There are a few things to keep on your radar today:
1. Delta is having a flash sale to quite a few international destinations from the US, starting at 10,000 miles round trip. Check Dan’s Deals’ comments section for known routes, or just use the flexible date search with cities like AUA, PTY, SJU, EZE, PLS, CUN, UIO, MIA, and similar from your home airport.
2. Emirates Skywards has an interesting type of promotion that I haven’t seen before: Earn one mile for every minute you spend in Dubai between October 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022, up to 5,000 miles. Register here if you’re traveling to Dubai and note that you’ll have to book a paid ticket on Emirates ticket stock, which means tickets issued by Emirates that start with 176, to be eligible. (Thanks to planesurf on reddit)
3. This isn’t strictly related to manufactured spend or travel hacking, but I know a lot of you went in on the iPhone SE Xfinity deal last year so I’m going to let it slide into the blog for now (believe me I don’t want this blog to turn into a blog that posts about coupons for free bread or about deals on 12-packs of diapers):
Apparently Xfinity has a rewards program and your rewards are based on subscribed services and length of time with Xfinity. I’ve been told that having a Xfinity Mobile plan unlocks better rewards and it certainly did for me. I signed in here, clicked ‘Join’, then had a bunch of awards available to me including a $100 Visa Gift Card (physical). I picked that one and passed on the others which were honestly pretty lame. Hopefully you’ve got something worthwhile too.
And a final, bonus news item to keep track of: TravelBloggerBuzz notes that American Express is starting a new financial advising arm. Anytime new technology and big money come together, you’re likely to find bonuses and manufactured spend opportunities. So keep an eye on this one.
Pictured: The slippery slope of a travel blog posting about non travel hacking related topics.
I’m going off-brand with today’s post, but stick with it, it’ll be worth it I promise.
Introduction
I use ITA Matrix essentially every single time I’m looking at airfares and often for reference when I’m searching for award travel. Not only that, but it’s quite possibly the most powerful tool that exists for an advanced travel hacker when dealing with airline tickets: It’s great for hidden city ticketing, fuel dumps, free one-ways, forced fare buckets, aircraft selection, forced routing through a particular hub, and avoiding married segments to name a few. There’s so much to this tool, and I’m going to make this post the first in a series about ITA Matrix for travel hacking, starting with Delta companion tickets.
There are two types of Delta companion tickets: 1) The domestic Main Cabin variant that you get with the Delta Platinum card, and 2) the domestic Main Cabin, Comfort+, or First Class variant that you get with the Delta Reserve. There’s a lot of nuance to where you can use these tickets, but for the most part just assume that you can use them on any round-trip Delta route within the continental US’s lower 48 states.
Fare Codes
When you purchase airfare or redeem miles, you’re booking into a specific fare class which is potentially different for each and every leg. Delta companion tickets require specific fare bucket availability for your itinerary:
Platinum: L, U, T, X, and V
Reserve: I, Z, W, S, L, U, T, X, and V (and W & S have further restrictions that in practice don’t really matter)
So, to look for Delta Companion ticket availability, you need to be able to look for specific fare buckets. This is child’s play with ITA Matrix. It also gives you better results than Delta’s booking engine will, and often lets you find cheaper tickets that qualify for the companion fare than you’ll find on Delta.com or by talking to an agent and having them search for you.
Make sure “advanced controls” are enabled (the link to enable them is right under the destination city)
Enter your “Departing From” and “Destination” airport codes (e.x.: LAX and ORD)
Enter DL+ in both the “Outbound routing codes” and “Return routing codes”, which forces the engine to return only Delta flights (bonus tip: enter DL without the ‘+‘ if you want only direct flights)
Enter the fare buckets for a companion certificate in both the “Outbound extension codes” and “Return extension codes”. This one is rather obtuse, so cut and paste the following:
Platinum variant: f bc=L|bc=U|bc=T|bc=X|bc=V
Reserve variant: f bc=I|bc=Z|bc=W|bc=S|bc=L|bc=U|bc=T|bc=X|bc=V
Enter your dates
Choose 2 adults
Click “Search”
I’m going to break my “one picture per post” rule in this series because I know some of you are visual learners. My search box for a Reserve companion ticket will look like this:
Sample search for Delta Reserve companion ticket
Booking
Normally I use bookwithmatrix.com for booking anything from ITA Matrix because you just cut and paste the booking results table into that website and it’ll forward you to Delta (or another OTA if you choose) with the exact flights and fare buckets already pre-filled. With companion tickets though, Delta doesn’t let you do that; instead, you’ll have to start your booking at delta.com/redeem and go from there.
If you can’t replicate the results ITA Matrix produces with Delta’s booking engine, first try setting up your airfare using a multi-city search. If that doesn’t work, you can call and give the agent each of the exact flight dates, flight numbers, and fare codes and they can manually book it for you. I’ve only had to do that a single time though, so it’s likely a rare occurrence.
Fin
I use all of my Delta companion certificates every single year, and they’re really valuable.
A final travel hacking tip: Delta says you need to use your co-branded Delta American Express card to pay for airfare when using a companion ticket. Don’t trust them, they lie. Any American Express will do, like the Personal Platinum which awards 5x on airfare.
Simon has a promotional code for 48% off of all fees when ordering Visa and Mastercard gift cards online, use code FS48JUL. Don’t use an American Express to buy these; sure, it’ll work but you won’t get any points or meet any spend thresholds.
I usually prefer to MS just about everything on my American Express cards so I in turn tend to ignore Simon, but now I have a need to run up a bigger balance on my Citi card portfolio and some of my normal methods aren’t currently cutting it. And no, this isn’t because of the AA mileage transfer partnership.
Southwest
2. Southwest is having a decent fare sale that ends today. Yes, they have those a lot, but this one is interesting because it encompasses the Thanksgiving holiday season and it’s likely that the free change window will pass over Thanksgiving in the next several days. So, let’s get hacking!
3. Kroger 4x Fuel Points on gift cards is back, and yesterday I saw Best Buy gift card rates jump as high as 97% for about 12 hours. Let me tell you, I dropped what I was doing and made a run to several Krogers in my area. If your gift card buyers weren’t offering at least 96% yesterday, consider whether you should seek another buyer?
Just don’t forget to add the coupon to your Kroger account and make sure you use the right Alt-ID. I don’t know why I was off of my game yesterday but I managed to do each of those once. 🤦♀️🤦♀️
Bonus
Bonus content: Delta seems to have devalued domestic SkyMiles award prices yesterday. Hopefully it’s a glitch, but if not, you can always get at least once cent per mile with Delta’s Pay with Miles as long as you have at a co-branded Delta American Express card, so always do the math!
Maxwell’s Equations can be used to figure out SkyMiles redemption values. Don’t see it? You’ll have to trust me on that one, or just assume they’re worth a penny in the worst case.
Let’s chat about bonus miles today with an eye toward gaming the airline mileage programs:
1. Public links are floating around for no lifetime language (NLL), high offer American Express Delta credit cards. You can probably get one to appear yourself by logging into your SkyMiles account and going through the process of booking a paid ticket; you’ll see on offer the last page before paying. In case that’s a lot of work for you, a public landing page has surfaced to check eligibility and skip the dummy booking: Click here and enter your SkyMiles number and last name to check for your account(s). These offers include a statement credit for spending on Delta too. (Thanks to DoC for the link)
Don’t forget that American Express currently has a five credit card limit (not to be confused with the ten charge card limit for cards like the Green, Gold, Platinum, or Centurion cards, they don’t count for this). People have played games to get around the credit card limit in the past, but I’m not one of them.
2. Another round of shopping portal bonuses has surfaced, and Alaska, United, and Southwest are all playing. In case you want to the play the game and win, Visa or Mastercards from Giftcards.com are usually the easiest way to knock these out without really buying stuff; of course the virtual variants work too but come with slightly higher fees.
To save you time, I’ve calculated how much it’ll cost in card fees and shipping to get each shopping portal bonus so you can decide if it’s worth it to you.
UPDATE: Miles (awesome name, right?) pointed out that these fees were calculated for physical gift cards, not virtual gift cards. So, shipping needs to be factored in, also some of math on physical gift cards requires taking a penny off in order to hit the lower fee amount, despite the posted schedule; but that doesn’t affect portal thresholds since the fee is included in the portal payout. Shipping fees are $1.99 per card, so updating is easy enough, the tables are now correct, and the article has been corrected. 🤦♀️🤦♀️
United
Bonus Threshold
Gift Cards Purchased
Fees
Miles
Cost Per Mile
$100
1 x $100
$5.94
100 + 500
0.990 cents per mile
$350
1 x $100 + 1 x $250
$12.88
350 + 1,500
0.696 cents per mile
$600
1 x $100 + 2 x $250
$19.82
600 + 2,500
0.639 cents per mile
corrected
Southwest
Bonus Threshold
Gift Cards Purchased
Fees
Miles
Cost Per Mile
$125
1 x $125
$5.94
125 + 250
1.584 cents per mile
$300
1 x $50 + 1 x $250
$12.88
300 + 900
1.073 cents per mile
$550
1 x $50 + 2 x $250
$19.82
550 + 2,000
0.777 cents per mile
corrected
Alaska
Bonus Threshold
Gift Cards Purchased
Fees
Miles
Cost Per Mile
$150
1 x $150
$5.94
150 + 300
1.237 cents per mile
$300
1 x $50 + 1 x $250
$10.88
300 + 600
1.208 cents per mile
$500
2 x $250
$13.88
500 + 1,200
0.816 cents per mile
corrected
There are two big caveats to remember: 1) I didn’t include any miles or cash back you’ll get from your credit card spend, and 2) I didn’t include potential liquidation fees that you may pay; hopefully that one is zero but YMMV.
At the highest threshold of each of those portal bonuses I’m a mileage buyer, even for United. But honestly, just barely for United.
Not the type of airline games I meant, but sure, why not?
Two roundups in a row? What can I say, it’s that kind of weak I guess. Don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger, or something.
1. AirFrance/KLM Flying Blue has a widely targeted 30% transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards. This, combined with the Flying Blue promo rewards can really turn into some great business class redemptions to Europe. Look for an email with the subject “Convert your American Express Membership Rewards® points now to earn 30% more Miles!” The one in my inbox had a link, but the link just takes you to the American Express page to transfer Membership Rewards to Flying Blue so I won’t post it here.
I’ve gotten great value out of the program in the past, and I will be taking advantage of this offer to a small extent, especially because transferred miles will now extend mileage expiration for other transferred miles.
2.This week’s fee free $200 Visa Gift Card sale expires at Staples tomorrow night, but don’t worry, another one starts on Sunday, but this time with fee free $200 Mastercard Gift Cards, limit 5 per customer or per transaction, depending on how your store rolls. I’m going to pass on this one because the stack of gift cards on my desk is growing uncomfortably large right now, especially considering that the closest Staples translates into 25 minutes in the car each way for me.
Side note that you didn’t ask about and don’t really care about either: I miss the OfficeDepot/Office Max sales quite a bit because there’s one of those about 5 minutes away on foot from my house.
3. American Express has another round of 20,000 Membership Rewards Authorized User bonuses going out for the Personal Platinum card. Use this link to see if you’re targeted. (thanks to Fryes)
4. Kroger has another 4x Fuel Points promotion running today through Sunday, and the BestBuy market is hot with the release of pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch OLED version. It’s going to be a productive weekend, especially if Kroger’s IT starts awarding 6x again.
Have a great weekend, and if you have ideas on cashing out some stupid Equinox credits, hit me up!
Frankly, I just don’t see the appeal of the Nintendo Switch, but when BestBuy gift card demand soars, roll with it.
I bet you thought the title was going to be WednesdAAy, right? I gotta mix it up sometimes, sorry.
Status Matches
Hyatt & AA have had a strange partnership for a few years, and now you can leverage each to get reduced requirements for status at the other by September 30th. Just make sure you delay registration until a couple of days before travel to give your self as much time as possible to finish the challenges. To take advantage of them, link your Hyatt and AAdvantage accounts if needed, then:
Register here for an AA 90 day status challenge if you have any Hyatt status at all. My status offer:
Gold for 6,000 paid flown miles or 7 segments, and $700 EQD spend
Platinum for 12,000 paid flown miles or 14 segments, and $1,500 EQD spend
Platinum Pro for 18,000 paid flown miles or 21 segments, and $2,300 EQD spend
Register here for a Hyatt 90 day status challenge if you have any AA status at all. Everyone gets:
Explorist for 10 nights
Globalist for 20 nights
Now, let’s turn off the blogger/bloggee relationship and just talk about this like friends:
AA Gold status is really like Silver at any other airline, it’s good for a free checked bag and the ability to pick the second worst seat instead of the worst seat on the plane.
If you want upgrades when flying AA, Platinum Pro or above is pretty much the only way you have a real chance, the others will just be dashed hopes and dreams, which sounds a lot like AA.
Hyatt Explorist isn’t worth much at all either. It will get you a couple of bottles of water if you’re lucky, and you’ll get a 2:00 PM checkout, but spoiler alert — if you ask nicely, you can almost always get a 2:00 PM checkout anyway so, enjoy your water I guess?
Hyatt Globalist is worth it if you travel a lot and use it. One of my dirty, shameful secrets is that I’ve been top tier at Hyatt for 9 years, and I don’t plan on letting that change anytime soon.
AAdvatange Reduced Mileage Awards
These have always been a great deal for Citi AA cardholders, and like any great deal, it dies. AA is killing off reduced milage awards on October 1, 2021. See if you can eek any value out of this if you still have a Citi AA card, but keep the next point in mind.
AA Sticks it to Flight Attendants
AA made a deal with many of its flight attendants to take either one or two year leaves of absence during the height of the pandemic, but now they’re making their flight attendants come back early because they’re anticipating huge staffing shortages during the holidays this year. As you think about those holiday plans, make sure you’re going in eyes wide open to make sure you’re not left strAAnded (I couldn’t help it) by a crew shortage at AA; I expect we’ll run into holiday problems, especially at smaller outstAAtions.
With AA staffing shortages, who will be there to tow AA’s planes to the gate after they slide off of the runway?
In what seems to be a recurring theme for 2021, another airline is having an anniversary contest in an attempt to generate marketing buzz, and, unfortunately, it’s working. (It worked for AA and United too.) Who’s next? If it’s a big US carrier, the only real option is Delta. I’m resolving right now to not fall into writing about a Delta anniversary scheme because at least once this year I don’t want to be played by an airline’s marketing department.
Anyway, Southwest has a 50th anniversary game going between now and June 18 at this link. You can enter once per day per Rapid Rewards account. My P2 won 50 Rapid Rewards points and I won nothing and got played. (That said, I did end up winning about 18,000 miles in the AA sweepstakes, so I will be playing this Southwest one daily, unless it plays me, amirite?)
Live capture of Southwest’s marketing department scheming.
Upload a copy of your COVID-19 vaccine card under Saved travel documents & numbers
Don’t use your dog’s United account on this one, you won’t be able to explain it away if you win (unlike most instances of your dog’s account). Watch out for the 1099 tax form from United if you win too, and contest the valuation they give you. It’s not hard to do.
By the way, I personally “internet know” someone that one a million miles in the AA 40th sweepstakes, it does happen.
A cadet in United’s wheelchair assistance training program.
