Most of my morning was spent in a deep trance, flying through the Microsoft-crippled cyberspace of airline portals. After last month’s expensive last-minute disaster with Air Canada, I decided to get way ahead of the rest of our travels.
My goal? Get all of our flights booked until the end of the year using the points we have available now. I'll run you through the details, but keep in mind, all fees and point rates are for two people and the cash value isn’t necessarily the price of the flight we’re taking. I’m looking for real value so I’m putting the lowest price with a reasonable route on our dates but it’d be higher if I took the specific flight’s rate.
🇿🇦 Flight 1: Cape Town to Kilimanjaro Airport = 50,000 Aeroplan points + $118
(An $815 cash value with no transfers are required.)
🇹🇿 Flight 2: Kilimanjaro Airport to Windhoek = 50,000 Aeroplan points + $118 ($926 cash value)
For this flight, I needed to split this into two separate bookings so we had to do the following:
Jess' moves: Move 8,000 Capital One Miles to Aeroplan. Transfer 7,000 Chase points to Aeroplan. And use the 10,000 already in the account.
Steven's Moves: Transfer 22,000 Amex points to Aeroplan and 3,000 Chase points to Aeroplan.
🇩🇪 Flight 3: Windhoek to Frankfurt = 70,000 Aeroplan points + $128 ($843 cash value)
In this case, Jess transferred 70,000 Chase points to Aeroplan.
🇵🇹 Flight 4: Frankfurt to Porto - The only uncertain factor right now. May just grab a cheap flight.
🇫🇷 Flight 5: Paris to Atlanta = 30,000 KLM Flying Blue points + $300 ($739 cash value)
I transferred 30,000 Citi points to KLM.
🇺🇸 Flight 6: Atlanta to Indianapolis =19,000 American Airlines Miles + $10 ($400 cash value with no transfers required.)
🏨 Hotel in Indianapolis = Hyatt Category 2 for 9,500 points (Cash value $150)
I used 10,000 Chase points to book the hotel.
✈️ Flight 7: Indianapolis to Raleigh = 30,000 United miles + $10 (A $300 cash value with no transfer required.)
🇬🇧 Flight 8: Raleigh to London = 54,000 American Airlines Miles + $10 ($650 cash value with no transfer required.)
🏩 Three nights at a London hotel
$2,304 cash value if you use the hotel we’ll stay at. If we were paying cash, we’d probably be looking at around $600 minimum but we had a Hilton Free Award Nights from a co-branded Hilton credit card.
🛫 Flight 9: London to Glasgow =18,500 Avios + $1 ( A $250 cash value)
For this flight, I transferred 18,500 Citi points to Qatar then on to British Airways.
Total cash value of travel: $7,377
Total Spend: $685
Total savings: $6,692
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Now if only the Aeroplan portal would start responding I could get to work. Next week, I’ll let you know how booking all these flights goes.
Wanna learn how to do this? Check out my course here.
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