How I booked 2 roundtrip flights to Hawaii for ~$140 each

I found out this week that my friends have decided to have their wedding in Hawaii next October.  Immediately, I started to look at award flights since I know flights from Seattle to Hawaii are usually in the $400-$500 range, and sure enough, each ticket was $550. I had known that Alaska charges 40K miles roundtrip to Hawaii, but I also knew that if I used BA miles, I could book on the same Alaska flights for 25K miles roundtrip.  However, with a little Google search, I found out that the cheapest way (if you’re on the West coast), is to use 20,000 Virgin America miles to fly on Hawaiian Airlines.  I then looked on HA’s web site and saw that they had award availability on the days I wanted.  I then called up Virgin to confirm that they can see the availability and that they were able to book.  She confirmed that it would cost 20K points and $11 in taxes.  As I was getting off the phone with her, she told me there were only 3 award seats each flight.  Gulp!  The problem is that I only had 700 VA miles.  Oh oh.

I knew that AMEX Membership Rewards points transfer to VA, and I had 200K of those.  I was going to transfer 100K during the current BA 40% promo.  I figured I’d transfer some to VA to book this flight.  Since I have more miles than time to use them all, I then asked some friends whether I should pay 20K to fly in coach or 50K to fly in first class.  I got different answers, and even as I write this, I’m still not sure which one I would take.  However, when I went to transfer those points, I found out that it takes 2 MR to get 1 VA point.  Now that’s just CRAZY!  Amex MR can transfer to Singapore Airlines to put you in their Suites class, so I wasn’t going to do this transfer.

I then researched what credit cards I could apply for.  It turns out the best I could do is a 15K point offer, which wasn’t worth a credit card application for me.  I then remembered that they started a shopping portal a couple of months ago, and coincidentally, they were also running a promotion of 2 miles / dollar spent buying AMEX gift cards.  While I haven’t discussed AMEX gift cards here yet, this is the math:

• 7 x $3K = $21,000 AMEX gift cards ordered equates to 42,000 VA points
• The fees on the AMEX gift cards are $4 per $3K, so that’s $28 in fees
• To liquidate 21K AMEX GC’s, assume $6 per $500 at a grocery store, that comes out to $6 x 42 = $252
• $252 + $28 = $280 = 42K Elevate points = 2 roundtrip tickets

I haven’t booked the tickets yet because I’m still waiting on the portal to credit my 42K points (may take up to a month.)  At this point, I’m just praying no one else snatches up those award seats.  While I know most of my readers are new and don’t understand much of what I’ve posted, I just want them to know that it’s possible to book CHEAP (not free) flights if you understand the miles and points game.