In the first half of this Real Life Award Booking, I outlined how you can earn enough miles for a round trip business class tickets to Europe in just a few months. For an extra few thousand miles per person, I helped my friend book a ticket from Washington DC to Auckland, New Zealand, and then back to the US through Tokyo, Japan. It costs 107,500 miles plus taxes and fees per person, with TWO long haul legs in business class. In this post I’ll outline how you can do that – right now! Or later…
Real Life Award Booking: New Zealand and Japan, Part 1 – Getting the points
For the past couple months, I’ve been helping a friend plan a big trip to New Zealand using frequent flier miles. I helpd out at the beginning, but he did most of the work in the end – it’s not too bad once you get the hang of it! In this post I’ll outline how he earned the miles, and then in Part 2 I’ll discuss how he strung together New Zealand and Japan into one award trip. Frankly, I have traveling envy – I’d love to book this trip for myself!
Real Life Award Booking – Asia for the In-laws, Seat selection
When I was in Europe a few years ago, before I got into this whole points thing, I distinctly remember taking an Air Europa flight and sitting in the very last row. Since I had booked through Orbitz, I was only able to select seats on the American carriers, so I got stuck with an assigned seat. As you can see, after I booked my in-laws trip to Asia, they too were left hung out to dry seat-wise (two Lufthansa and four Thai Airways flights). I’ve since learned how to get seat assignments on most foreign carriers – and what I’m sharing about it should work on travel you paid for, too!
Real Life Award Booking: Asia for the In-laws
I’m taking a break from my Education of a Points Freak to talk about a real life award booking I just made for my in-laws. I find it’s easiest to learn how to book award space by just doing it. I’ve played around with a lot of dummy bookings, but it’s more fun to look for actual awards. Helping my in-laws book their upcoming trip to Asia helped spur me on to write this blog, so hopefully their itinerary will be helpful to anyone reading!
Education of a Points Freak, Q3 – What are the pros and cons of different airlines’ mileage programs? (US Legacy Airlines)
- Education of a Points Freak – Introduction
- Question 1 – Is accumulating points and miles for everyone?
- Question 2 – Won’t applying for credit cards hurt my credit?
- Question 3 – What are the pros and cons of different airlines’ mileage programs? (US Legacy Airlines)
- Question 4 – What are airline alliances and how are they useful?
- Question 5 – How can I keep track of all my account balances?
- Question 6 – What are other useful tools I can use?
- Question 7 – What are some good credit cards to start with?
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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