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asthejoeflies

Helping you and your family save money on your vacations to Disney and beyond

There’s a Burn Notice on my Points: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Introduction

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Burn Notice: Hilton HHonors

Burn Notice: American AAdvantage

As I noted in the introduction to my Burn Notice, Delta Skymiles were close to the top of my list of points to burn. Why? Well, there has been speculation for almost a year now that Skymiles are going to be devalued soon – a lot of people believe they might become revenue based. What that would mean potentially is that instead of 100,000 Skymiles being worth a round trip business class award ticket to Europe, it might only be worth $1000 in travel (if each Skymile is valued at one cent). $1000 generally isn’t enough to get a round trip business class award ticket to Europe, so that would be a major devaluation.

Anyway, I convinced my wife that it’d be a good idea to go to Europe with a 6 month old Baby M this summer. Not sure if that’s a good idea but that will obviously be covered this summer. In this post, I’ll outlined how I burned our Skymiles, and how you can too. The point of these Burn Notice points are to give examples of bookings that can give you ideas of how to burn your own points!

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There’s a Burn Notice on My Points: Introduction

This is how we dress when we travel
This is how we dress when we travel

Burn Notice: Introduction

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Burn Notice: Hilton HHonors

Burn Notice: American AAdvantage

I’ve decided to put a burn notice on some of my miles. Between my wife and I, we’ve accumulated over one million miles, mostly within the last year and a half or so. Well, as Hilton (most recently) and countless other award programs have taught us time and time again, miles and points are a volatile currency whose value only goes one way: down. So I’ve decided it’s time for us to book a couple of trips. There is no point on sitting on a stockpile of points – so let’s do this. Throughout this series, I will be talking about how I burned these points to give you examples of how you can burn yours!

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Using ITA Matrix to find flights: Newark to Istanbul RT for <$500

By the time I get this post up, this deal will probably be dead. But as of 2:21 PM EST on Thursday 1/31, you can fly round trip from Newark to Istanbul for $494 per person during President’s Week. There are sub 500 flights from Dulles and O’Hare as well, though not during President’s Week. I’m going to use this great flight deal for a tutorial on how to use ITA Matrix, my favorite flight search tool.

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Education of a Points Freak, Q3 – What are the pros and cons of different airlines’ mileage programs? (US Legacy Airlines)

Once I became comfortable with the idea of applying for a bunch of credit cards in order to get the sign up bonuses, I started getting to know the various airlines out there. I don’t have time to travel all the time like the hardcore bloggers, plus when I first started I still was wary of applying for too many credit cards, so I wanted to consolidate miles into one or two programs to being with. It’s generally a good idea to have a lot of miles in one or two programs anyway, though diversity helps provide coverage if you travel a lot. I’ve gotten a feel for the pros and cons of a lot of the big airlines out there, both in terms of the product the airlines provide and their mileage programs. Being based in the US, I’m obviously more familiar with US carriers, so in the first post addressing this question, I’ll be focusing on the US legacy carriers.

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