point fu

As I've mentioned before , in spring you can often find great deals Business Class fares for summer travel to Europe. Some years, like last year , they're harder to find, but I just now snagged a June round trip from New York to Berlin on Scandinavian for $2200 . It's a one-stop itinerary via Oslo, with the long leg in their new(ish) lie-flat seat on an A330. I bought directly from SAS's website using my Amex Gold card for the 3x airfare bonus. SAS lie-flat Business Class $2200 isn't a great fare, but it's definitely a good one . The rest of the year these flights are usually in the high $3000s. With all of the recent mileage devaluations, this flight would have set me back 140,000 United miles. Using the mileage math , that comes out to 1.6¢ per mile when the flight is $2200. Since I'm always aiming for 2¢ a point at the bare minimum , doing this with miles didn't make sense. Furthermore, I'll earn nearly 20,000 miles for this flight (s...

We had a family emergency last week and had to find a flight to Seattle from New York City in a big hurry. We all know that as the flights fill up, the prices go up. But I'd forgotten that if you're buying TWO (or more) seats, they're both billed at the price of the most expensive seat .  ( FYI the flights were so full because the airlines had already issued a weather-related travel waiver for Saturday - meaning that lots of people were trying to leave a day early )   TIP 1: Sometimes it's cheaper to book two separate tickets! In my specific example: if I searched for two seats, they were $1800 each. But when I changed the search to just one seat (on the very same flight), the price dropped to $718. Once we purchased that seat, the other seat (the last one one the plane) jumped up to $1800. Now at $1800 all kinds of terrible domestic point rewards start to make financial sense. What I ended up with was a 3¢ per point redemption (60,000 points) – not great but ...