Hello from the SFO Polaris lounge! I’m flying to Japan in ANA First Class tonight thanks to wide-open award space that happened earlier this year. At SFO, the lounges all close by 10 pm (Centurion at 9 pm, KLM at 7:45 pm), but the flight is at 1:45 am, so ANA issues $30 meal vouchers per passenger in the form of a Mastercard Gift Card. Terms state the merchant must be categorized as “food, dining, or restaurant.” It’s the same GC that United, Alaska, and Delta issue (though I hear they are sometimes Discover cards), with the same zip code of 60173. You receive a QR code and the card number, expiration date, CVV, and billing zip code. From some internet sleuthing, I found the entire billing address: 1475 E Woodfield Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173.
TagDelta
It’s pretty evident why this would be the case for someone. Once you have built up miles and points balances through credit card signups and manufactured spending, means are less of a bottleneck. Traditional award charts offer fixed miles prices for flights irrespective of the cash price, which means that (assuming you can find availability), a $500 flight to a random U.S. city near a national park costs you the same as a $200 ticket between two major domestic hubs. For premium cabins, the value proposition can be even greater, because the miles prices are typically marked up 50-150% relative to coach, whereas cash prices can differ by up to a factor of ten.
Therefore, last year saw me travel to a bunch of places I had been dying to visit — Australia and New Zealand with Esther and Michael, Milan and the south of France with my sister, and Cambodia and Hong Kong with my friend Jacob.
Of all my “planned” trips last year, however, the ones that were the least expected and also the most difficult to arrange were my visits to Dublin. My partner moved to Ireland for a year, and since my job offers me the flexibility to work from nearly anywhere (incidentally, we have an office in Dublin), we decided that it would be easier for me to trek there than vice-versa. All told, I will have made five trips to visit, and the process of booking those flights allowed me to explore a lot of different facets of travel hacking and flight booking that hopefully will open up other options down the line.
Since writing things down helps me remember them, I decided to do a write-up of my experience booking each of my five trips:
Trip 1: Easy mode
What I spent:
One thing that remained relatively unchanged last year was Delta’s Skybonus program. Skybonus is a rewards program for businesses as an incentive for them booking flights for their employees. Like AA’s equivalent, Business Extra (United’s is explicitly limited to corporations/large companies), rewards are earned as multipliers on ticket price, with higher multiples for higher fare classes.
At the end of 2015, Delta changed the program to have an annual spending requirement and to require a minimum number of distinct employees to take a flight, in order to make it a less viable double-dip option for sole proprietors. However, through some fare sales, targeted promotions, and help from family members, I was able to not only meet the requirements, but earn enough points (85,000) to redeem for a domestic round-trip. No one I know had ever earned enough points or redeemed a Skybonus certificate, so I was eager to try it out.
Within a few minutes, I received an email with my certificate number and a prompt to call Delta to redeem for a flight.
However, having redeemed gift cards for Delta flights, I knew there was a way to redeem online, so I clicked through to the redemption instructions and followed the links to Delta’s website.
After entering the certificate details, the full certificate details appeared:
Thankfully, and unlike the upgrade certificates for which you can redeem (for which it’s often difficult to determine if there’s availability), my certificate’s terms were simple: as long as there was availability in T class (which is not the lowest fare class), I could book a flight.
On I went to search for a redemption (I had pre-confirmed T class availability before redeeming for the flight):
There were plenty of options. I picked the most direct, which led me to the fare details page and eventually the checkout page.
Interestingly, the price breakdown and receipt showed not an award redemption, but a purchase of a flight with a base fare of $0 and the $11.20 ($5.60 TSA fee each way) in taxes and fees. What I suspect, therefore, is that I will earn Medallion Qualifying Miles on the flight, although obviously I won’t earn any redeemable miles. Ideally, I would have attempted to credit it to Alaska, but since their partnership with Delta is ending before I take my flight, I won’t get to see if I can earn redeemable miles based on fare class (for the sake of science, I might put in my Air France Flying Blue number, but the miles wouldn’t be too useful for me).
Another interesting note is that, despite the flight being after the end of the Delta/Alaska partnership, the website did allow me to enter my Alaska Mileageplan number and select “Preferred” seats as per the current reciprocal status benefits. Who knows if they’ll stick, but worth a shot.
All in all, this was a successful double dip. I think it’s unlikely I requalify for Skybonus this year, so it will probably be my last, but I’ll take it!
Happy hacking!
Elite Status Roundup: What I’ve earned, and what I’ve learned
Which of my predictions reached fruition?
With that out of the way, onto the main event…
I f***ing love Delta Skymiles
Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but it isn’t that far off.
Being good at anything, be it a job or a hobby, is all about having a set of tools that you know inside and out. As a software engineer, it matters less how many programming languages I know so much as having a set that covers a sufficiently diverse functionality and knowing that set very well.
Travel hacking — and for the purposes of discussion, I’m going to limit the scope of discussion to redeeming airline miles — is no different. As great as it is to know the ins and outs of 20 different programs, fragmentation (i.e. maintaining balances across all those programs) is expensive both mentally (you have to remember what program is good for what redemptions) and financially (since you’re likely to have orphan balances). That is to say, having a few programs that you accrue balances in and making active choices to invest in those programs is far more beneficial for the average person than a shotgun approach.
I’ll use myself as an example. Although I have access to pretty much every frequent flyer program on the planet (through transferrable currencies like Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest), and although I know some international programs have some really nice redemption opportunities, I generally stick to the following six: Alaska, United, Air Canada, Virgin America, Southwest, and you guessed it, Delta.
Admittedly, six is still a lot, but the choice of those six were very intentional:
- Alaska has great slate of partners (most of OneWorld) and very flexible routing rules.
- United doesn’t charge fuel surcharges and is a member of the Star Alliance.
- Air Canada offers cheaper business class redemptions on Star Alliance partners relative to United.
- Virgin America flies SFO-JFK and is a fixed-value currency.
- Southwest is price-competitive on random short flights, also has a fixed-value rewards program, and all awards are fully refundable.
- Delta Skymiles are a fixed(ish) value currency.
This is nominally a post about Delta, so let’s talk about it. Why are Delta Skymiles in my Swiss-army knife of airline miles, and why do I like them so much?
For starters, they transfer from Membership Rewards, so I have very easy access to them. But more importantly, you can pretty much always book an award flight on any route Delta flies. This is made possible by the fact that they have five different levels of award pricing for each route, and although it’s primarily a ploy to reduce the value of your miles (to closer to 1 cent a piece on Economy class redemptions), I actually appreciate the opportunity to be given a choice whether to use miles or points irrespective of the cash price. I can always decide that the “value” is too low, but that’s a decision for me, not for the airline.
To be clear, it annoys me to no end that they got rid of their award chart, and I find it insulting. Restricting access to information is one of the most in-your-face power plays you can make. But consider the purpose the Skymiles serve for me. If I’m flying somewhere domestically (for which United and Alaska typically offer poor redemptions, if there’s even availability) in Economy, and neither Southwest nor Virgin America fly to my chosen destination, I can always fall back to flying Delta, since I know that there will be availability. My redemption value (cents per point) might be something like 1.2, but if you consider the fact that it costs me between 0.3 and 0.5 cents to earn a single Skymile (via Membership Rewards), that’s pretty much a no-brainer versus paying cash (this is separate from the argument of whether to use a cash back card or a points-earning card because we’re talking about redemption, not accrual).
Moreover, I’ve found Skymiles to be the most consistently useful currency for my parents, who fly mostly domestically out of New York and (almost) always together. Delta covers most of the map, and if their cash prices out of New York are competitive (which they almost always are), then I can pretty reliably save them money by using Skymiles, not to mention the fact that the multiple tiers of awards makes it far more likely that there is award space available for two. Given that my dad basically wants to avoid paying cash (i.e. retail price) at all costs, Delta offers me an unbeatable value proposition.
Diversify, and always explore.
The only reason I am able to speak this positively about Delta is that I never bet the house on them. I didn’t pour all my loyalty into its arms (whether miles or status), and as a result, I was well positioned to adapt to the changes in their loyalty program. This is true of every program in my toolkit. I keep as many points as possible in transferrable currencies, and when changes do occur (inside or outside my toolkit), I constantly re-evaluate the role the program in question can play in my overall strategy.
It also pays to re-evaluate your strategies even in absence of program changes. For example, my parents recently got a Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which gives them access to 1.25 cent per point redemptions on flights through the Chase portal. Although historically they’ve put their spending on the U.S. Bank Flexperks card (between 1.3 cents and 2.0 cents per point) at 1 point per dollar, if they instead put their daily spending on the Chase Freedom Unlimited card (1.5 points per dollar), they can both take advantage of Chase Ultimate Rewards transfers when beneficial or get a guaranteed 1.875 cents per point on their spending (1.5 * 1.25) when redeeming for flights (I actually like this strategy better than a 2% cash back card, although the 2% card is strictly better than the FlexPerks strategy).
That’s me, what about you?
The original idea for the post was to talk about the strategy of combining refundable awards bookings with revenue-based airlines (Southwest by default and JetBlue/Virgin America if you have status) with good last-minute award availability on more traditional chart-based programs, but this was a bit more spicy and it’s something I’ve been thinking about more and more as I scale up my miles earning to a point where my balances are hitting six and seven figures.
So what about you? What are your go-to programs? What do you use each program for?
Happy hacking!
Related Reading
This is a breakdown of what we’ve booked so far and how we’ve paid for it:
|
Qantas SFO-SYD business class (Daniel and Michael) |
62,500 American Airlines miles + $26.40 per person |
125,000 AA miles + $52.80 |
|
Virgin America SFO-LAX and Virgin Australia LAX-SYD economy class (Esther and husband) |
25,000 Virgin America points + $35.40 per person |
50,000 VX points + $70.80 |
|
Delta SFO-LAX and Virgin Australia LAX-SYD economy class (Esther and husband) |
50,000 Amex Membership Rewards points transferred to Delta miles + $30 transfer fee + $27.60 per person |
100,000 MR/DL miles + $115.20 |
|
Park Hyatt Sydney |
30,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points transferred to Hyatt points, per night |
120,000 UR/Hyatt points |
|
Air New Zealand SYD-ZQN |
$157.59 per person – $100 Amex Offer for Amex Travel ($100 off $500) |
$530.36 |
|
[hotels in New Zealand TBD] |
||
|
Fiji Airways AKL-NAN-HNL |
$547.40 – $128 Orbucks per person |
$2189.60 – $512 Orbucks |
|
InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa |
30,000 IHG points per night |
60,000 IHG points |
|
[second hotel for Fiji TBD] |
||
|
Alaska Airlines HNL-SJC (Daniel) |
12,500 British Airway Avios + $5.60 |
12,500 British Airway Avios + $5.60 |
|
Esther’s grandfather-in-law’s condo in Honolulu |
Family duties |
Family duties |
|
Alaska Airlines HNL-OAK (Esther and husband) |
12,500 British Airway Avios + $5.60 |
12,500 British Airway Avios + $5.60 |
So many flights to SYD?!
Ok, let’s back up. You may have noticed that it appears that my husband and I have TWO flights each from SF to Sydney. The LAX-SYD part is even on the same Virgin Australia flight. Yes, we have managed to clone ourselves so we can enjoy Sydney 2X as much and cover more ground in the short amount of time we have there. And somehow in Sydney we will manage to condense ourselves back into two people for the rest of the trip.
No, that’s not possible (yet). As much as I would love to clone myself 100 times and send the rest of myselves around the world and leave one to work and pay for everything, there is only one of me and one of him, and therefore I need to cancel one of those extra flights.
Source: makeameme.org
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This is where the embarrassing story begins. Several months ago, Daniel was trying to help me think of ways to get myself to Sydney, since he and Michael had already booked Qantas business class using AA miles (I had just wiped out my AA balance for a Japan Airlines first class redemption, so sadly that was not an option for me). He informed me that LAX-SYD flights were only 25,000 VX points one way (40,000 roundtrip). I was shocked by how “cheap” that was, but I didn’t have 50,000 VX points yet, so I had to somehow manufacture the points. I had obtained 2 Virgin America Visa Signature credit cards with signup bonuses of 30,000 points each, but for a long time I had only had 30,000 points deposited, with the other 30,000 missing. That is another story itself, which I will tell one of these days (travel hacker drama).
Anyways, I thought I had filed the information about LAX-SYD being 25k points in the back of my head, but one day after a particular infuriating and sad phone call with Comenity and Virgin America, I was chatting with another travel hacker friend about how I still needed to book my LAX-SYD flights but didn’t have enough VX points because Comenity/VX had dropped the ball on me. I must’ve been blinded and incapacitated by my emotions from the phone call because I completely forgot how many VX points LAX-SYD required. I went to the Virgin America Elevate Partners website to check:
Source: virginamerica.com
Mistake #1: Not reading/clicking carefully or double-checking
I told my friend it was 40k VX points + $130 per person and I only had around 45k VX points at the time and since I always need to book for 2 people, there was no way I could get to 80k anytime soon. (NOTE: my HUGE, COSTLY mistake was not clicking that little teeny tiny “One Way” radio button!!!! He didn’t think to question me, so he didn’t double-check.)
Given that we erroneously thought the flight was 40k VX points, he recommended that I look at Delta. Delta is 50k points SFO-LAX-SYD with $27 fuel surcharges. For only 10k more points, I would get SFO-LAX and the fuel surcharges were much lower! I don’t collect Delta miles, and I honestly have never stepped foot on a Delta plane in my life. In order to get Delta miles, I needed to create a Delta account, and transfer Amex Membership Rewards in. I did the first step, then signed into Amex, where I saw that I only had 97,000 Membership Rewards points. FML. My friend said Delta availability is unpredictable, and I should book as soon as possible.
Mistake #2: Hasty decisions made in an emotionally unstable state
I was still reeling from my terrible phone call with Comenity & VX, and several kind friends on Twitter advised me to live chat Amex and tell them the situation. So I did. Amex Customer Service has never failed me, and immediately afterwards I even wrote a blog post detailing how they came through for me in this situation and fast-tracked ~3,000 MR points into my account so I could book right away. If Amex hadn’t been so efficient, this whole mistake probably could’ve been avoided. 😛 But they are friendly and efficient, and I instantly had 100k MR points in my account, which I began transferring to Delta. I was a bit shocked by the screen that said transferring points to a domestic-based airline would incur a fee of 6 cents per point. This gave me pause, and I should have more thoroughly checked all the possible ways I could get to SYD on miles and points. But I didn’t. I was sad, frustrated, and anxious to get this over with. So I paid the $60 to transfer my hard-earned 100k MR points to Delta, effectively wiping out my entire Amex MR balance. :sob:
Source: www.millionmilessecrets.com
The transfer was instant and I booked the flights. And then I felt happy, because I felt like Amex and Delta had saved the day, when Comenity and Virgin America had tried to ruin it.
Mistake #3: Not talking over the plans with my original advisor (Daniel)
I told Daniel and Michael that I had successfully booked the ticket, and went about my merry way. A few days or a week later I was chatting casually with my group of travel hackers about the redemption and how I had redeemed 50k Delta points per person but gotten an extra SFO-LAX flight out of it for no additional miles/cost. Daniel noticed this, and he said, “Esther, I hate to break this to you, but I just realized that our lines of communication may have crossed.” What? He then proceeded to explain that LAX-SYD was 25k points, NOT 40k. 40k was for roundtrip. My heart dropped, and I raced to the Virgin America website again and looked. Sure enough, this time I saw the radio buttons and I realized I hadn’t clicked “One Way” in my emotional state of cloudy judgment. @#$LKJ#LK%JLK!@J#!!!!!! I then went back into my Facebook Messenger chats and saw that indeed, just a little over a month ago before all this happened, Daniel had told me how to get my LAX-SYD flight for cheap.
Source: www.facebook.com
What to do?
It was too late to cancel the Delta reservation since more than 24 hours had already elapsed. Besides, what would I do with 100k Delta points? I had already paid for the transfer to Delta, so I was out 100k MR and $60. To rub salt in my wounds,
this promotion was recently announced for a bonus on transfers from MR to VX, and VX Gold status until Feb 2017 for transferring 80k MR
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