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.
How do you liquidate AmEx gift cards? I’m assuming that’ll be talked in a future post.
Yes, this will be in future post, but the best way is to buy gift cards from a drugstore or grocery store from a friendly cashier that doesn’t check ID. You can then liquidate the gift cards to money orders or Bluebird/Serve.