The Flight to Spain and the First Night in Sevilla

Traveling to Spain

Since we would be spending a lot of time in airports, I splurged on a pair of Admirals Club passes

bought on Ebay for $35.  Each is good for 1 person plus kids, for as many airports as you will be visiting that day.  American Airlines sells them at the door for $50 per pass.  In retrospect, I don't think I would pay more than $5 for the privilege of sitting in an Admirals Club unless I were by myself and had work to do.  We almost missed one flight, and the time when we were stuck hours at the airport, we had to be at the gate because we didn't know when our flight was leaving.

Disneyland too expensive? Spain may be a better option.

Dearest Internet,

After an extended period of introspection and apathy, I write you from a small but lovely apartment in Seville, Andalucia, Spain.  If you don't want to read the details, skip to The Finagle, below.  Details on our trip will be added as I write them.

Start Spreading the News: Part 1 - Heading East

Introduction
Part 1:  This Page
Part 2:  Connecticut to New York


Our flight was Saturday morning from San Francisco, 90 miles from our house, to Newark.  We looked into a "park and stay" deal at several of the SFO airport hotels, since I was out of points.  It would have cost about $170 for the week.  Not terrible but it's above the $50 threshold that warrants further research.

We had asked my aunt who lives in the Bay Area if we could stay there and if she could drive us to the airport, and she happily obliged. 

Left Friday evening after I got home from work to head out to the Bay.  Stopped at our favorite sushi restaurant for dinner, got to our aunt's house, and everything went as planned.  She even was willing to drop us off and pick us up, saving about $65 in parking fees and an hour on each side of the trip.

Start Spreading the News: Introduction

After a very busy few months at work, interspersed with a maniacal frenzy of frequent flier booking, it was at long last my daughter's school's spring break, which means we were officially on vacation.

The Goal

This trip is the next in our quest to have as much fun as we can on a relatively modest budget, within the limits of my family's patience.  In this case, we are spending one night in Connecticut, four nights in New York City, and two nights in Boston.

Most if not all people I know who consider themselves frugal enjoy one or more particular splurge.  We are no exception.  In fact, frugal might be the wrong word entirely.  More to the point, we spend money on things that are important to us, and in particular, that we can't get for free or nearly so.  Otherwise, if it can be scrounged, it will be scrounged, and unapologetically so.

Get your 100,000 AA miles before it's too late

Update:  It's too late.  But there are plenty of other good deals to be had.

With the new AA - US Airways merger officially announced today, I'm handicapping the over/under of the termination of the legendary "two browser trick," which still gets you 100,000 miles on AA per person, to occur within about a month.  (50,000 miles for each of two cards)  But it could be anytime, maybe tomorrow, maybe it already happened.  To be honest, I'm surprised it didn't happen as soon as the loophole was exploited about three years ago.  In any case, it's worth trying even if you only get one of the 50k cards.

The new CEO will be very focused on cost cutting and this is surely one of the first loopholes to be closed.  So if you are considering taking the deal that has enabled me and countless other scavengers to rack up way more frequent flier miles than we ever thought possible, do it now.

I believe that the 2 cards applied for simultaneously will show up on your credit score as a single credit hit, about a 3-point decrease in the score, although I am not certain of this.  Conventional wisdom is that you need a credit score of at least 700 to qualify and my personal experience is that you can't have applied for a lot of other credit cards recently.

You and a spouse have separate credit scores and can each apply separately, and each get 100,000 points this way.  If you give

Daraius explains the procedure eloquently and answers many questions about it.  Be sure to follow the directions very carefully, or you might not get both cards.  Click Here for instructions on millionmilesecrets.com!

Here is what you could do with 100,000 miles on AA:

• Four 1-way tickets to/from Japan offpeak
• Five 1-way tickets to/from Europe offpeak
• Five 1-way tickets to/from South America offpeak

Or half as many if you fly first or business class, or slightly fewer trips if you fly in the summer.  

And if you are very resourceful and patient and live in certain places, you could bundle each of the above trips with another domestic one-way trip, for only the cost of the TSA fee ($2.50 per segment).  Or you could hire a professional to help you.

Of course, it is possible (albeit unlikely, given the number of sharps floating around) that AA somehow makes money off the 2-browser trick, in which case expect to see it there until kingdom come.

Note: this may not be a good idea for you if you are in the middle of applying for a mortgage (or if you plan to apply for one soon and your credit score is marginal) and/or if you have a difficult time paying off your credit card balance every month.

Good luck and enjoy the miles.

Extreme Booking: A True Story of Trip Planning with Frequent Flier Points - Part 3

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3: Below

I'm not going to recap the story up to this point, since it's way too complicated to summarize in a few sentences.  Instead, I encourage you to read parts 1 and 2 sequentially before you read this.

Plan C

By the last week of December 2012, the long-awaited miles from the new credit card bonus had posted to my AA account, but the seats to Japan that we wanted for the spring were no longer available.  However, at this later date, I realized we could book for the following Thanksgiving, using AA points on Alaska Airlines, but not yet on American.  Alaska seems to be available about 330 days ahead, in accordance with AA rules, but AA's own seats seem to show up in the booking engine about a week later.  I called my sister, on vacation in Hawaii.  We invited ourselves to her house in Phoenix for Thanksgiving 2013, and decided on the following:

Extreme Booking: A True Story of Trip Planning with Frequent Flier Points - Part 2

Part 1
Part 2: Below
Part 3

Previously on Bottom-Feeding the High Life:

Wife and kids have ticketed reservations from SMF to TUS using BA points (9,000 points + $9 each).  They also have unticketed TUS to San Jose, and SFO to Tokyo HND, and HND to SFO, and SFO to New York. TUS-SFO-HND was 25,000 miles + $45 per person; HND-SFO-JFK was another 25,000 miles + $32 per person, or thereabouts.

I had the same reservations (except for the SMF to TUS and TUS to SFO parts). 

Some of the reservations were to expire Friday, but I was still waiting for my new AA Citicard bonus points that I needed to execute the transaction.  I had enough charges on my billing statement, which closed on Tuesday, and I needed the bonus points to show up within 3 days of the statement closing.  The reservation home was to expire at midnight Friday, Japan Standard Time.

We already knew that.  So what happened?

Extreme Booking: A True Story of Trip Planning with Frequent Flier Points - Part 1

Frequent flier points are generally not easy to use, given that the "saver" seats you can use to fly with mileage points are typically extremely scarce on most flights.  You can easily find "anytime" seats which require twice as many points, but this is a big waste of points and it is seldom better than paying cash, so I don't really count that as using miles.  For someone with a day job, such as myself, and anyone with kids who attend school on a specified schedule, it is that much more complicated, as it is when a family of four wants to travel together on an impacted routing.  And the reality is, pretty much all flights, or at least some flights on just about any routing, are impacted.

This is the very true story of the planning of such a routing.

The Big Finagle Part 3: Getting Just Beyond the Limits

This is the third in a multi-part series on getting the most of your frequent flier points for those just looking to get there in coach, and not particularly concerned about flying business or first class.

Part 1:  Award chart sweet spots
Part 2:  Using the Stopover to Bundle Trips
Part 3:  This Page

Today's topic is mixing airlines to get places that cost way too much on the airline on which you have most of your points.  If you recently found yourself with more frequent flier points than you had ever expected to accumulate, thanks to the two-browser AA trick, you can go a lot of different places with your miles.   As I pointed out in Part 1 of this series, you can get pretty far on not many miles, as long as you use them judiciously.  However, in addition to sweet spots, the award chart also has a few sour spots.  Not that there is anything sour about those places - I'm sure many of them are wonderful - but it costs an awful lot of miles to get to some of them that aren't much farther than another place which requires many fewer miles.

In particular, the Middle East is grouped with India and Central Asia at 45,000 miles each way.  This seems ridiculous - 90,000 miles round trip to get to some places that are really no farther than some places in Europe.  Similarly, North Africa requires a 75,000 mile round trip.



This is when it helps to have frequent flier miles on more than one airline.  With that and a little creativity, and a whole lot of patience (both booking and traveling), you can reduce the number of miles you need substantially.  Alternatively, you can look for low-fare airlines to get you over the last hump, as explained below.

In particular, the British Airways Executive Club program awards miles based on distance, rather than general continent-to-continent awards as American Airlines does.  You can get a BA credit card with 50,000 bonus points.  These can be advantageous when traveling between two continents that are geographically close.  Also, you can avoid the BA transatlantic fuel surcharges by using your AA miles for that part, and/or use BA miles (or "avios" as they call them - whatever) to fly One World partner airlines.

The caveat, of course, is that you have to do a lot of finagling.  You may also be subject to various departure taxes, etc.

There is an easy-to-use tool to figure out where your BA miles can fly you on these nonstop short routes, and it is here.

Hawaii

The no-longer-secret about BA Avio miles is that they can be used for a nonstop between California and Hawaii for 12,500 miles, about 5,000 less than a domestic airline.  You can also use BA miles to fly Alaska Airlines which has many nonstops between California and Hawaii.  

Some more examples of the use of BA miles to Hawaii and other places are discussed in the links at the bottom of this post.

Israel and Jordan

When my kids are a little older, we may take a family trip to Israel around the time of their Bat and Bar Mitzvah ceremonies.  I hope to be able to use frequent flier miles, but I'm pretty sure there is no way I'll be able to accumulate 360,000 miles.  

Granted, this is six years away, and the programs could change completely between now and then, so the exercise is largely academic in my case, but the information may be relevant for others planning to do this sooner. 

U.S. to Israel on 30,000 miles one way (off-peak) or 40,000 miles (peak)

If we can travel offpeak (for Europe- Oct 15 through May 15), we could get to Israel on a total of 30,000 miles per person one way.  This isn't that much less than 45,000 one-way using AA miles, but if going with a family, as many people might travel to Israel, you could save 120,000 miles for a family of four, which could make a big difference.  U.S. home airport (San Francisco) to Dusseldorf on Air Berlin, for 20,000 American Advantage miles, plus 10,000 British Airways Avios miles from Dusseldorf to Tel Aviv, also on Air Berlin.  Alternatively you can take an AA flight to London or Madrid, and then an Iberia or BA flight to Dusseldorf or Berlin, to catch the Air Berlin flight to Tel Aviv while avoiding the BA/Iberia transatlantic fuel surcharges.  

Jordan to U.S. on 24,500 miles one way (off-peak) or 34,500 miles (peak)

One place I'd like to visit on that trip is Petra, Jordan.  If you can fly home from Amman, Jordan - and honestly, that may not be so practical, I haven't really researched this trip in much detail - but supposing you are traveling solo and don't mind hoofing it a bit, you can fly back from Amman on Royal Jordanian which is a One World partner airline, as are BA, Iberia, Air Berlin, and AA.  If you didn't mind making an extra stop, you theoretically could fly from Amman to Lanarca, Cyprus for 4,500 BA Avios miles and then get from Cyprus to the U.S. on a 20,000 mile ticket, using a combination of AA, BA, Air Berlin, and Iberia.

U.S. to Istanbul on 20,000 miles one way (off-peak) or 30,000 miles (peak), plus taxes, plus Pegasus Airlines from Istanbul to Tel Aviv for about US$75

Pegasus Airlines is a discount carrier that, as of this writing, is offering a promotion for their new Istanbul-Tel Aviv routing for $70 round trip plus a $5 check-in fee.  Your experience may vary.  In any case, you can use aa.com to book your flight using BA and AA all the way to Istanbul, which itself is a destination that you can enjoy for a few days, and then hightail it to Tel Aviv in time for Shabbat dinner.  Note that this is a budget airline that seems to charge extra for everything, in the vein of Allegiant, Spirit, Ryan, etc, including seat assignments.  However they do seem to allow one item of luggage at no additional charge, up to 20 kg (44 lb).  Also, like many low-cost carriers, they use an alternative airport, Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen Airport (SAW), so you will need to figure out how to transfer from IST.  And they only allow booking five months in advance, so if you are planning a big trip a year out on AA and partners, this segment will have to wait.

Other interesting routes 

To make the most of BA Avio miles, you need to think about the various partners and all of the places that are within a short distance of their hubs.  If the last flight is 2,000 miles or less in actual distance, it will cost 10,000 avio points or fewer.   If it is under 1,150 flight miles, it will cost 7,500 avio points, and if it is under 650 flight miles, it will cost only 4,500 avio points.  In particular, since you can get to the farthest reaches of Europe with relatively few points (particularly off-peak), the Middle East is a good target for relatively few additional miles.  North African cities relatively close to Spain, such as Morocco, are also good candidates, since you can get from Madrid to Casablanca for 4,500 Avio miles.  You are constrained by the flights of OneWorld partners, and these low-mileage flights need to be nonstops.  

Alternatively, you could get as far as you can and try to get a cheap flight on a discount carrier, as suggested above from Istanbul to Tel Aviv.  This could also be a good way to get to places like Egypt, Tunisia, etc.

I was trying to find a route into China for less than the boilerplate 35,000 miles but so far I haven't found one.  It's too far from Japan for a low-mile routing on JAL, and there are no nonstops on any OneWorld partner airlines between China and Korea that I am aware of.

Can I do this in conjunction with a Stopover to get two trips in one?

Sure, why not?  As long as you can manage all of the rules, of which there are many.  See Parts 1 and 2 for details.  Brag about your success and/or commisserate about your failures in the comments below.

The Big Finagle Part 2: Using the Stopover to Bundle Trips

This is the second in a multi-part series on getting the most of your AA frequent flier points for those just looking to get there in coach, and not particularly concerned about flying business or first class.

Part 1:  Award chart sweet spots
Part 2:  This page


When Daraius interviewed me recently, he asked me what I now know that I wish I had known when I started collecting points and miles.  My response was:

I also only fully understood the power of an AA international stopover only a few weeks before we left for Paris.  Had I realized this when we booked our reservation, we could have looped in one-way tickets to Hawaii on the return end to use later this year.  Doh!  By the time I understood this, the change fees would have made it not worth it.  I was really kicking myself for letting that one slip by.

I've gotten multiple questions to explain what I was talking about.  Here is the post some of you seem to be waiting for.  In this post we will attempt to book a one-way flight using a stopover, which is a way to effectively get two separate one-way flights on a single international travel award.

The Big Finagle Part 1: Award Chart Sweet Spots

This is the first in a multi-part series on getting the most of your AA frequent flier points for those just looking to get there in coach, and not particularly concerned about flying business or first class.

Part 1:  This Page
Part 2:  Using the International Stopover to Bundle Trips

If you have ever flown on Southwest or Jet Blue and are reading this, you know what coach feels like and you somehow managed to survive it. Congratulations, you can handle the rough and tumble of life without the constant coddling that those delicate, high-maintenance flowers up front require.  If you are like me, you will use your hardiness to your advantage and save your miles.  (There is one exception to this rule.)

If you are looking to get the most bang for your points buck, the first thing you want to do is look at the award chart and find the "sweet spots".  Since most of us have earned our points through American Airlines AAdvantage program credit card promotions, I will use that as an example, but you could apply the same methodology to any program.

AA.com upgraded

As of this weekend, you can now apparently book Hawaiian and British Airways flights using your aa miles on aa.com.

Saturday 3/17/12: "GOATS"

American Airlines 41: Paris CDG - Chicago O'Hare
Depart 11:20 am, arrive 2:45 pm (local times)
American Airlines 637: Chicago - Los Angeles
Depart 5:10 pm, arrive 7:40 pm (local times)
United Express 6462: Los Angeles - Sacramento
Depart 10:52 pm, arrive 12:15 am

A morning of minor missteps

Took the shuttle from the Hyatt to CDG Terminal 3 and caught the CDG-VAL tram to terminal 2, then walked to Hall 2A (American).  We waited in a LONG line.  About halfway through, we were interviewed by an AA security employee, who said we could have waited in the short line to the right since we had already printed our boarding passes.  Misstep 1!

The area was crowded.  At the same time the Chicago flight was boarding, a flight to Dallas was also boarding, and it was oversold.  They were taking volunteers and offering $800 to switch flights - for people with reservations on the Dallas flight, but not the Chicago flight.  Misstep 2 - should have booked through Dallas!  (couldn't have known 8 months ago though.)

Security confiscated a bottle of kosher wine, some pear jam, and halvah with Arabic writing on the package which we had tried to carry onboard with us.  They said that we could check it, but it wasn't worth the cost of another checked item so we didn't bother.  In retrospect, we should have thought it through.  The 3.5 ounce limit for liquids was not news to us.  Misstep 3!

Friday 3/9/12: Flying to Paris

American flight 118:  Los Angeles to New York (JFK)
American flight 44: JFK to Paris (CDG)

In Los Angeles

Caught 5 am hotel shuttle to LAX.  When we told a woman traveling in the shuttle with us who was in LA on business that we were on our way to Paris, she acted like she just heard that her grandchild had been born, like it was some kind of a miracle, and there was finally some good in the world.

LAX security process was terrible.  First, we were standing in the security line and then were directed by staff to another line about 300 feet away, which turned out to be considerably longer than the line we were originally in.   Next, apparently the boarding passes I had emailed to Nancy to print the night before while she was in the hotel’s business center were mobile boarding passes and were not valid when printed on paper.  So she had to download the pass while we were trying to pass through security but her connection was poor, so it took us about 30 minutes to get through security.

Once we got through security, everything was fine.  The AA/Citibank credit card I had recently acquired gave us two passes to the Admirals’ Club.  When we arrived at the Admiral’s club check-in desk, I asked the clerk if we could re-use the cards at our layover and she said we could, and returned them without filling the cards out.  Inside the Admirals’ Club, everything is quiet and there are free snacks (nothing interesting, some apples, party snack mix, and grocery-grade mini muffins), and coffee and tea service, but more importantly there were lots of places to sit and dock my computer, with wifi, so I was able to wrap up my work for the time being.  We sat there until boarding.

Flight 118

LAX-JFK flight (AA 118) was full, or nearly so, but not oversold.  Skipped the pay-per-chew meal.  Our plan was to keep awake on the first flight, and then take our sleeping pill on the second flight so we could sleep, since we would be arriving in Paris at 6:30 a.m.  This plan largely worked.

At Kennedy Airport

At JFK, we were hungry and thirsty and stopped in the priority club again, but the clerk told us we should go to the Admirals’ club (A.C.) in the International section after she started filling out our cards (rendering them useless beyond that day).  By the time we huffed over to the international A.C., it was already time to board.  Doh!  Had we skipped the A.C. in JFK altogether, we could have used the passes on the return flight.

Since they were admitting several standbys, I waited at the counter about 10 minutes until I had the chance to ask if they were asking for volunteers for denied boarding,  Nancy rolled her eyes, perhaps appropriately, since they weren’t. We boarded having grabbed a handful of pretzels at the Admirals' Club and wishing we had sprung for snacks and more reading material when we had the chance.

Flight 44

Coach in American Airlines was surprisingly not bad.  I was prepared for the worst but I found the service to be warm and sufficient - we are pretty do-it-yourself kinds of people - and the food on international was perfectly edible.  They still serve 2 meals included with the price of admission, and they still offer complimentary wine and beer on international flights (not liquor) so I enjoyed a “Champanito” as I first heard a mini-champagne bottle called when flying to Ecuador in 1997, and since then has been my personal tradition on outbound international flights.  This and the meds, combined with 3 hours sleep the previous night, enabled both of us to sleep about 4-5 hours on the flight, which for me is pretty good.

Flight arrived slightly ahead of schedule.  We waited at least ½ hour for our luggage, but immigration had no wait at all, and as far as I could tell there were no customs inspectors there whatsoever.  We were told to walk to catch the train but when we walked all the way to the station, about 1/2 mile, we were stopped, apparently because someone left an abandoned luggage item at the train station, so we were told to walk around the other way, which we didn’t understand how to do and didn’t want to shlep our luggage another mile around the airport.  We decided to take a cab instead.  While we were in the taxi line, an unlicensed cabbie offered to take us to our hotel, the Holiday Inn Express in the 19th Arrondissement - about as close to the airport as you can be while within Paris proper - for the bargain basement fare of 80 euros.  We passed, and took a regular metered cab.  The fare ended up being 37 euros.  Should have done that in the first place because trains (and the added bonus of shlepping luggage up and down stairs, etc.) would have cost at least 24 euros for the two of us anyway.

The Finagle

The tickets were made possible by the 75k bonus AA citicard (a different one) I ordered last year.  (The 75k offer no longer exists but there are other good offers that still do.)  AA offers round-trip mile Saaver coach seats in the off-season for 40,000 miles plus $98 taxes each.  (For comparison, a summer peak non-capacity-constrained frequent flier ticket may cost 120,000 miles.)  After the tickets were booked and paid for, I later realized an even better finagle – a way to bundle it with a one-way ticket to Hawaii at a later date – but it was too late to change without incurring significant fees that would have offset the upside, and in any case that is a story for another day.

Thursday 3/8/12: SMF-LAX with the kids

Southwest flight 3705: Sacramento to Los Angeles

We left Sacramento in a rush with some work left a little more undone than I had hoped.  First time in the new SMF terminal and was generally impressed, although struck by the amount of relatively vacant space in the check-in area.

Uneventful flight on Southwest to LA. 

Dinner with my parents at the Proud Bird, a classic near LAX airport.  Parents paid.  Thanks, Parents.

Checked into the Candlewood Suites in Hawthorne.  It was the least expensive Priority Club hotel with an airport shuttle to LAX.  Hotel was adequate but the area is pretty sketchy and the pictures on the web site paint a pretty rosy picture.  Room was nice, lobby almost nonexistent.  I probably wouldn’t stay there again unless I am traveling solo, although Nancy is a trooper, and didn’t seem to mind.  Room was booked in advance for about $90/night inclusive, about $10 more than I saw available on hotwire. 

Parents took the kids with them, first night kid-free in over a year.  I was mostly focused on trying to wrap up my work that I had not finished before my vacation, before getting about 3 hours of sleep.