Questions and Answers

Lucky, I just found your blog and have been reading it with great pleasure. I have a 2 month sabbatical from work coming up next summer and my family of 4 would like to travel from our home in PDX to Boston, then on to London, then to Orlando, back to Boston, and back to PDX. How can I do this very cheaply?

Welcome [USER=1297]@MJH[/USER] – do you have any points at all right now? Will have to say that while it’s not impossible to get award seats on some of these flights, it will be tough to get them for all the flights.

Are economy seats ok? (that will improve your chances) Being flexible with dates will help as well. Just to set expectation, you’re probably going to need to pay cash for some of these seats.

If you’re starting from scratch with points, you (preferably and your spouse too) will need to be able to apply for credit cards, meet the minimum spend and pay them off quickly. If you’re currently carrying balances on your cards then please do not apply for any more until you have those balances paid off. The interest you’d pay costs more than any benefit you’d get from the cards.

[QUOTE=”MidSouth Skier, post: 10864, member: 184″]Welcome [USER=1297]@MJH[/USER] – do you have any points at all right now? Will have to say that while it’s not impossible to get award seats on some of these flights, it will be tough to get them for all the flights.

Are economy seats ok? (that will improve your chances) Being flexible with dates will help as well. Just to set expectation, you’re probably going to need to pay cash for some of these seats.

If you’re starting from scratch with points, you (preferably and your spouse too) will need to be able to apply for credit cards, meet the minimum spend and pay them off quickly. If you’re currently carrying balances on your cards then please do not apply for any more until you have those balances paid off. The interest you’d pay costs more than any benefit you’d get from the cards.[/QUOTE]

I do have points on Alaska, American and United. My dates are very flexible and economy is fine. I have small balances but usually pay them off monthly, rarely do I carry a balance over to the next month.

What kinds of balances in Alaska, AA & UA do you have? Are you willing to split up 2+2 if needed?

Alaska 42.9K, AA 5.6K, UA 0 and Delta 0. So not much to work with. I can buy miles to get up to award levels. I have no problem splitting up 2+2 if it makes financial sense.

OK, with that kind of mileage balance you’ll just need to crunch some numbers to see if it makes more sense to buy miles or just buy tickets. If you can bump your AA balance to 50K, that should give you enough for two PDX-BOS round-trips at the saver level. Not much, but it’s something. (I’m making the assumption that both times through BOS you’re wanting to spend a few days there and not just come back to PDX straight from Orlando. Otherwise you could just book the domestic legs as an open-jaw.)

For the rest of the flights you’ll just need to compare the prices you’re seeing to the price the airlines are currently selling their miles for. AA has miles on sale through Jan 4th. You are limited to purchasing 150K miles (excluding bonus miles) per person each year (think that’s based on calendar year).

See Lucky’s points valuation (under Start Here at the top of the page) to see what a point is worth and how much you’d pay under the airlines’ sales. (Hint: they’ll usually ask more than Lucky thinks it’s worth) Compare how many points you’d need to the actual cash price of the ticket.

While I can’t say for sure, it’s possible that buying the tickets outright will be a better deal for you. If you had more time to accumulate miles it would definitely help – so if you’re going to get 2 months off again next year, you could start working on your mileage stash now. 😉