Category: Airlines

Introduction

Reader Ryan reached out to me and asked if I had any thoughts on how to book a flight for the same day that might be cancelled. I loved this question, because it’s exactly the kind of out of the box thinking that makes some travel hackers extremely successful.

Why did Ryan want to do this? The short answer is that airlines that cancel flights are, in most circumstances, obligated to give you a refund for a cancelled flight if you ask, and for other instances you can get a newly issued travel voucher with a new expiration date far out in the future. So, it’s a nice hack for extending an expiring voucher.

Finding Flights Likely To Be Cancelled

Over the 2021 holiday season, it seems like you’ve got about a one in five shot of having your flight cancelled without doing anything special, but normally that’s not the case. You can still tilt the odds in your favor though. To find flights that are likely to be cancelled:

  1. Check Flightaware’s misery map for the top three miserable airports
  2. Check the FAA’s national air status map for the top three airports experiencing traffic management issues
  3. Combine the above to come up with a route that passes through at least two of those airports, and even better a connecting flight in a third

When I looked for Ryan yesterday, Seattle (#1), Denver (#2), and Atlanta (#3) were having major issues, and Ryan’s expiring voucher was on Southwest. With Denver and Atlanta being Southwest hubs, I guessed the best option would have been either: SEA-DEN or DEN-ATL; but even better yet: SEA-ATL-DEN or SEA-DEN-ATL.

By the way, if you really want to tilt the odds in your favor, see where each individual flight is coming from on Flightaware and book one that’s already delayed or cancelled upstream. I didn’t do this yesterday though because I was in a hurry.

How’d That Work Out?

Let’s see how I did:

  • SEA-DEN: Southwest had six scheduled flights, none were cancelled, five were delayed
  • SEA-ATL: Turns out this route doesn’t exist
  • DEN-ATL: Southwest had four scheduled flights, none were cancelled, two were delayed

Ok, so I failed — but only a little:

  • SEA-DEN: All but one of the flights was delayed over an hour
  • DEN-ATL: Both delayed flights were over an hour delayed (or seemed to be as of this writing)

Alright, so if Ryan followed my advice, he’d still have a 5/6 shot of the first leg being delayed by at least an hour and a 1/2 shot of his second flight being delayed by at least an hour. There’s also decent chance misconnect in Denver. With an hour plus delay, calling Southwest is likely to get you at least a refund to a new travel voucher with a year later expiration, and it’s less likely but still possible that you could get a full refund. So, Ryan would have been in good shape even though we didn’t find the cancelled flight he was looking for.

Conclusion

If you have an expiring travel voucher, try and find a flight likely to be cancelled and book it. It could go well for you. Your odds will definitely be better than inflation dropping below 3% in 2022.

It turns out that planting a rabbit on your flight won’t cause it to be cancelled; he’ll just get an upgrade while you’re #1 on the list sitting in economy muttering to yourself and watching him from afar.

I noticed it’s busy out this week, anyone know why? Anyway:

1. You may remember that Chase gave a year of DashPass to cardholders starting in January 2021, and for many of you that year is almost up. You can get another year as long as you do the following before January 1, 2022:

  • Deactivate your DashPass membership
  • Remove all your Chase cards from DoorDash (I had to do this from the website, I couldn’t figure out how in the app)
  • Wait one day
  • Add a new (different from the one you used in January) Chase card to DoorDash

(Thanks to Viper3773)

2. A helpful tip courtesy of discussion at Flyertalk, and it’s definitely applicable to some of the fares I’ve already booked — in today’s pandemic-era airline environment:

  • Almost all fares are changeable with no fee
  • Almost all fares can be cancelled and held as expiring travel vouchers
  • Paying for a First Class upgrade with cash or miles has gotten more expensive

So, if you’re considering paying for a seat up front with a ticket you’ve already booked, check the original cost of the ticket paired with the cost of an upgrade and compare that to the cost of a new ticket booked directly into First Class. If it’s cheaper to book directly (right now it usually is), cancel your existing ticket, take the voucher, then use the funds to book into a proper First Class fare.

3. VanillaGift.com has fee-free e-gift cards through this evening with code EGIFT2021. I’m praying to the holiday gods that this one sticks around post expiration exactly the way that FLASH2021 didn’t, though being e-gift cards makes these slightly less useful so my prayer voice is more of a whisper.

4. SoFi is giving $20 for checking your interest rate on a personal loan, and it only requires a soft-credit pull. It took me about 60 seconds to run through the motions, but a SoFi rep called my voicemail twice afterword so keep that in mind. By the way, this deal barely made the cut I’m still trying to figure out exactly where that line is ($20 for one minute is above the line, but the phone calls almost pulled it below).

Happy holidays to you and your families!

Pictured: American Airlines’ First Class “holiday ham cake”, which thanks to this post, you can get for even less.

You’ve got just a little over a week and a half before “reset to factory defaults” happens on just about everything we do. Set aside a bit of time to take care of the following this week:

1. Spend any American Express credits in Uber Eats or Uber, and remember that your December Uber Wallet size is quite a bit bigger than other months when Platinum cards are involved.

2. Check for any annual fees that posted and call the bank for a retention offer, or just chat online if the bank is American Express. Some sample phraseology: “I’m thinking of closing this card because of its high annual fee, but before I decide what to do I was wondering if there are any retention offers or spend bonuses.” If you get an offer, don’t forget to add: “Are there any other offers available?” Sometimes there are better offers if you keep asking.

American Express specific note: If you accept a retention offer, plan on keeping that card for 12-13 months to avoid getting popups that deny credit card bonuses in the future

3. If you have an American Express co-branded personal card (Marriott, Delta, Hilton), make sure you’ve attached the dining offer to your card and spend it soon. The easiest way to do this from home is to buy an exact value Amazon Meals gift card on Fluz. As always, find a Fluz referral from a friend to make their day if you don’t have an account already, they’ll earn something and so will you.

3. Spend any American Express co-branded business card wireless credits by tomorrow night, but make sure you’ve added the offer to your cards first. Don’t forget that American Express Business Platinum cards have a $10 monthly credit too, just make sure you’ve activated it on your benefits page.

4. Make sure you’ve spent any $10 American Express Personal Gold dining credits. My go to is the local coffee shop for a coffee and a crepe which jumps just north of $10 on GrubHub. Buying physical gift cards at a ShakeShack is another option.

5. Cancel any cell phone burner accounts that you’re done with (and for which you didn’t use a virtual credit card number that already expired).

6. Finish off any Q4 5x bonused spend on Chase Freedom cards, Discover IT cards, US Bank Cash+ cards, Citi Custom Cash cards, or similar.

7. Book any American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts (or The Hotel Collection) stays with your $200 Platinum credit for upcoming travel next year, even if it’s speculative. Historically American Express’s systems lose their memory after the calendar rolls, so keep that in mind.

8. Use your Chase Sapphire Reserve $300 travel credit, and remember that it works on groceries this year too.

9. Use your American Express Platinum $200 airline incidental credit, Chase Ritz Carlton $300 airline incidental credit, or PenFed PathFinder $100 airline incidental credit. United TravelBank is a great way to do this. On the American Express card, make sure you’ve selected an airline first. By the way, you can change your airline selection at any time as long as you haven’t yet used any during this calendar year, just call or chat with AmEx.

10. Use any American Express Sak’s $50 credits, but make sure you activate the benefit first. I personally make sure and stop by a physical Sak’s store and buy gift cards to resell at approximately 83% of face value, but if that’s not a good option for you, Agile.Travel put together a nice list of options for things to buy.

11. It’s time for some shenanigans with American Express Clear credits (yes, there are options) so burn those or gift them to a friend. Side note: Soon, it looks like you’ll be able to buy Clear gift cards for resale.

12. Check for any credit card spend bonuses that you may want to hit before the end of the year, like:

  • World of Hyatt Visa free night certificate after $15,000 spend
  • American Express Hilton Surpass and Honors Business free night certificate after $15,000 spend
  • American Express Hilton Aspire second free night certificate after $60,000 spend
  • American Express Delta Platinum MQM boosts after $25,000 and $50,000 spend
  • American Express Delta Reserve MQM boosts after $30,000, $60,000, $90,000, and $120,000 spend
  • British Airways Visa companion ticket after $50,000 spend
  • JetBlue Visa Mosaic status after $50,000 spend

Good luck out there.

The American Express master control panel. They’ve made great use of the turbo button for all of 2021, but a tech earning $12 / hour will push the reset button at 11:59 PM EST on December 31 so be ready.

Do this now: Register for Hilton’s Q1 Promotion for 2,500 bonus points per stay from January 1 through May 1.

1. The PenFed Pathfinder Visa credit card has a new targeted offer for a $150 statement credit for adding an authorized user by December 31.

What’s that? You haven’t heard of this card before? Well, I’m not terribly surprised. The card hasn’t exactly achieved Unsung Hero status, but still probably worth your attention because:

  • The card has effectively a $425 sign-up bonus (50,000 points at 0.85 cents each)
  • The card gives a $100 airline incidental credit every year
  • The card has effectively no-annual fee (the $95 annual-fee is waived every year as long as you have a free PenFed Access America checking account)
  • The card has offered multiple spending bonuses this year (like $50 back after spending $500)
  • The card is churnable
  • You can hold multiple Pathfinder cards simultaneously

Everyone can join PenFed for $5, and PenFed is an excellent target for shenanigans.

2. The HMBradley 3.0% APR bank account is going to require that you hold the HMBradley credit card to continue to qualify for 3.0% APR on up to $100,000 starting on February 1, 2022. (Thanks to chooseyourusername17)

As an alternative high-yield option, you may want to consider a Series I Savings Bond, which will pay at minimum of about 3.56% APR, and probably quite a bit more. Free-quent Flyer has posted an excellent in-depth article with more information.

3. Check your Marriott Bonvoy account for new targeted promotions. There have been multiple reports of earning opportunities for free-night certificates, like this one.

4. Get ready to plan your summer travel because the next Southwest Airlines schedule extension is expected today and it will cover most summer travel, with an extension through September 5. There are two reasons this is interesting:

  • On many routes, the cheapest fares sell-out quickly, so booking early will typically get the best price
  • Southwest will probably tweak their schedule for far-away flights and let you change to any other flight on the same route ± two weeks for no-additional charge; so book the cheapest flight you can find in that window and wait for a likely schedule change to switch to the flight you want

Good luck out there.

Sample path available to PathFinder Visa cardholders (and non-PathFinder Visa cardholders too, but they have less fun.)

1. Southwest has 20% off of fares to or from Hawaii for travel between March 11 and May 12 of next year, which includes Spring Break for most of the US, use promo-code HAWAIISALE.

2. Yesterday’s deal with SimplyMiles turned out to be a giant disaster after all, because of course it did when AA was involved. The gist:

  • They took the site down yesterday morning (it was timing out on all requests)
  • They site came back and they put a banner up saying that only purchases before a (probably incorrect) time were honored
  • They removed the banner all-together
  • They messaged that they’re “working with Mastercard” to everyone who wrote in and asked about status

First, I’m terribly sorry if I got you involved in this deal and it ends up wasting your time. Second, I hope it works out for you whether or not you end up wasting time. And because you didn’t ask, here’s my prediction for how this will go:

Usually, ill-conceived promotions turn into flaming meteors that crash into full dumpsters outside of a liquor store — so, I guess that.

3. One of my absolute favorite long-term deals of the last year was fee-free Vanilla Visa gift cards at vanillagift.com because:

  • Vanilla Visa gift cards work in quite a few more places than Metabank/BHN Visa gift cards
  • Vanillagift.com continues to work well with American Express cards (unlike simon.com)
  • The “flash sale” ended up lasting over five months even though it was supposed to be just a couple of days

Well, rejoice (maybe) because that flash sale is back for 2021 using the code FLASH2021. The code was just announced yesterday and as of this writing is supposed to expire yesterday, but I have high hopes that it won’t actually expire. Give the code a shot today, and keep it in your back-pocket because it’s possible that it will continue to work well into 2022.

A dumpster outside of a liquor store waiting for the next fiery AA promotion to come crashing down.

Hello friends! Let’s start the week off right with a few quick hits and a few big deals:

1. Here’s an updated link for the Delta Platinum 7,500 miles authorized user bonus from last Thursday, give this one a shot in case the other one didn’t work for you.

2. A follow-up from a week ago: my application for the US Bank Business Triple Cash card was approved with a ginormous credit line. How I’m going to play it: Hit the minimum spend to earn $500, lower all of my US Bank credit lines, then apply for three or four more of these before the offer goes away.

3. Rakuten’s card-linked cash back program has added BestBuy, Walmart, Gamestop, and Walgreens cash back at 5%, which blows the Staples 2.5% that we discussed in early December out of the water. Each of these stores sells one or more valuable gift cards, and each of them will let you buy those gift cards with a credit card (like perhaps an Amex that has an 99 employee card for 1.8 million points offer and a +4x offer attached?) Just don’t forget to link your cards to Rakuten and click “Link Offer” in your account.

The last time Rakuten had great partners with their card linked program it all went well for a while until they shut down a few accounts doing major volume in gift card purchases. So, add a kombucha, a banana, and a usb cable to your purchase to mask what you’re doing. At 5% cash-back, you can afford to treat yourself to America’s favorite fruit.

4. I think that Staples has had more weeks with a gift card sale going than weeks without one in 2021. Maybe next year I’ll post only if they’re not running a promo to save everyone time. That said, it isn’t next year yet, so… Staples is having a $200 fee-free sale on Visa gift cards issued by Metabank running through Saturday, limit five per transaction. (Thanks to GC Galore)

Liquidation? Try bill-pay services and try grocery stores that aren’t Kroger or Safeway/Albertsons; also, maybe look at the Western Union agent locator. Remember, the velociraptors in the documentary Jurassic Park found weaknesses in the electric fence that separated them from the money order terminals by probing. Be a velociraptor.

5. American Express has a 20% transfer bonus to Singapore Krisflyer, and Gary pointed out that this stacks with a promotion that Singapore Airlines is running through the end of February for Star Alliance Gold status. I’m calling this out because if you fly United a lot, and I mean a lot, and if you want to redeem a Singapore award for you and P2 (and maybe P3+) in the next couple of months you could get a ton of value because Star Alliance gold status through Singapore will get you into United Clubs when flying United Airlines (and a free checked bag, but if you’re flying United a lot then they’ve already lost your bag so you don’t have one to check, and you didn’t have to pay for them to lose it thanks to your status).

Just do this one on or after January 1 so that you’ve got effectively 25 months of club access (through February 2024).

The victory scene in Jurassic Park when the velociraptors successfully buy a money order.

I book a bunch of trips every month (fun fact: I cancel about 40-50% of them), and as a result I’ve developed a playbook for how to handle flights as departure nears. And by using the playbook I’m able to get around most delays as long as there’s more than a single option for flights. I’m also usually able to do that without waiting in any lines at the airport or gate, and without sitting in the airport watching rolling delays.

To wit: Yesterday my original flight was delayed by a little over two hours because the aircraft was passing through SLC earlier in the day, and SLC had a big winter-storm at the same time. The delay for my flight didn’t post until about 15 minutes before boarding. But, I knew it was going to happen hours prior and I already had a backup plan. I wanted to write up my game-day playbook to give you ideas for doing the same in the future so let’s dive in eh?

About 12 hours before departure:

  • Check the FAA Delay Map for a quick view on any airports that aren’t operating at, err, peak-efficiency
  • Check flightaware for the booked flight
  • Figure out where the aircraft is coming from
  • Click “track inbound flight” repeatedly until I see all the aircraft’s prior flights to its inbound flight, and I also note the time on the ground between flights for each airport the aircraft will stop at (anything less than 45 minutes is almost certainly an airline pipe dream, and you can assume that those legs will be delayed)
  • Set alerts in the airline’s app or in flightaware for the flight and for the inbound flight

Once I know where the bad airports are and I know all the routes my inbound aircraft is flying before getting to me, I’ll have a good sense for whether or not my flight will be delayed due to weather, congestion, airport closures, or other external factors (of course mechanical issues, dented aircraft, San Francisco fog, or any other number of things could delay the flight too — but those things are harder to predict).

If my flight is going to pass through an airport on the delay map or if it has a bunch of overly optimistic 20 minute turns (I’m looking at you, United Express), I’ll proactively call the airline and ask nicely to switch to an alternative flight with a better chance of going out (side note: I use ITA Matrix with forced carriers to find alternatives that may not appear on the airline’s own site.) At 12 hours out, getting another routing is easier than you probably think it is — often just saying “the plane is flying through Newark in a few hours and Newark has major delays, could I switch?” is enough to get the alternative routing you want.

About 2 hours before departure:

Again, I’m at a decision point: if anything looks sketchy, I may want to jump to my own backup booking or rebook on an alternative flight on the same airline. The two hour mark here is key because alternative flights probably haven’t filled up, none of them are likely to be under gate-control, and other non-avgeek passengers on your flight haven’t done anything proactively yet. This is also the point where if you call the airline it’s very easy to switch to another flight by mentioning issues with the inbound aircraft, even if they haven’t posted in the airline’s system. (Side note: New ticketing while a flight is under gate-control is something I don’t wish on my worst enemy, it’s like another layer of hell.)

Boarding time

The first thing to check when boarding time hits is whether or not the aircraft is at the gate. If it’s not, you’re probably going to be delayed and it may be again time to jump to flightaware to see where the aircraft is. (Hopefully it’s not diverted to Lubbock, TX, which has happened to me twice. Thanks United Airlines.)

Most US airlines board 5-10 minutes later than the boarding time printed on the boarding pass or at the podium, but it’s very rare for the airline to start boarding any later than those 10 minutes unless something is going on. If 15 minutes have passed from the posted boarding time and no one is getting on, it’s time to investigate: Is the aircraft door open? Is the gate door open? Is anyone walking around the aircraft? Is luggage being loaded? Is there someone with a maintenance vest wandering around?

If anything looks fishy, it’s time to explore alternatives on the current airline and other airlines, so if/when a delay posts I already know what I want to do and what’s available. If I think the airline is going to have a long hold-time or wait at the lounge/customer service desk, I may dial-in or line-up to get myself in the queue at this point too.

Once on-board

The last thing I do once I’m on-board is cancel any backup flights that I may have booked. Trying to do anything else with your itinerary is basically out of your hands at that point, so, the only thing left to do is to get annoyed when you’re approaching your destination and the flight attendant announces “ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been cleared to land so please […]”. Why should you be annoyed by that? Well, I absolutely, positively guarantee that you haven’t been cleared to land — that happens within 3-5 miles of the airport, or the last two minutes or so of the flight. The more you know.

Happy weekend travel hackers!

This is what came up in image search for “layers of hell”. I can’t say I understand why that happened, but it’s demonstrably correct.

Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s Q1 2022 Bonus Promotion (2,022 bonus points per night for everyone and another 1,000 per stay if you’re a credit card holder and stay in certain cities for stays between January 15 and April 20).

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s jump into todays points:

1. American Express sent me a link for 7,500 SkyMiles for adding an authorized user to personal Delta Platinum card and spending $500 on the user’s card in six months. If you have a Delta Platinum card, try your luck here.

2. Reader Pavel let me know that Turkish airlines is holding a 30% off sale on both business class and economy tickets booked by the end of the year for travel from now through May 15, 2022. This is a great deal, but there are a few gotchas:

  • Turkish awards can be difficult to book, especially for the first time on a frequent flyer account
  • The award sale is only valid on Turkish metal, so no United or other Star Alliance flights can be tacked on
  • Mixed cabin awards mostly aren’t allowed

Booking tips can be found in Frequent Miler’s Turkish guide.

3. Reader Pavish shared that his local Sam’s Club is now selling $50-$500 variable Vanilla Visa and Mastercard gift cards. There are reports of the same thing in other locations too, so it could be worth checking your local club. The activation fee on these is low at $4.88, and unlike Metabanks, Vanilla cards work well in almost all liquidation channels. My first question is: Can I use a Walmart or Sam’s Club gift card to purchase these? I honestly don’t know the answer, but it’s worth exploring.

Good luck out there.

Thursday Triple, if Thursday was a water polo player.