I love the times that playing this game works so perfectly. It just happened for me. Let me tell you about the flights I just booked.
Remember, I recently had Rob take advantage of the offer for 50,000 United MileagePlus Miles by getting the Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Visa. He met the minimum spend of $3,000 and the 50,000 miles were just deposited into his United MileagePlus account.
In and out the miles go…
I just used the miles to get Rob a flight over MLK weekend for a trip to Beaver Creek with Daniel. The flight connects through Denver on the way there. The return is a direct flight out of Vail. (The direct flight going to Vail was too early for Rob and Daniel). The amount of miles I redeemed for this flight was 50,000 United MileagePlus miles. This flight, had I paid, would have cost $1551.70!!!
A few things to note…
One, Rob only had enough miles in his account to book his ticket. I used miles from my account to book Daniel’s ticket. I then had to call United so they could note on Daniel’s reservation that he was traveling with his Dad under a different reservation. We’ll see how that all works out. 🙂
Two, I have been eyeing these flights for about a month now, ever since I knew that Rob was going to have these bonus miles deposited into his account. I just looked last week and the redemption amount was 100,000 miles. When I looked this morning, they were a mere 50,000 miles in comparison. Further evidence that you need to be relentless in searching for rewards you want.
Three, 50,000 miles is on the higher end of a redemption but these flights are into Vail/Eagle (versus Denver which is then still a 2+hour drive to Vail) We have traveled many times to Vail over these last few years and redemptions are always around 40,000 to 50,000 miles. (Last year I got flights on American for 40,000 miles per flight).
Four, I saved $ $3,100 using miles on these flights! Miles of which 50,000 of them we got for basically doing nothing except spending what we normally would anyway to get a bonus. The game worked perfectly here!