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Related post: Master Chart: Here Are The Best Ways To Book Every American Or Alaska Award Flight Within The US And Canada!
Earlier this week I wrote about my experience flying from NYC to Cleveland and watching a pair of gate agents argue with a pair of flight attendants and a mother flying with her infant, over her Doona.
I booked that Sunday-Monday trip 2 days beforehand.
I love using miles for aspirational trips, as that’s where the best value can be had for trips that you could otherwise not afford. We have used miles to fly in first class to 6 continents (well, 7 if you count the flight to a boat) and treasure those memories.
But you can also get great value out of your miles domestically.
For example, the cheapest last minute flight from Cleveland to NYC that Sunday was $400, or over $500 for a flight leaving after I could catch a Shacharis at home:
And the return flight was similarly priced as well:
So, of course. I looked at my mileage options.
You can do quick math to figure out the bank points needed, without having to open those sites. With a Sapphire Reserve you’ll get a value of 1.5 cents per point and with an AMEX Business Platinum Card you’ll get a value of 1.54 cents per point after the 35% points rebate. Divide the cost of a $950 round-trip flight by 1.5 to see that it would cost around 63K bank points for those flights.
What about airline miles?
American wanted 24,000 miles for a flight that would get me to NYC in time for the L’chaim:
Delta wanted 22.5K miles for an early-morning flight, or 50K miles for a flight at a reasonable time:
United wanted 15K miles, or 16.7K miles for a flight at a reasonable time:
Or 13.5K United miles for Club cardholders:
Of course, anyone mileage savvy knows that you also have to look at partner airlines.
Skyteam carriers Virgin Atlantic and Air France Flying Blue have Delta flights between Cleveland and NYC for just 7.5K miles or 5.5K miles respectively, however Delta blocks all domestic partner award space within 3 weeks of the flight.
I confirmed that was still the case on the Virgin site and ruled out Delta:
Star Alliance carrier Air Canada charges just 6,000 miles+$34 to fly on United, but United only releases a limited subset of flights to partners, so the only option there was for a 6am flight.
Same goes for Lifemiles at 6.5K miles+$15.
OneWorld carrier BA had the AA flights available in first class for 24K Avios+$5.60. That’s certainly better than 24K in coach with AA miles, especially considering that it’s much easier to obtain Avios from bank point transfers and that there are often 30% transfer bonuses.
Qatar would be able to book this for 20K Avios+$10, but would have to be booked over the phone.
Qantas would be able to book this for 18.4K Miles.
And finally, there’s Alaska. In a few days from now, you’ll be able to transfer AMEX points to Hawaiian and from Hawaiian to Alaska at a 1:1 ratio.
They wanted just 9K miles+$19 in first class, so this was an easy choice:
For the return flight, AA wanted just 8.5K or 9.5K miles:
United wanted 15K miles:
Or 13.5K United miles for Club cardholders:
BA wanted 12K Avios, though Qatar would have been 9.5K Avios over the phone, Qantas would have been 8K miles, and Etihad would have been 6,043 miles:
Air Canada was just 6K miles, but only had the 8:29pm flight available:
And Alaska wanted just 4.5K miles for coach:
Thanks to AA status, I booked AA4366 for 4.5K miles, got upgraded to first class, and even had an empty seat next to me. And thus began the showdown at the gate.
What are your favorite uses of miles?
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74 Comments On "Before You Book That Award Ticket, Be Sure To Shop Around; How I Booked My Flight To NYC Last Week"
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for a mileage geek its fun but for avg joe thats a lot of effort for a 1 hr flight
It’s actually not much effort at all, can pull it off in a few minutes once you’re used to it.
True, but how many hours does it take to get “used to it”?
Make that argument on any learning curve the investment at beginning pays of long term always question is are you ready for investment time. Time is money but spending more each time to avoid a small few hour curb is dumb! Just need to set a time to learn the ropes!
Is there a way to look up the mileage for the different airline all in one place? Or did you have to search on each airline’s website separately?
Only DD followers know that miles are their own currency
😀
Nice post.
Thanks!
This is a master class in the art of travel hacking and understanding the importance of partnerships. The only part I didn’t understand is why your AA status helped you get upgraded to first class when you booked with Alaska miles? I thought that if you book with miles there is no way to swap out the frequent flyer number on the reservation like you can with revenue fares?
Also, it’s stuff like this that makes me jealous of people who live in NY 🙂 You have viable options with all the major carriers. I usually fly out of BWI and only UA and WN make sense on most routes.
once booked add your status thru finair
Can’t edit Alaska PNR through Finnair.
OK, guess I have to write a part 3.
If you do end up writing a full article on this, please drop a link to it here
There wre lots of options out of IAD if you’re not too far.
The downside is- now that Alaska miles are going to become easy to obtain, due to the Amex–> Hawaiian-> Alaska route, everyone is going to find out and hit this hard, and the 4500 rate is going to get devalued sooner than many of us will be to able to use the big stash of miles we just transferred for the 20% bonus….
Could be.
Earn and burn em!
Ha! I transferred 400,000 MR for 480,000 Hawaiian…. that’s a LOT of short-haul flights at 4,500 apiece 🙂
The truth is, I figured that the AMEX-Hawaiian transfer option would go away at the same time as 1:1 Hawaiian->Alaska became available. This window of time where it’s possible to go straight from AMEX-> Alaska at the same time I think is going to hurt us in the end- it’s too easy.
Agreed. This all fell in place very quickly.
Fingers crossed that the devaluation doesn’t come too fast. I just moved and am now near PHL so I’m finding Alaska miles to be much more useful because it’s an AA hub. Transferred 100K to Hawaiian. It was my first time doing a domestic transfer, forgot about the stupid fee that Amex charges but it should be well worth it.
I really enjoyed this post! Well done!
Thanks!
Great post. Easy to read and understand and follow. I have been doing the mini version of this comparing between just aa, United and ba where it makes sense. I feel I need a cheat sheet to look up which ones to check for which routes from sna and lax area.
Thanks!
Excellent post broken down clearly. Was fun to read!! Kind of felt like I was with you on the journey while reading it. Thanks Dan!!
Glad you enjoyed!
Do you have miles sitting in all those different airlines’ mileage accounts? Or do you only transfer the points in once you determine which flight you want to take? The other night I tried to look at Virgin Atlantic reward availability but it didn’t let me, maybe because I don’t yet have a VA freq flyer acct. Will simply having the account with no miles within it allow one to see reward availability? Thanks for the advice.
You can search Virgin with no miles. I would transfer miles on demand if that was the best option.
Thanks
virgin now often directs to their new website where you have to login to search
Still don’t need miles.
Do the miles transfer instantaneously?
https://www.dansdeals.com/points-travel/ultimate-guide-bank-points-transfer-airline-hotel-partners-plus-breakdown-long-transfers-take/
Thanks for a quick, but in depth post. You showed all the airline options and their repsective booking options very clearly.
Greatly appreciated. I love such posts
Pleasure!
Why do you write Club cardholders?
United has expanded availability for card-holders (any paid card, if not the free one, too).
What are good partner options with United?
Depends on the route, but 2 are in this post.
Dan I noticed when booking flights recently that AA had availability on Alaska, but no other partners had. Does AA have expanded awards due to their partnership? and is it vice versa?
Yes.
I haven’t noticed it the other way yet.
Hi Dan. What would be the steps if I want to fly to CLE from EWR or PHL. JFK is a bit far for Lakewooders. TY
Same exact steps as in this post.
No jetblue? They’re so easy and cheap no need for 3rd party booking…
By all means, please find me a JetBlue flight option.
Love this, keep ’em coming @dan ! Nothing like learning through watching!
@dan have you done a writeup on all the partners you can book through?
Biggest takeaway from the post is that booking UA or DL through partners is pretty much dead no matter how tantalizing the rates are as they simply don’t release many seats to partners.
Really depends on the route and dates.
Any popular route or date especially close in.
This is my travel hacking weak spot. This would take me literal hours and I still may not have ended up with the deals you found.
@dan do you have any thoughts on points.me ?
is it a good service to use or better to do the legwork alone?
https://www.dansdeals.com/points-travel/milespoints/will-amexs-new-point-service-show-best-award-flight-options/
I used their paid service two summers ago and they found me flights to Panama and England. I found it very helpful.
Thats not to say that pros like @dan might be able to find more/better options but for many of the people who commented on this post about having a hard time searching all the sites and knowing how to search, points.me def is a good starting point.
And the fact that you can just pay for the month and not need to pay for a yearly plan is also great.
You haven’t mentioned Ethiad for 6k or qantas 7800
They were both mentioned in the post.
LOVE.
DAN YOU ROCK!
Apply that effort and brain power to actually make money, you would be benefiting society more instead of mooching. Just like all those who work so hard to figure out how to stay on government programs, use that energy to respectfully make a parnasah instead of taking from society.
Glad you’re worried about my parnasah and ability to make a living. 😀
JJ and I do this full time and are doing just fine, thanks for asking!
There’s no mooching here, the only profitable part of the airlines’s business is their mileage programs and they do quite well with them. The banks do just fine with them as well. As do our readers, which is most important.
Don’t bother with the haters, just keep them coming
Perfect response
Got jet lagged just reading the post!
“What are your favorite uses of miles?”
Driving. I just need to compare gas stations, and no one argues about the Doona.
Great Post, Sensei!
LOL
Who transfers to Etihad?
https://www.dansdeals.com/points-travel/ultimate-guide-bank-points-transfer-airline-hotel-partners-plus-breakdown-long-transfers-take/
Thanks this is super helpful! One question: do airlines ever add partner award availability as time goes on? In other words, if a specific AA flight in February is not bookable on Alaska today, is there a chance it will become available when it gets closer? Or is it a one-way (downhill) street and availability will only decrease as it gets closer to the flight? Trying to figure out if it makes sense to wait.
Absolutely, it changes daily!
Good to know. Thank you very much!
Thanks for the great write up, Dan. Much to digest.
Appreciate anyone’s opinion so I can learn how to best compare award.
Example: Cle to DFW
AA wants 8.5k +$5.60 for a red eye flight while alaskaair wants 7.5K+ $19 +$12.50 partner fee for the same flight. How do you valuate which is better value? Thank you!
how often does Alaska availability change? looking for a flight in 2 weeks which currently shows as “unavailable”, though first class shows at “5 left”.
All the time.
Sorry if this isn’t relevant to this discussion directly. Just tried booking flights I’ve been following from ny to Panama for the week of Thanksgiving. I know it’s Friday/a weekend day. Prices doubled from the last time I checked a few days ago. Would you book today bc they’re only gonna go up from here because it’s just over 3 weeks out? Or wait til next Tuesday to book because it’s best to book on Tuesdays?