Update: No-Risk Mileage Award Space for American, Delta & United
American, Delta, and United all now have an award waiver in place, meaning it costs nothing to redeposit miles if you make a booking now and change your mind later. Only last month, fees were imposed to do this (albeit low fees). So, depending on your dates (see below), the risk of booking has been lowered.
American Airlines: waived award reinstatement and change fees for awards booked by May 31, 2020, for travel through September 30, 2020.
Delta: already had the waiver in place last month. Delta’s current “travel waiver” is offered for all new bookings until May 31, 2020, including award flights. This means that all fees will be waived for changes or redepositing miles for one year based on the ticket issue date.
United: is waiving all redeposit fees for award ticket cancellations made more than 30 days before departure for the remainder of 2020.
Our No Worries Widget outlines airline policies as well as our opinion on risk, plus pros and cons for each airline. It’s updated daily and reflects the news above.
South Pacific Fare Update
Delta, Qantas, and United are offering 36 to 42% off travel to Australia for Business Class fares from September through March 2021. (Note: This depends, of course, on the ban on foreign visitors to Australia being lifted by September.) This is the only region for which we’re currently seeing a fare drop. In the past, fares have run $6,000 to $8,000 on these major airlines from the U.S. to Australia.
Sample Savings for Business Class: Newark to Melbourne on United costs $4,598 round-trip, compared to the normal fare of between $7,000 and $8,000, that’s a savings of up to $3,402 (42%).
Sample Savings with Amex’s International Airline Program (IAP): You can drop the price even further if you’re a member of the program. New York to Sydney with the IAP discount for Delta is $3,941.
Stopover Loophole Strategy (SLS) to Australia: Delta and United allow a stopover in their hub city on published Business Class fares to Australia. So let’s say you want to travel from New York to Melbourne on United and currently the lowest Business Class fare is $4,598 round-trip. Now, you can make a stopover in San Francisco and the cost will stay the same. So you can fly New York to Melbourne, but stop in San Francisco, and spend a few days exploring the city when it opens up later this year, for no additional cost.
U.S. transcontinental tickets easily cost $1,300 to $1,400, so if you can combine that into a trip to Australia, you’re laughing (as the Aussies say).
Or, to look at it another way: if you’re in New York and going to Los Angeles, you can tack on Sydney for only $2,500!
If you’d like to learn more about this, we’ve written about the SLS a number of times over the last few months:
- FCF’s Secret Portugal Side Hustle: Two European Destinations for the Price of One
- British Airways with a London stopover
- Germany and Switzerland with Lufthansa
- SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines
- SAS, to Vienna, Brussels, and Copenhagen
Alaska Miles On Sale for 1.72 Cents Each
Through May 31, 2020, Alaska Airlines is offering a targeted buy-miles deal for up to a 60% bonus on purchased miles. Prior to this, the biggest bonus you’d typically see was 50%. You’ll have to log into your Mileage Plan account to see your bonus level.
You can purchase up to 150,000 miles per calendar year. Based on a 60% bonus on purchased miles, you could buy 100,000, and receive 160,000 (100,000 + 60,000 bonus) miles at a cost of $2,750, which is just 1.72 cents per mile.
Use those purchased miles on Alaska’s numerous partners: American, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Japan Airlines, Qantas, Singapore, and 11 other carriers—for up to 76% off normal fares. For more information see FCF’s report here.
Who should buy miles? In general, FCF wouldn’t recommend buying miles right now unless you have a planned trip, you don’t have any miles in your account and have played this game before, or you don’t have a credit card that allows you to buy points. But in any case, this is a really good price on Alaska miles.
Opportunity example: Around the world in Business Class for 132,500 miles: Alaska’s awards allow you to book a different partner in each direction and/or to book one-way awards. Plus, Alaska’s awards program is especially high value because it allows one stopover on each one-way ticket.
So, you could fly with Alaska Airline’s partner Cathay Pacific to Johannesburg from the U.S. and get a free stopover in Hong Kong. From there, you could return by flying on their partner British Airways and stopover in London, all for 132,500 miles. For more information see FCF’s report here.
A Bit Of Good News:
