, long haul. I think Frankfurt is what it is. Frankfurt to Ulaanbaatar, if I remember correctly. I could be off on the city, but it was something along that sort of a distance. And it was like everything else was in the thousands, but this one was so much cheaper. It was like a thousand ish dollars. And, uh, and I was like, is that a lie flat seat? I've never heard of that airline. Cause they're not an airline you would normally book with miles. They aren't in any major Alliance or anything. And I Googled. And of course, one mile at a time had a review of their business class. And, and, and basically, you know, what, what lucky had said was that the soft product wasn't anything amazing. Cause

Starting point is 01:16:44 there's not really any competition for them, but it was a lie flat seat for a thousand bucks. And that was pretty much the going rate that it always was. And so if you can get that through a credit card portal for say, what, 70-ish thousand, less than 70,000 points, if you're using your points at one and a half cents a piece for a business class, that's probably as good of a deal if you actually wanted to fly that route, of course, obviously, as any award you're going to get. So it's worth taking a look now and then because you may come across an option like that on an airline that maybe you're willing to fly or maybe you're happy to fly because you're like, oh, great, I can get to Ulaanbaatar

Starting point is 01:17:20 from Frankfurt without having to connect anywhere. So it's worth taking a look at that, I think, for those types of opportunities, too, because sometimes we get so wrapped up in the award searches that we forget that there are some other airlines that don't belong to alliances too. And they may have something that meets our needs for the situation we're in. Yeah. Real quick. So I had a situation, i was looking for a return flight from london to detroit and it occurred to me my wife and i have a global upgrade certificate so what if we just book delta economy and apply our upgrade certificates that would be great but that one-way flight was i'm gonna make up some numbers because i don't remember exact but let's say two thousand dollars

Starting point is 01:18:02 for that one way so i'm like okay, maybe a round trip would be cheaper. And of course it was dramatically cheaper. So it brought it down to, I don't know, let's make up, let's say $900. And then I remembered, well, we have a trip to Lisbon coming up a couple months later. So what if I match the dates around the Lisbon trip and it stayed really cheap that way? Now, in that case, it wasn't cheap if I returned to Lisbon. So it was only cheap if I returned to London. I tried some other return options. Normally, that would be a good way to do it, but I booked the return to London and it's really easy to book. There's so many flights to Lisbon from there. So I'm not worried about that at all. But

Starting point is 01:18:55 yeah, so I was able to, you know, for much less than a one way book the round trip and satisfy two halves of trips with one booking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then the OpenJaw thing is a great tip for Europe because OpenJaw flights often do price less and you have to just search around with different airports. Nice thing is that you can sometimes, well, with Google Flights, you can put in multiple different airport codes at once. So you could search to a bunch of different airports and see which one's coming up the cheapest and then eliminate the more expensive options and add some other airport codes. So

Starting point is 01:19:29 certainly something to play with and have fun with. And if you have not seen our post about how to get great business class deals using Google Flights or how to find great business class deals using Google Flights, we will have a link to that in the show notes also because that post, even though it's an older post, the general techniques of finding good business class deals with Google Flights are still there, I'm sure. So that's that. All right. I think that wraps up our main event finally and brings us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week is unfortunately kind of as long as the rest of everything else today, but I'm going to try to condense it a little bit. The question of the week came in our Frequent Miler Insiders group from Steven, and you need some background. That's

Starting point is 01:20:08 why the question is kind of long. So Steven had a little bit of a story. He applied for the Wyndham earner business card back in early December, 2023. And when he applied, they needed copies of things. And sometimes Barclays does this, right? They'll ask for a copy of your social security card and a copy of a utility statement and this and that. And you send them in and then they'll be like, oh, no, it's too dark. We can't read it. You need to send it again.

Starting point is 01:20:31 And so you go through that whole song and dance. So he went through multiple submissions of his license, bank statement, social security card back and front, only to be told again and again, they couldn't read the seal on it. Went up until February, like from an application early December. That went on until February, being told that he had to keep resubmitting it. And then they said, okay, you got to get a new social security card altogether. And he did that, got a new copy of it somehow, I guess, and was finally approved. Or so he thought. They told

Starting point is 01:21:01 him he'd get the card in the mail in seven to 10 days, but it never came. So he called the fraud department again and they said, okay, well, you were approved by the credit department, but not by the customer security department. There's three different departments that have to approve you first in order to get approved. So the customer security department didn't approve that yet. And so they went through a bunch of that. And I explained that it was a customer security person that approved me before. And so whatever, they asked to resubmit the social

Starting point is 01:21:30 security card again for the fourth time. And so it goes back and forth a little bit saying, look back at the notes. We've already done this a whole bunch of times. Somebody already approved it. They found in the notes that somebody had approved it and said, okay, yep, put everything through. You're going to get the card in seven to 10 days. Once again, card didn't come. Weeks later, calls back customer security department again. And they say that he needs to resubmit his social security card again because they can't read this again, right?

Starting point is 01:21:56 He's like, I've already been through this. They went through the notes, everything else. And they just continued and continued to hammer. No, we need another copy of it. We need another copy of it. Long story short, and this was a long story that i'm condensing significantly here eventually gets to another rep and another rep and blah blah blah and they say okay we can see you have all the stuff but because you apply it in early december at this point it's been more than 90

Starting point is 01:22:21 days and the application is expired you have to submit a new application. You've got to be kidding me. So Stephen goes on to say, the irony of all this is that when I applied in December, the offer was 45,000 points. Now, the current offer on the Windham-Earner business card is 100,000 points, a higher level of spend. So the question is, does he apply again? What do you think, Greg? Are you asking me whether he did apply again? No, he's asking, he's asking, should he apply again? What would you do in that situation, Greg? Well, I mean, this should have been a what crazy thing. So he got hung up on asking for a supervisor and blah, blah, blah. There's a whole bunch

Starting point is 01:23:02 of other stuff in here. It was long, but I'm condensing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this should have been a What Crazy Thing segment. And so I think you need to do it, Stephen, so that you can provide more fodder for future shows. This is the craziest story, craziest application story I think I've ever heard. Oh, I mean, it is.

Starting point is 01:23:21 If you read the whole thing, it was sufficiently crazy. And, you know, the reason I brought this up for question of the week is because I found myself laughing going through because of the time it took Stephen to type this up. I mean, I can't imagine how long it took to actually go through it all. But I thought about how you can really kind of take this one of two ways. I feel like sometimes people get offended quickly and they're like, oh, my goodness, I have good credit and always get approved for stuff and they don't want to approve me. Forget it. I'm never going to deal with Barclays again.

Starting point is 01:23:48 That's one approach. Another approach though, which actually is what I said, if you're the kind of person that can kind of giggle to yourself and say, well, at least I'm going to get an extra 55,000 points from compensation for my time here. I might as well throw my hat in the ring again. What's the worst that's going to happen, right? Like if you can laugh and do that, then, you know, he may end up with 100,000 points, 55,000 more than he was hoping to get in the first place. So I think it's probably worth throwing your hat in the ring again. What I told him also is that it seems like much of this song and dance happens when you apply as an LLC and people who apply as a sole proprietorship, that is, often don't have to go through nearly as much of this, like sending in documents and resending them and resending them.

Starting point is 01:24:31 So I said, if it's possible to apply as a sole proprietorship, that seems to be easier for whatever reason. I don't know why it doesn't make any sense. And it's just anecdotal. So don't hold me to that. But that's at least what I've seen in anecdotal data points. But I don't think it's just anecdotal. So don't hold me to that. But that's at least what I've seen in anecdotal data points. But, you know, I don't think it's worth getting too wildly offended. Annoyed, yes. And Stephen, I'm sure, was annoyed by this whole thing. But at the same time, you have to kind of say, well, man, I got to accept the things I can't change here. And for whatever reason, I can't change Barkley's craziness, but I can take another 55,000 points from them. So I'd give it another shot. Why not? What do you got to lose? Well, do you think he should apply as an LLC again so that everything's consistent or apply as sole proprietor and then risk them saying your applications were inconsistent? You're trying to- Well, he's also got a sole proprietorship. There's nothing wrong with that. You can have multiple businesses and you can apply as a sole proprietorship, not under his primary business. So I don't think, well, I don't know. I mean, who knows with Barclays? Who knows what they're going to consider to be an issue? You're right. You're right. There is some risk there, but I wish Steven the best of luck because

Starting point is 01:25:36 I got the sense that he probably is going to give it another shot. But yeah, definitely these weird things happen sometimes. And I don't think it's worth writing them off entirely, though. Barclays, it is worth noting, can be really weird about that Windham Runner business card. I didn't mention in all of that that despite having excellent credit and going through all those hoops, when he was approved, he was approved for a vast $1,300 credit limit. And so he's fighting over a card, you know, for like weeks and months with a $1,300 limit. And Barclays has been known to give really weak limits for a lot of people on that earner business card for whatever reason. So yeah, there's definitely some frustration involved sometimes.

Starting point is 01:26:17 But at the same time, if he ends up with 100,000 points, it's probably a pretty good win. And the card that he wanted anyway at 45,000 points, probably be a win. Although the amount of time he's put into it, maybe it'll feel less like a win for him, but a win for us. Thank you for the entertainment, Steven.

Starting point is 01:26:32 Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly. I was listening to that story thinking, Oh my gosh, we, we love that card,

Starting point is 01:26:37 but not that much. Yeah. I mean, if you knew at the beginning that it was going to take all of that, it wouldn't be worth it. Right. You know? So certainly I would, I would not if you knew at the beginning that it was going to take all of that, it wouldn't be worth it. So certainly I would not go into it if I knew that was all going to be the case. But it's not always the case. And so I would bet at least $5 on the fact that if Steven does this again, it might just go through and be automatically approved.

Starting point is 01:27:01 So we'll see. I'll be curious to find out. At any rate. I think they're going to ask him for his social security card again. They might. Well, he's like, and it's like a bright, clear,

Starting point is 01:27:11 brand new document. So the fact that they can't see the seal on it now, like, but what do I do? What else is there to do? I mean, part of the problem is they're using fax machines and that's, you know.

Starting point is 01:27:21 Oh my gosh. Yeah. So that's just the way. Also, Stephen should uh take pictures of a social security card while at a dark windham hotel and that might be part of the problem right gotta do it somewhere better than that yeah yeah go over go over to the uh holiday the bright holiday on a cross sheet take the picture good luck with that good luck with that all right well unfortunately we are out of time for today.

Starting point is 01:27:46 If you've enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you could find Stephen's question and find out if he updates and lets us know whether or not he gets the card. 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 our giant mailbag, you can send that to send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Bye everybody.

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Frequent Miler on the Air - Where to find hidden award flights | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep246 | 3-15-24

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