Tag Archives: Free First Class Next Month

Free First Class Next Month: The Updated End with Table of Contents

Posted on March 27, 2013 by MileValue | 7 Comments

This is the thirty-fifth and final post in a monthlong beginner series that started here.

You did it! You passed Miles Collecting 101. You should now have the basic tools to accrue millions of miles through credit card sign up bonuses mainly, but also online shopping, dining, flying cheap paid fares, and many other ways.

So what’s next?

Your mileage education is never complete. There’s always something more you can learn, so check back daily at this blog. Hopefully you now have the basics down and can understand a few of the more complicated posts.

Keep up with your new hobby, and maybe I’ll see you at the front of the plane in the flying bed across the aisle from mine. It’s your turn to enjoy Free First Class ~~Next Month~~ This Month.

Here is a link to every post in the series in case you missed one. Reading the whole thing should take less than hour.

Free First Class Next Month: Table of Contents

Other good beginners’ posts:

Two Foundational Questions in Miles Collecting

Rookie Alli’s First App-o-Rama

Best Current Credit Card Offers

Free Credit Card Consultation

MileValue Award Booking Service

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Free First Class Next Month: Using the MileValue Calculator

Posted on March 25, 2013 by MileValue | 1 Comment

This is the thirty-fourth post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Name Your Own Price on Priceline to Save Hundreds on Hotels (Part 2).

The Mile Value Calculator is one of this site’s most important contributions to the world of frequent flier miles. Before making any redemption, you should check its value with the calculator. Before deciding whether to purchase with cash or miles, you should check which is a better deal with the calculator. While putting your own value on AAdvantage miles or Avios, you should use the calculator.

Now that you’re nearing the end of your crash course on miles, it’s important to know how to use it properly. The following is an excerpt from the very first blog post I published. It explains what to plug into the four text boxes in the calculator with three examples:

Frequent Flier Miles Value Calculation

Ticket Value- For the ticket we are acquiring with miles, we need the lesser of the ticket’s value to us and the ticket’s cost.
- Example: A coach one-way ticket from LAX-PIT costs $200. Bill is flying to Pittsburgh to propose to his girlfriend, so he values the ticket at $5000. For the formula, we use the lesser of the cost ($200) and the value ($5000), so we plug in $200.
- Example: Jacqueline lives in San Francisco and decides at the last second to go to Atlanta to watch UVA basketball play in the ACC Tournament. On the way, she wants to stop in Minneapolis to visit family. Last second tickets from SFO-MSP-ATL-SFO cost $1213. Jacqueline is not a rabid fan and sees her family several times a year, so she only values the chance to go take this trip at $450. For the formula, we use the lesser of the cost ($1213) and the value ($450), so we plug in $450.
- Example of Premium International Travel: The most common time the cost and value diverge are for international first class travel. Jeff lives in Los Angeles and wants to book his dream vacation to see the Australian Open with a little exploration of Australia thrown in. He is also an expert on maximizing AAdvantage miles, so he knows he can get a free stopover in the international gateway city for as long as he likes. So he books JFK-LAX (June), LAX-SYD (January), MEL-LAX (January), and LAX-MIA (March). The transpacifics are in Qantas first class on A380s; the transcontinentals are on AA first class on 777s with fully flat seats. He plans on using the transcontinentals as half his airfare for upcoming vacations to New York and Miami. In cash, this itinerary would cost $25,700. To figure out his subjective value, Jeff looks at the cost of this itinerary in coach, which is what he would book if he had to use cash. The cheapest Australia itinerary in coach costs $1225, but it includes stops and is over 40 hours one way. Jeff values his direct flights $400 more than that and his first class a further $600 more. So he values the Australia part at $2225. He values the other first class legs, using the same process of finding the applicable coach fare and then adjusting for his valuation of first class and routing, at $700 total. So for the formula, we use the lesser of the cost $25,700 and his value ($2925 = $2225 + $700), so we plug in $2925.
Taxes and Fees Associated with an Award Booking- Include all taxes, award booking fees (US Airways), phone ticketing fees, close in ticketing fees, and any other fees. This number should be easy to find, since it is the total amount the airline is trying to charge your credit card.
- Bill purchased his flight within 21 days of departure online. United hits him with a $75 close in ticketing fee and $2.50 in taxes, so his total taxes and fees associated with the award booking are $77.50
- Jacqueline purchases online and Delta does not charge close in ticketing fees. Her total taxes and fees are $7.50.
- Jeff has to call a phone rep to book Qantas flights with AA miles. AA charges him a $25 phone fee plus taxes of $128. His total taxes and fees are $153.
Miles Used- How many miles will the trip we are considering cost?
- Bill found saver award space for the date he wanted. His trip cost 12,500 United miles.
- Delta allows free stopovers domestically in cities that are along a legal routing. It is legal to route SFO-ATL through MSP. Because Jacqueline found low level availability on delta.com for her entire itinerary (she has magical powers), her total cost is 25,000 SkyMiles.
- Jeff’s LAX-Australia roundtrip in Qantas first costs 145,000 AAdvantage miles. He craftily added the transcons in fully flat seats for no additional miles. Total: 145,000 miles.
Miles Foregone by Not Purchasing Ticket- Use the Great Circle Mapper to calculate how many miles the trip would earn in coach if you paid the fare. Add in any mileage earning bonus you would receive if you have status on the airlines you are flying. Use the miles earned in coach even if your award is booked in first classunless you would have paid for a first class seat in cash if you had not used miles.
- Bill’s PIT-LAX is 2136 miles, so he is forgoing 2136 miles by not purchasing his ticket with cash.
- Jacqueline’s routing is 4634 miles, but she is a Delta Diamond Medallion flier, so she would earn a 125% mileage bonus on her miles flown if she purchased the ticket with cash, so she is foregoing 10,426 (4634 + 1.25*4634) miles by not purchasing the ticket with cash.
- Jeff’s megatrip is 20,226 miles of flying, which is how many he’s foregoing by not purchasing the ticket with cash.

I use the calculator daily, and I hope you will use it regularly now also. You can find it under the resources tab on the menu above.

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Free First Class Next Month: Name Your Own Price on Priceline to Save Hundreds on Hotels Part 2

Posted on March 23, 2013 by MileValue | 4 Comments

This is the thirty-third post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Name Your Own Price on Priceline to Save Hundreds on Hotels Part 1

Yesterday we learned about priceline’s “name your own price feature” that allows us to save 60% on booking hotel rooms. I walked you through process of bidding, the pre-bidding preparation of noting all the zones without the quality of hotel we want, and gave a guideline for the first bid amount.

Now make your first bid. If you’re looking for a 4 star hotel in the Madison Square Garden – Convention Center of New York like in my example, the first bid should be the $40 per night suggested in the last post.

You will be prompted to enter your credit card info. And priceline will show the total amount of your bid including taxes and fees, which is usually about $10 per night higher than the amount you entered.

There are three things that can happen. First the bid may be accepted. It’s unlikely that your first bid will be accepted, but if it is, your card will be charged, and you will have a nonrefundable booking at a hotel in one of the zones you’ve bid on.

Second, the bid may be rejected outright. I’ll explain how to handle this in a moment.

Third, the bid may be rejected, but with a counteroffer from priceline.

In either the counteroffer or outright rejection situation, you will want to continue bidding with a free rebid. Remember yesterday when I said to write down the numbers of the zones without the quality of hotel you want or a higher quality?

I want a 4 star hotel in New York, so I wrote down the four zones, which had only 3 and 1/2 star hotels and below. Those zones are the key to free rebids.

You have as many free rebids as you have zones without your quality hotel or higher. (You can actually stretch your rebids much farther if you don’t mind using permutations. See here.)

I have four zones, so four free rebids. I would space out my rebids so that I go from $40 to the highest price I’m willing to pay over the course of those four bids. So if I were willing to pay $80 per night, I would make my rebids $50, $60, $70, $80. If I had a surfeit of free rebids from the permutation method–ten in this case–I would just add $4 or $5 to my bid each time.

How do you use a free rebid? You use a free rebid by adding one of the zones you’ve identified as free rebid zones earlier to a previous bid. When your bid is not accepted, priceline brings you back to the bidding screen and offers the chance to add a zone or a lower quality hotel.

Add exactly one zone during each free rebid. So my second bid will have two zones, Madison Square Garden – Convention Center and one free rebid zone. My third bid will have three: Madison Square Garden – Convention Center, my first free rebid zone, and a second one.

Why is a free rebid free? Because I am looking for a 4 star hotel. That means priceline will only book me into a 4 star hotel or higher. I am adding zones that don’t have such hotels. That means the only zone I can be booked into is still my desired zone, Madison Square Garden – Convention Center.

So I am getting free rebids by adding dummy zones that priceline cannot book me into!

As you’re working through your free rebids, one may be accepted! Great. More often though, before one is accepted, priceline counteroffers. The counteroffer looks like this, and claims that if you up your bid to a specific amount, the hotel is yours. Always decline; we’re very close to getting an even better deal!

Common wisdom is that once priceline counteroffers, you can usually get the room for about half the difference between your last bid and the counteroffer.

At this point, decrease the amount between your rebids to a few dollars. Priceline will eventually accept one of these free rebids at a level below their counteroffer, and you’ve probably saved hundreds on a multi-day stay.

Those are the basics of using priceline to get your hotel after you’ve booked your free first class ticket to the exotic locale. If you want to learn more, here’s an entire blog on the subject.

Now that you know how to exploit priceline, get to work saving hundreds of dollars on your next hotel reservation. Let me know your results.

Continue to Using the MileValue Calculator.

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Tagged Free First Class Next Month, Priceline

Free First Class Next Month: Name Your Own Price on Priceline to Save Hundreds on Hotels Part 1

Posted on March 22, 2013 by MileValue | 8 Comments

This is the thirty-second post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Cheapskate Lodging with Hotel Promos, Hostels, airbnb, and CouchSurfing.

Today I’ll continue the theme of cheap paid travel when you don’t have or don’t want to use points.

This is a topic I love: saving 60% on hotels using priceline. If you aren’t being reimbursed for your hotel expenses, and you have any flexibility over which hotel you can stay in, priceline.com’s “name your own price” section can save you hundreds of dollars per stay, so bookmark this post!

Let’s imagine you’ve booked free first class into an exotic city; now it’s time to get your room.

There are a few tricks to know when bidding on priceline, so read this post (and tomorrow’s) carefully before setting off to make your bids. First let me explain how priceline’s bidding section works.

As the commercials say, hotels give their unwanted inventory to priceline to sell at a steep discount to get at least some revenue. Priceline categorizes their inventory by city and then by zone within a city.

Priceline does not let you select a hotel in which you want to stay. All you can select is the quality of the hotel (in stars), and the zone in which you want to stay. That’s crucial. If you need to stay in a specific hotel, do not use priceline’s bidding feature.

Another aspect to consider is that you earn no hotel points and no status for stays booked through priceline. For me, this is not a problem because I don’t believe that hotel loyalty programs are worth the 150% premium I would often have to pay if I didn’t use priceline.

With those caveats in mind, if you still want to save 60% on hotels, scroll down on the priceline homepage and click “bid now” under the hotel in the “name your own price” section.

Type in the city, your dates, and the number of people. Now the city map will come up with a number of zones–New York has 18.

You can click on a zone to zoom in on it. Do this for any zone you’d consider staying in to make sure you are willing to stay in the entire zone.

Why? Because if you bid on a zone and win, you could end up with a non-refundable charge on your credit card for a stay anywhere in the zone.

If you’ve identified one or more zones in which you would stay, check their boxes. Now decide which quality hotels you want to stay in. The priceline star system does not necessarily correspond to any other star system, so click on each star level to learn about that star level and see what brands fall under that star level.

Now you’re almost ready to make your bid, but let me explain how bidding works. To make a bid, you have to give your credit card info because if your bid is accepted, the hotel is booked. You are given the hotel information, and a non-refundable charge is made to your card.

You can only bid once per day. This is designed to keep you from bidding $1 per night and increasing your bid $1 at a time until you find the lowest price at which a bid is accepted. Luckily there are two circumventions to the one-bid-per-day rule.

The first is that you can add lower quality hotels and rebid.

The second is that you can add a new zone and rebid. This is a huge loophole we will exploit to save hundred of dollars.

Before bidding, you need to note every zone in your city of choice that has only lower quality hotels than you’re searching for. Reread that sentence.

If you are searching for 4 star hotels in the Madison Square Garden – Convention Area section of New York, note every section of New York that has only 3 and 1/2 stars and below.

The way to do this is to check each area’s box one at a time and see which do not allow you to check 4 or 5 star hotels because they have none.

Zone 4, Coney Island, has no 4 star or better hotels, so we note that for later.

Write down all these zones that lack 4 star hotels and above because each such zone is a free rebid that we’ll use later. For New York, there are four zones that lack 4 and 5 star hotels, I noted that they are zones 4, 8, 13, and 14.

Now make your first bid. The FAQ section on the biggest site related to priceline bidding suggests the following opening bids:

1* $15
2* $17
2.5* $19
3* $25
3.5* $25
4* $40
5* $55
Resort $40

I think those are good starting points. You will be prompted to enter your credit card info. And priceline will show the total amount of your bid including taxes and fees.

The most likely outcome is that your bid will be rejected. Fear not. We’ve got some tricks up our sleeves like free rebids! I’ll walk you through using those tomorrow!

Continue to Name Your Own Price on Priceline to Save Hundreds on Hotels (Part 2).

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Free First Class Next Month: Cheapskate Lodging with Hotel Promos, Hostels, airbnb, and CouchSurfing

Posted on March 21, 2013 by MileValue | 5 Comments

This is the thirty-first post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Status.

Yesterday I said that I was down on hotels and hotel status generally. Why? I am a:

frequent traveler- I spend probably about three months a year outside my apartment
frugal traveler- $100 a night or more is never going to cut it for more than an occasional splurge
social traveler- hotels are isolating
anti-tourist- I don’t want to spend all my time in a touristy part of town, eating at touristy restaurants, and drinking with other Americans

So I pursue a mixed lodging strategy. I stay some nights at top-tier, fancy-pants, several-hundred-euros-per-night hotels. I stay the majority of my nights for free with friends or through CouchSurfing, and I round out the rest of my nights cheaply at hostels or through airbnb.

Fancy Hotels

I have a taste for occasional luxury. It’s fun to indulge. And it’s pretty easy to stay at fancy hotels for several nights a year. My two main strategies are hotel credit cards and hotel promos.

On the cards front, the one I would currently recommend is the Citi Hilton Reserve.

The Citi Hilton Reserve comes with two free weekend nights at almost any Hilton worldwide after $2,500 in purchases in the first four months plus Hilton Gold Status, which means free internet and breakfast. Rookie Alli got the card on her last churn. The card has a $95 annual fee.

If you and a traveling companion both get it, that’s four nights.

Then there are free nights from hotel promos. Occasionally, hotel programs offer incredibly generous promos where staying a paid night at any of their hotels will mean a free nights later at a nicer hotel.

For example, Starwood recently had a promo where a paid night at any SPG property would earn a free weekend night at any category 1-6 property. I spent about $100 on a one night stay in Pasadena. (I could have found cheaper, but I got a lot more value staying in Pasadena than a less nice area.) I will use my free night for a property in Europe that is over $300.

Radisson ran an even more lucrative promo last year, where you could earn up to three free nights through a stay-one-get-one promo.

Combining the best hotel promos of the year with the best credit card offers means seven to ten free luxury hotel nights per year, which is more than I need.

Free Lodging

I try to make the majority of my lodging on the road free by staying with friends and CouchSurfing. For more information on CouchSurfing, see Everything You Need to Know about CouchSurfing.

The basic gist is that is a safe, fun way to meet locals, see non-touristy residential areas, and save money that is suitable for all ages.

Cheap Stays

Most of my cheap stays are at hostels. I’ve written about How I Pick a Hostel. The gist is that hostels are a cheap, social place to stay that are ideal for solo travelers and groups of all ages. I pick hostels based on review sites to ensure that I consistently stay at great ones.

Recently I’ve added airbnb to my repertoire for cheap stays. My brother and I used airbnb in an emergency situation when we arrived in Melbourne, Australia during the Aussie Open without a room booked. All the hostels were sold out, and hotels wanted $300+ per night.

We hopped onto airbnb and signed up. The sign up is full of security features. I had to upload a photo of my ID and give a credit card to identify myself. Then I could browse listings for spare bedrooms, apartments, and houses. Prices vary widely. We stayed in an empty bedroom in a house with a family for $182 total over four nights, which works out to about $22 per night per person.

The location was perfect for the tennis tournament and convenient to a cool string of Asian restaurants. One big variable with airbnb is the host if you don’t rent an entire apartment or house. Our hosts were really nice and offered to let us eat with them every meal if we wanted. My brother took advantage of breakfast with them, but we ate our other meals out because we were rarely at the house.

It’s very easy to have a good experience on airbnb because you can check other people’s reviews, choose the perfect location, and price for your trip.

(Airbnb is also convenient for finding long term furnished rentals. It’s how I located my five current month lease in Buenos Aires.)

Recap

My lodging plan for three months on the road per year is a mix of luxury hotels that I don’t pay for, cheap hostels and airbnb rentals, and free stays with friends and couchsurfers.

This suits my budget, willingness to meet new people, and desire to get out of touristy areas. It also suits my comfort level, but I really think most people would love CouchSurfing and airbnb, and they should give them a try.

Continue to Name Your Own Price on Priceline to Save Hundreds on Hotels (Part 1).

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Free First Class Next Month: Status

Posted on March 20, 2013 by MileValue | 2 Comments

This is the thirtieth post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Using ITA Matrix to Find Cheap Flights and Fuel Surcharge Info

Airlines and hotels offer elite status that rewards frequent travelers who are loyal to a single brand of airline or hotel. These perks can be incredibly valuable, or they can be not worth the time and money taken to earn them. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about status to decide whether chasing it makes sense for you.

Basics Everyone Should Know

1. To earn airline status, you need to fly a certain number of paid miles or segments. Airline elite status starts at 25,000 paid miles flown.

2. You can credit paid, flown miles to an airline or one of its partners. Airlines are always partners with every member of their alliance and some non-alliance partners.

3. Airline elites get perks like priority check in, security, and boarding; seat upgrades; extra miles; waived baggage fees; dedicated customer service lines; waived award fees; waived change fees; and more.

4. To earn hotel status, you need to stay a certain number of paid nights or make a certain number of paid stays at a hotel chain. Or increasingly, you can receive status from carrying a credit card.

5. Hotel elites get perks like upgrades, late checkout, free internet, access to club rooms, priority check in, and extra points.

Very Frequent Traveler: 100k paid miles flown and 25 hotel stays per year

The more you travel the more status benefits are worth to you and the easier they are to obtain. One of the truisms of status is that you are better off having one top tier status than two mid tier statuses.

That means that instead of flying 50,000 miles on American Airlines and 50,000 miles on United, fly 100,000 on one to earn top tier status. 50,000 mile levels may earn a few seat upgrades and waived fees, but the 100,000 mile level will mean nearly automatic upgrades domestically and upgrades to flat beds on a few international flights a year.

It means instead of earning Hyatt Platinum AND SPG Gold to earn Hyatt Platinum OR SPG Platinum.

As a very frequent traveler, you will naturally earn statuses. Your main concern needs to be to consolidate a few top tier statuses instead of a bunch of low- and mid-tier statuses.

Your main value question: is it worth the extra money to maintain complete loyalty to unlock the top tier of loyalty at one airline and one hotel?

Frequent Traveler: 25k to 100k paid miles flown and 5-25 hotel stays per year

This is a big range of travel. At this level, you will earn some status, but not top tier status naturally.

The basic strategy for people in this range is still going to be to focus on staying with one hotel chain and flying one airline and its partners.

The basic question will be: is it worth the extra money to mileage or mattress run to earn the next tier of status?

Mattress running is booking a cheap hotel room you don’t need to earn stays, points, and status.

Mileage running is booking cheap flights that you fly not to reach the destination but to earn miles and status.

If you are close to the next tier of status, it might be worth your time and money to mattress or mileage run.

If you’re not that extreme, you may still be able to make minor tweaks to get to the next status level. Maybe you can break a two night stay at one hotel into two one-night stays at nearby hotels in the same city to double your stay credits.

Or maybe you can route in a slightly longer way to earn more airline miles. For instance Los Angeles to Dulles to Atlanta roundtrip will earn 1,500 extra miles roundtrip compared to connecting in Houston.

Image from gcmap.com

One final tip for people at the bottom of this range: You can credit both miles flown on American Airlines and miles flown on Delta to Alaska Airlines. Earning bottom tier status on Alaska at 25,000 miles combined on those partners will earn benefits on American, Delta, and Alaska flights.

Infrequent Traveler: Less than 25,000 paid miles flown and fewer than five paid hotel stays per year

Don’t chase status! It’s that simple. You don’t travel enough on paid itineraries to make status all that valuable, and you can easily get some hotel statuses and mimic airline status.

When you do fly, you can mimic many of the benefits of bottom tier status by getting an airline credit card. For instance, the Delta Airlines credit card comes with a free checked bag and priority boarding.

And you can exceed the benefits of top tier status on international flights by redeeming your miles for business and first class itineraries. Flying beds, first class lounges, and chauffeur service are available to anyone with enough miles.

For hotels, there are a number of ways to get status from credit cards and free sign ups.

You can get instant Platinum status with Accor hotels by signing up here.

You can get automatic Hilton Gold status as well as two free weekend nights at almost any Hilton worldwide by signing up for the Citi Hilton Reserve.

You can get free SPG Gold status if you hold any American Express Platinum card.

For infrequent or frugal travelers, I am down on hotels and hotel status in general. More on better alternatives in the next few installments.

Continue to Cheapskate Lodging with Hotel Promos, Hostels, airbnb, and CouchSurfing.

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Free First Class Next Month: Using the FlyerTalk Mileage Run Deals Forum to Find Cheap Flights and Mistake Fares

Posted on March 11, 2013 by MileValue | 2 Comments

This is the twenty-eighth post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Using the Great Circle Mapper.

Today Free First Class Next Month shifts to Cheap Economy Class Next Month because I’m going to let you in on the secret to the absolute cheapest paid travel around, the FlyerTalk Mileage Run Deals subforum.

FlyerTalk is an online forum. Its subforums have posts and information on every deal to get more miles, every frequent flier program, and every other possible aspect of travel and loyalty programs. It’s an incredible resource that I check every single day to learn more.

It also has subforums that deal with mileage running. Mileage running means flying for no other reasons than to earn miles that you can redeem for more expensive travel and to earn status to make flying more comfortable.

True mileage runners fly indirect, mainly domestic routes with as little time as possible at the destination in order to rack up miles and airline status. They use the status for upgrades and the miles for international first class trips.

I have never and probably will never mileage run. Why? I think it’s a bad deal for me when I factor in how much I value the time I’d be wasting flying to nowhere.

But I am very interested in the key component of mileage runs: cheap air fares. Those cheap air fares are collected and posted by mileage runners in the Mileage Run Deals subforum at FlyerTalk.

In the subforum, a typical thread title is:

UA: BOS-LAS $266 a/i RT (3.7 CPM)

Let’s walk through what this code means. The title begins with a two letter airline code. “UA” means United. You learned that in a recent post about airline codes. If you ever come across an unfamiliar code, you can reference that post or google the code followed by the word “airline.”

The second part is “BOS-LAS”, which is the airport codes of the origin and destination cities. In this case, Boston to Las Vegas. Again google can crack the airport codes if you can’t.

The next part is “$266 a/i RT.” a/i means all in, which is how the poster says that $266 is the price after all taxes and fees. RT means roundtrip. If it said OW, that would mean oneway.

The last part is 3.7 CPM or 3.7 cents per mile, which means if you divide the fare by the number of miles you’d earn with the most indirect routing, each mile would cost 3.7 cents.

I use the forum in two ways. The first way is to check it regularly when I know I need to make a trip between two cities. In October 2011, I decided to go to Atlanta March 7-11, 2012 for the ACC Basketball Tournament.

Knowing I wanted to make the trip, I always scanned for LAX-ATL deals on my daily trip to the forum. I struck gold and found the trip for $152 on United, which is an incredible deal for a transcontinental roundtrip and $150 less than I was willing to spend.

The second way is to spontaneously vacation. On my daily check I once found $170 roundtrip from LA to several countries in Central America I’d never visited. I immediately booked an open jaw into Guatemala and out of Honduras for a twelve day trip to three countries I’d always wanted to see.

One key thing to remember when you see a deal in the forum is that it will probably be gone very soon. If you want that fare, pull the trigger immediately before you lose your chance. This is especially true if the fare is a mistake fare, many multiples less than the fare normally costs.

Last year I booked a $230 mistake fare from LAX to Lima, which is normally about $1,000 by finding it on the forum and booking immediately.

Check the forum daily to save hundreds on trips you have to take and trips you’ve only ever dreamed of.

Continue to Using the ITA Matrix to Find Cheap Flights and Fuel Surcharge Info.

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Free First Class Next Month: Using the Great Circle Mapper

Posted on March 9, 2013 by MileValue | 2 Comments

This is the twenty-seventh post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Using Seat Guru to Pick the Best Award.

The Great Circle Mapper is a valuable, free, online resource that can be found at gcmap.com. It is a simple mapping tool that can shed light on your itineraries.

On any page, you can type airport codes into the text box. If you separate two codes with a dash, a straight line will be drawn between them and the distance of the flight given.

A comma can be used to separate airport codes between which you will not be flying.

This denotes an open jaw trip. The outbound is Los Angeles to Honolulu. The return is Kahului to Los Angeles.

After typing in the codes separated by the appropriate dashes and commas, click Map.

Now you have a cool map of your upcoming trip with the distance of each segment and the total distance listed below. Beyond its coolness, I use Great Circle Mapper for several reasons.

If you want to know how the distance of an itinerary changes by adding stopovers or changing the routing, it’s a a great tool.

This is important if you are trying to earn miles from flying paid tickets, and you want to see how many miles each routing earns. Most airlines’ official distance between two airports corresponds almost exactly to Great Circle Mapper’s distance.

Another reason you want to know the distance is to know how many Avios would be needed for an award flight between two cities. Because Avios is a distance-based award program, you need to know the distance of each segment to know how Avios will price an award.

The third reason to use Great Circle Mapper is to check whether a putative award routing is legal. Many award programs have a maximum mileage that can be flown between any given award origin and destination. (It is usually a multiple of that city pair’s Maximum Permitted Mileage. For instance an American Airlines award’s routing is capped at 1.25 * MPM.)

And my favorite reason to use the Great Circle Mapper is to visualize all the free first class I’m flying. Here’s my flights flown or booked for 2013, and hopefully I’ll be adding more soon because I see big holes in South America and Asia!

Continue toUsing the FlyerTalk Mileage Run Deals Forum to Find Cheap Flights and Mistake Fares.

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Free First Class Next Month: Using Seat Guru to Pick the Best Award

Posted on March 8, 2013 by MileValue | 2 Comments

This is the twenty-sixth post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Planning Awards with Wikipedia and Kayak.

Today I’ll be explaining a tool I use every time I book a flight or research an award to ensure I get the best seat possible, seatguru.com. SeatGuru is an online compendium of airline seatmaps.

Along the left top of the site, hold your cursor over Browse Airlines. Select from the list.

If you click on an airline, every aircraft in its fleet will show up. If you click on one, you can see its seat map.

The aircrafts are grouped by whether they are narrow body (one aisle) or wide body (two aisles.) The latter tend to be used for the longhaul flights on which we are most interested in seat quality.

I use seatguru in three ways. The first is to figure out the best product on an airline. For instance, if I know that I want to fly in US Airways business, I could open US Airways three widebody jets’ pages and compare the business class product offered on various US Airways planes.

From comparing them, I learned to avoid the 757, which only has recliners, and to shoot for the A330-200, which has lie flat beds inside their own suites.

I would use this information when booking any paid or award ticket. When booking a ticket, the aircraft is always listed alongside each option. I would make sure if I were booking a business class ticket on US Air that the flight was operated by an A330-200.

The second way I use SeatGuru is to make sure I get the best seat within my class of service. I had a flight on a British Airways 777-200 in business class.

When looking at the seatmap, note that some seats are color coded. Just like driving, green is good, and red is bad. Seatguru shades a seat green if it has more room than normal.

It shades it yellow or red if the seat has a defect like a window seat that isn’t aligned with a window. Or a seat that is too near to a galley or toilet. Or the worst of all, coach seats that don’t recline.

From looking at the map and holding my cursor over the map, I chose seat 2J. It has tons of extra space, only one seat mate, and will be easy to enter and exit.

The third way I use SeatGuru is to figure out whether a business class seat is angled lie flat or true lie flat. Hold your cursor over any seat for that info. A text box will pop up explaining whether the seat is fully flat like British Airways business:

Or whether a seat is angled lie flat like most of American Airlines business:

SeatGuru is intuitive to use and is a wealth of information. From now on when booking or researching a flight, pull up the seat map and find out where the best seat for you is.

I rarely actually use the process described in this post to bring up seat maps. An easier way is just to google “[airline] [plane mode] seat map.”

Continue to Using the Great Circle Mapper.

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Free First Class Next Month: Planning Awards with Wikipedia and Kayak

Posted on March 7, 2013 by MileValue | 3 Comments

This is the twenty-fifth post in a monthlong series that started here. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete. I am writing this for an audience of people who know nothing about frequent flier miles, and my goal is that by the end, you know enough to fly for free anywhere you want to go. Previously Using Expert Flyer to Redeem Delta Miles.

In an ideal world if you had United miles and wanted to fly to Phuket, you’d go to united.com, type in your dates and find your trip. In the real world, often no award comes up, and you have to be creative. How can you get creative with what possible routings exist?

For me, the two best places to get routing ideas are kayak.com and wikipedia. If a client for my award booking service says he wants to go from LAX to Phuket, Thailand with United miles, I don’t instantly know all the routing possibilities.

My first thought would be that the last leg will probably be Bangkok to Phuket on Thai Airways, since I’m sure such a flight exists. But I want to know all the possibilities to figure out the best routing in terms of duration, layover quality, and airline quality.

So first I would search “phuket airport wiki.” Every wikipedia page for an airport contains a section entitled “Airlines and destinations,” which I scroll down to.

In this example, I’ve specified using United miles, so I’ll scan the list for all Star Alliance partners. If you’re not sure about an airline’s alliance, here’s a list of airline hubs and alliances. You can also click on the airline, and its wikipedia page will list its alliance.

Once I’ve noted all the ways to get there on the Star Alliance–on Air China, Asiana, Austrian, and Thai– I’ll move on to kayak.com. At kayak.com, I’ll search LAX to HKT for one passenger in economy near the dates my client wants. I’ll make sure to search +/- 3 days, so I can catch routings that are only possible once a week because of non-daily flight schedules.

I sort the kayak.com results by alliance and duration.

Such filtering allows me to see that the shortest itinerary bookable with United miles is LAX-ICN-HKT on Asiana.

I also note the information about what aircraft operates each segment, which I take to seatguru.com to figure out which itineraries have the best seats. More on that tomorrow.

Now ideally I’d then be able to go and book a short, comfortable itinerary. But if I run into trouble, I’ll go right back to wikipedia.

Say I can’t find any simple one stop itineraries between LA and Phuket. If I’ve found space from Seoul to Phuket, I would go look at the Seoul-Incheon page to see how I can get to Seoul.

Or I might go to the LAX page to see how I can get to Asia from LAX. Then I’d go search LAX to Asia flights or flights to Seoul for award space.

I constantly check wikipedia for information on where airlines fly–major airlines have an article listing all their destinations that is linked to the airline’s wiki page–and where it’s possible to fly from an airport. It’s an incredibly helpful weapon when booking awards.