Did I really just book a frequent flier ticket?
Posted on June 13th, 2008 – 1:35 PMBy Kara McGuire
Did I really just successfully book a non-stop frequent flier ticket for 25,000 on Northwest? In August. Flying back to Minneapolis the weekend of the RNC?
Somebody pinch me. In recent years, I’ve had zero success booking frequent flier tickets. It’s been several years since I could afford one because we aren’t frequent fliers and I rarely could find a ticket for as little as 25,000 miles.
Most of the time, I’d log on and find that a ticket would cost me 50,000 or more.
I still have a no-fee Worldperks Visa card (but I only earn 1 mile for every $2 spent). But I never use it. Getting gift cards that I know I can use is a much better perk in my book.
But today, I happened to log on and see if there was a ticket to Hartford, CT in August so my husband could fly to the wedding of a childhood friend. The wedding is a must attend and I’ve nervously watched the price tag rise in the past couple of months climb from around $380 to a whopping $785 today.
So I was amazed to find a Worldperks ticket for him to use. I’d say 25,000 miles for a $785 ticket is a great value.
My colleague Liz Fedor, who covers airlines, wrote a story last week about frequent flier miles. And research she included in the story shows that while it’s not always easy to find a flight, there are some out there.
Jay Sorensen, who runs Wisconsin-based IdeaWorks, had heard plenty of anecdotes from people who couldn’t book the trips they wanted using miles. So his company made 5,000 booking queries to assess the seat availability for reward tickets on eight large airlines.
He found that a family of four traveling in the summer could book tickets to key markets more than 46 percent of the time. A couple flying outside the summer season could book reward tickets on American, Alaska, United and Southwest more than 96 percent of the time.
Matt may have to buy his own pop, pay for extra bags and check himself in, but at least he’ll be on that plane.
6 Responses to "Did I really just book a frequent flier ticket?"
My wife and I were able to use Northwest miles (25k each) for two free flights to Big Sky, Montana in late February of this year. The only catch was that we had to fly out late on a Thursday night and return on the 6:00 am Monday morning flight leaving Bozeman. It was well worth it if you can deal with the inconvenient times.
Maybe I’m odd, but have never had to use double miles for any of my trips. In the past 3 years - 1 ticket to Newark, 2 to Phoenix, 2 to Denver, 2 to Jamaica, (granted the Jamaica trip cost me an extra 15k miles since I had to go first class… bummer for me). I’ve only had to be slightly flexible in my plans by 1 day or so. Maybe the ball will drop and my luck will change, but I’ve saved a significant amount of money when I compare the annual fee for my worldperks card.
My very generous parents just used their FF miles to gift my fiance and I two RT tickets flying into Rome from MSP (one stop) and back to MSP from Paris (nonstop). INCREDIBLE! I cannot believe how lucky we got. Glad to hear you did, too.
Yes - it’s possible and glad you found the ticket. Sometimes a compromise is necessary - like going MSP>DTW>CDG instead of non-stop to get the ticket @ lower miles.
25K for 785 ticket is a good bargain - we don’t use miles for tickes < 400 or so.
Never had problems booking free tickets. Usually better to call, and be nice.
Now one trip to Asia routed me thru Europe, where I had a nice enough layover to get out and see the city. Probably annoying for some, excellent for me.
I was pleasently surprised to get two tickets to Paris and back in the fall for the dates of my choice without having to use double miles.
I’ve had trouble finding seats when dates were firm in the past. I’ve almost always had to use double miles.
