July 31, 2014

Award Trip Breakdown: Business Class Cathay Pacific Vancouver to New York (YVR to JFK)

Our Alaskan cruise ended Friday morning at 7am in Vancouver and to maximize our time spent in Vancouver without spending the night, I looked for a redeye flight home back to New York. Cathay Pacific had the perfect flight for us leaving Vancouver at 10:50pm and arriving in New York at 7am. Even better, there were several ways to book this flight with miles and there was availability in either economy or business class. I ended up booking business class with lie-flat beds for Andrea & I for a total of 25,000 British Airways Avios each – an unbeatable deal I’ll explain in more detail below.

A little champagne pre-departure helps you fall asleep right?

Sleeping Andrea (ok pretending to sleep for the photo)

Cathay Pacific is part of the Oneworld Alliance which includes airlines such as American Airlines, British Airways, and now US Airways. As experienced travel hackers will know, by being in the same alliance you can book a partner member’s flight even if you don’t have miles in that specific program. For example, I have no Cathay Pacific Asia Miles but I have American Airlines, British Airways and US Airways miles and all of them could be used to book this Cathay Pacific flight! However it is important to determine the cost in miles in each program and any other restrictions associated so you can book the flight for the fewest miles possible. Let’s run through my options:

Option 1. American Airlines AAdvantage Miles – American charges 25,000 miles per person for a one way business class flight from Canada to the lower 48 US states or 12,500 miles for an economy class seat. There is no restrictions on booking just a one way flight.

Option 2 – US Airways Dividend Miles – US Airways charges 50,000 miles per person for a roundtrip business class flight with no option to book just a one way flight. This stinks because I only need a one way flight and I would not be able to book this flight for half the amount of miles due to US Airways rules on award travel. Since I want just a one way flight, this option is out.

Option 3 – British Airways Avios – British Airways has a unique award chart in that the price in miles of the flight depends on the distance of the flight flown. So I needed to figure out how far the distance was between YVR (Vancouver Int’l Airport) and JFK. You can check this at Global Circle Mapper (it returned a distance of 2,449 miles) or to avoid this step, simply use the British Airways Avios Calculator tool on their website to determine the Avios cost in miles. My cost would be 25,000 miles one way and there is no restriction on booking just a one way flight.

British Airways Distance Based Award Chart

My decision came down to using AA miles or BA Avios – both of which I had a healthy balance of – and I decided to use Avios since they are best for direct, shorter flights (based on the unique award chart above). I’d rather save my AA miles for longer trips possibly to Asia or Australia where BA Avios would be a poor use (since these trips generally require connections and that would raise the mileage cost for Avios).

You might be wondering why I decided to pay double the cost in miles to fly business class for a short 4 1/2 hour flight. There a few reasons in which I’ll outline below:

1) It’s a short redeye flight and my goal is to maximize sleep. After a long day in Vancouver, I guessed (correctly) that we would be exhausted and I wanted to hit the ground running the next day (as best I could on ~4 hours of sleep). I don’t have to tell you this but lie-flat seats make a big difference.

2) Cathay Pacific is a world class airline, recently voted #1 airline in the world, with great reviews for service and food. I tried to stay up for the dinner service but was too tired so maybe this wasn’t as important in the end but still went into my decision making process

3) This was an unbeatable value in terms of a redemption of miles. Generally for domestic and Canadian flights it is hard to average more then a cent or two per mile (i.e. $250 flight that cost 25,000 in miles has a redemption of 1 cent per mile). In this case, business class seats were pricing at $2,000 a seat!! That’s a redemption of 8 cents per miles (2,000/25,000) which is phenomenal!

4) I just wanted to do it. As I’ve said before, points & miles allows you to take and have opportunities you would have no chance to experience otherwise. Could I ever pay this for business class flight? Hell no. But with miles it’s easy – it was only an extra 12,500 miles per person which is nothing in the grand scheme of things considering signing up for a credit could get you 50,000 to 100,000 miles in one shot!

The Final Tally: 25,000 British Airways Avios (transferred from my American Express Memebership Point balance) + $71 in taxes. Not too shabby for a $2,000 flight!

Lastly, I’ll leave you with some additional pictures of the seat (sorry for the poor quality but its the best I got for this trip).

June 30, 2014

Award Trip Breakdown: First Class Flights to Alaska for $5

Andrea and I just got back from an Alaskan cruise (which I highly recommend) and in order to get to Alaska to meet the cruise, we had to book flights to Anchorage from New York. This post goes over exactly how we booked first class flights to Anchorage for $5.

When looking for flights to Alaska from New York during the summer, we quickly came across one realization: Flights are really freaking expensive! It was over $300 one way and it was difficult to find itineraries that were under $300 and did not involve really long layovers. I quickly realized I needed to use miles to get the best flights.

If you read other points and miles bloggers (and you should), they generally do not recommend redeeming miles from the legacy carries (America, Delta, United, US Airways) for domestic coach travel (12,500 miles one way) and especially domestic flight class (25,000 miles each way). Domestic first class is just essentially a bigger seat, some free entertainment and a meal that ranges from disgusting to somewhat eligible but at a cost of double coach travel.

United Domestic First Class

However, looking at our situation, I decided to look for first class awards for the following reasons:

Flying NY to Alaska is over 8 hours of actual flying. That’s longer than many flights to Europe from New York. Most airlines charge 30,000 miles in COACH for one way travel to Europe, so for 5,000 less miles on a longer flight I got a better seat, food, drinks and entertainment.
First Class flights were pricing near $800 for our date. This resulted in per mile value of 3.2 cents ($800/25,000*100). For a domestic redemption this is fantastic as a good redemption can range from 1.5 – 2 cents per mile.
Since I’m 6′ 3”, I prefer business class and up on any flight over 6 hours. This isn’t to say I couldn’t survive this flight in coach (I’ve done 11 hours in coach) but I do value a more comfortable experience for 8 hours.
I have over 3 million miles across currently and every day I hold miles, they lose value. I don’t gain anything for holding them but instead as shown by the recent devaluations made by the airlines, my miles tomorrow may not get me as far if the cost of a trip in miles is increased.

Searching for availability was quite easy for this trip and I found some availability with United connecting in San Francisco. This would enable us to actually have lie-flat seats on the JFK to SFO segment before flying SFO to ANC. However, due to a schedule change, delays and cancellations this isn’t what we actually flew. I will discuss what happened to our initial flights and the process to fix them in a followup post on this.

Summary of Flights:

Departing (booked): United Airlines JFK-SFO-ANC for a cost of 25,000 miles plus $5 in taxes per person for First Class.
Departing (actually flown): United Airlines EWR-ORD-ANC for a cost of 25,000 miles plus $5 in taxes per person for First Class.

Miles Used: Transferred 50,000 Ultimate Rewards from my Chase Sapphire account to United. These points were obtained by using my Chase Sapphire Preferred card.

In short, we traveled to Alaska in style in First Class to start our cruise for a cost of 25,000 miles plus $5 per person. Compared to economy flights with long layovers over $300 and First Class flights costing $800, I think we made the right choice.

What do you think?

June 5, 2014

Award Trip Breakdown: Long Weekend in Paris for $181!!

For Christmas this past year, I gave Andrea a lock for Christmas. Yup, that exact one below. Instead of being cliché and giving the plane tickets as the gift, I gave her the lock and led her through hints to what the lock was for – the Pont des Artes, the famous bridge in Paris. This was the very beginning of a romantic long weekend in Paris and here is how I did it for almost nothing.

Andrea’s Christmas Gift

Flights: Departure – JFK-London-Paris, economy class on American/British Airways. Return – Non-stop Paris-JFK flight on American Airlines.
Retail Cost: $1,000-$1,500 per person.
My Cost: 36,000 American miles + $181 in taxes per person.

American Airlines usually charges 30,000 miles each way for an economy class ticket to Europe. However, during the off-peak season, as defined by American Airlines to be October 15th to May 15th (that’s over half the year!), a one way flight to Europe is only 20,000 miles. For a nice fall trip or spring weekend in Europe, that is a bargain! You will notice my taxes were quite high at $181 and that is because I could not find award space on AA’s direct JFK to Paris flight, thus requiring me to make a connection on British Airways, who charges high taxes on all flights (both award and cash). If I could have eliminated that flight, the total taxes would have been~ $95 per person.

However, I said my net mileage cost was 36,000 miles, not 40,000. How? One of the benefits of the Citi American AAdvantage Platinum Select card is a 10% rebate on miles redeemed each year with American Airlines if you pay the taxes and any fees with this credit card when making the award reservation. So when I redeemed 40,000 miles for my award flight, a few days later I saw 4,000 miles added back to my account to make my net mileage cost 36,000 per ticket.

I obtained these miles via signing up for various American Airlines credits card. I’ve had 3 different cards (and my wife has had 3 as well) that offered anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 miles as a signup bonus. Currently there is a 50,000 mile offer for the Citi American AAdvantage Platinum Select mentioned above but the better offer is a 100,000 mile signup bonus for the Citi Executive World Elite Mastercard. That’s enough for two tickets to Europe and you would still have 20,000 miles leftover towards your next trip!

Lodging: Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome.
Retail Cost: $800-$1,000 per night.
My Cost: 2 Free nights from Hyatt Credit Card + 22,000 Hyatt Points per night (for last 2 nights).

For this romantic weekend in Paris, I wanted to stay in one of the top hotels in the city and I settled on the Park Hyatt which right near the Palace Vendome. However, with rates usually hovering around 600-900 EUROS per night, a stay here was only possible on points. The Hyatt Visa by Chase offers 2 free nights at ANY Hyatt in the world as its signup bonus so I planned my application for the card to coincide with this trip.

With a signup bonus like this, it makes sense to maximize the redemption at high end luxury hotels (if that’s your thing). My thinking is simple – at these high end properties around the world, there is no chance in hell I could ever afford to pay cash for them. Sure I might get enough points for them but when the bonus is simply two free nights anywhere, I want to stay at a place I can’t normally otherwise. For the additional two nights, I transferred some of the points from my Chase Ultimate Rewards account which were achieved with my Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. This redemption highlights the flexibility of transferable bank reward points I discussed last week.

In the end, my long weekend in Paris cost me $181 out of pocket per person for flights and hotels. And the icing on the cake was Andrea loved seeing the bridge and adding our lock to it.

I think a long weekend at a top end hotel in Paris for under $200 is something we all could afford. Want help in making it happen? My consulting services and award booking services will do the work for you.

Stay tuned for more award trip breakdowns!

April 17, 2014

Award Trip Breakdown: Maui Wowie!

*This will be an irregular series on some of the free (or almost free) trips I’ve booked. I’ve posted short summaries of these trips on this page but this series will go more in depth and I’ll breakdown how I booked this trip.

Andrea and I just got back from Maui on our 2nd Honeymoon and it was an absolute blast – the perfect balance between a nice relaxing vacation on the beach sprinkled in with some activities such as a rainforest hike to waterfalls and a canoe outrigger experience. Fortunately points and miles made this 2nd Honeymoon a reality and in this post, I’m gonna breakdown exactly how I booked the trip with points and miles and how I acquired the points and miles needed for a trip like this.

Flights:

Departing: Hawaiian Airlines JFK-HNL-OGG for a cost of 17,500 miles plus $5 in taxes per person.
Return: Hawaiian Airlines OGG-HNL-JFK for a cost of 17,500 miles plus $5 in taxes per person.

Once I saw Hawaiian Airlines offered a direct flight from NY to Honolulu, I wanted to book this flight for our Hawaiian getaway to avoid stopping in LA or SF. There are two basically two main ways to acquire Hawaiian Airline miles – 1) Hawaiian Airlines credit card from Barclays or 2) Transferring American Express Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines.

Andrea and I decided to each open a Hawaiian Airlines credit card (though it was from Bank of America a year ago) as the credit card offered a signup bonus of 35,000 miles for spending $1,000 in three months. The annual fee of $79 was not waived. The minimum spend was pretty easy to accomplish based on our normal level of spending so it wasn’t long before we had 36,000 miles each (35,000 bonus miles + 1,000 miles for spending $1,000).

Hawaiian Airlines charges 40,000 miles roundtrip from the mainland US to Hawaii but as a cardholder, you were entitled to a 5,000 mile discount on award flights, reducing the cost per person to 35,000 miles plus $10 for taxes roundtrip! So for paying an annual fee of $79 each, we got our flights to Hawaii covered. Compared to the retail cost of these flights of about $1,000 each, we got a deal!

Hotels:

Grand Wailea (a Waldorf Astoria Resort) – 2 Nights

Grand Wailea

Back in early 2013, I applied for the Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve credit card which offered a signup bonus of 2 free weekend nights at ANY Hilton Hotel for spending $2,500 in 4 months . The annual fee of $95 was not waived. The Hilton family includes Conrad, Hilton, Hilton Garden Inn, Waldorf Astoria, etc. so to make sure I maximized the value of the free nights, I made sure to use them at a Conrad or Waldorf Astoria. Additionally, this credit card grants you Hilton Gold status which gives you free breakfast, room upgrades and other benefits when staying at Hilton Hotels. This is a HUGE perk!

With the flights booked to Maui, I booked our first two nights in Maui at the Grand Wailea. In addition to getting the nights for free, by using points we avoided the $25 daily resort fee, so our bill would have literally been $0.00 if we didn’t have a rental car which we had to pay for parking. Nights here can go for $300-$600 depending on the time of year, so we easily got $600-$1,200 in value.

Andaz Maui at Wailea

Andaz Maui

The Andaz Maui is a brand new hotel that opened in fall 2013 so of course I wanted to stay there on our trip. The Andaz Maui costs 22,000 points per night or you could use half the amount of points per night, 12,500, plus a co-pay of $150 per night. I opted to use 12,500 points + $150 per night but you could easily use all points to make the stay free. I did this because by paying a small co-pay per night, I could apply a suite upgrade certificate I received from opening the Hyatt credit card (more on this in a future post).

To acquire Hyatt points, I transferred points from my Chase Ultimate Rewards account. In the past I signed up for several Chase Ultimate Rewards cards, including the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Chase Freedom. The beauty of Chase Ultimate Rewards points is they can transfer to many different airlines and hotels including United, Southwest, British Airways, Marriott, Hyatt etc. so you can use them as needed. I had over 150k Chase Ultimate Rewards points from signup bonuses, everyday spending and other small promotions so I transferred 75k Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt to book the stay.

My total cost was 75,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points plus $900 which might seem steep until you consider this hotel routinely goes for almost $600 a night for a standard room and a $1,000 for a suite, which we stayed in! For 6 nights in our suite, it would have cost $6,000 (which I simply couldn’t afford) so paying $900 represents a pretty nice discount!!

From good flights on Hawaiian Airlines to a great stay at the Grand Wailea to an AMAZING stay at the new Andaz Maui at Wailea, Andrea and I can’t wait to return to Maui.

Remember, this can be you and I’d be happy to help you get there!

April 6, 2014

The Blog is Back and Some Future Scheduling Updates

After a nice vacation in Hawaii, I’m eager to return this blog to a more regular posting schedule. It’s been almost two weeks since my last Points & Miles 101 post and I’m sure you’re yearning for more (unless my April Fools post held you over…like it did for some of my-coworkers.)

Some of the upcoming posts will focus on:

Points & Miles 101 – The next segment in this series is obtaining your credit score for free and I plan to follow it up with posts discussing more about points and miles themselves – (which kind of points and miles exist, are all points and miles equal, etc.) I will also provide you with some tools and instructions on how to get ready for that first credit card application.

Award Trip Breakdown – This is a new series I’m about to start that will discuss more in-depth on how I acquired points and miles for trips and then how I actually booked them. I already touch upon this in Where I’ve Traveled on Points & Miles but I want to provide a little more detail on how I earned the points & miles for a particular trip and how easy it can be for you to do the same.

Trip Reports & Reviews – I’m not 100% decided on this yet but I’m thinking about doing trip reports for any trip I used points and miles on. This will have nothing to do with points and miles but will instead showcase my opinions of the airlines, hotels, activities and restaurants I experienced. I don’t know if my readers will be interested in this but my thought process is if someone saw a more in-depth review of say the Andaz Maui, it might give you that extra boost to start focusing on booking your own vacation plans (and hopefully using points and miles to get there!)

Stay Tuned!

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