Category: Travel Hacking

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.

The Actual Search

  1. Visit matrix.itasoftware.com
  2. Make sure “advanced controls” are enabled (the link to enable them is right under the destination city)
  3. Enter your “Departing From” and “Destination” airport codes (e.x.: LAX and ORD)
  4. 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)
  5. 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:
    1. Platinum variant: f bc=L|bc=U|bc=T|bc=X|bc=V
    2. Reserve variant: f bc=I|bc=Z|bc=W|bc=S|bc=L|bc=U|bc=T|bc=X|bc=V
  6. Enter your dates
  7. Choose 2 adults
  8. 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.

Delta’s companion ticket rules aren’t always, uh, rules.

Happy Thursday.

Simon

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!

For a quick primer on the Southwest free change window, see Spring Break, Southwest Style.

Kroger

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.

For the second time this year, Flyertalk had a unique find that I haven’t seen anywhere else. What even is 2021? I used to read Flyertalk every single day, and now I’m lucky to visit once a week. Anyway:

1. There is a Hyatt Globalist status challenge available to anyone right now, and you’ve got through November 30th to register. This one is slightly harder than normal because you’ll have to call a full service Hyatt’s sales department and ask to register, so you can’t just clicky-clicky your way to status. When you register you’ll get Explorist status through 2021 no matter what. But you can earn status through February 2023 pretty easily:

  • Stay 10 nights to keep Explorist
  • Stay 20 nights to earn Globalist

My usual advice is that Globalist is absolutely worthwhile and valuable, and lower status with Hyatt is barely worth mentioning and you can replicate most of it with a nice “please” to the front desk at check-in. (Why yes, I have been called cynical before. Why do you ask? Actually, maybe they just called me apathetic, I can’t be bothered to remember which.)

2. Meijer has a $5 reward for every $50 spent on gift cards, up to 10 per account through August 14. I hope if you live in Meijer land that you’ve gotten a few MPerks accounts by now. Make sure to add the offer to your account UPDATE: MJ let me know that there’s no need to add the offer to your account on this round.

Do note that several gift cards are ineligible, but Home Depot and Best Buy are both eligible so there’s lots of juice to squeeze. (Thanks to Stephen at GC Galore)

I’m also too apathetic to create funny caption.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now but just in case you haven’t, here’s the background for today’s post: Citi Thank You Points can be transferred to AA between now and November 23rd. (Why this date? No idea.) People are celebrating this and frankly with good cause. Until now, Citi Thank You Points have been my least favorite bank currency amongst the major players — so much so that I’d choose 1.0 Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards over 1.2 Citi Thank You Points. In general I think of Thank You Points as worth exactly a penny and move on to bigger and better things (say, 15x “shop small” with an American Express Platinum from Resy as a great example).

I hear your rebuttal, and yes, the Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles program has some sweet-spots and Citi Thank You Points are uniquely positioned to take advantage of that; but booking Turkish awards can be a long and frustrating process involving multiple unanswered calls and weird email bookings, and the rest of the Citi Thank You Points transfer partners range somewhere between “Chase and American Express can also do that”, and “I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork because if I’m going to be in that much pain, I’ll do it to myself.”

But now with Thank You Points transferring 1:1 to American Airlines’ AAdvantage program, there’s some real value to be had. I’m excited, but I’m also very cautious and won’t be transferring all of my Thank You Points to AA miles for one reason: AA Miles are ready to devalue, and for better or worse, that’s coming sooner rather than later. Consider:

  • Delta has a dynamic mileage redemption scheme (Asia will cost you 210,000 SkyMiles round trip in business class, if you’re lucky)
  • United has a dynamic mileage redemption scheme (Asia will cost you 160,000 MilagePlus miles round trip in crappy business class, if you’re lucky)
  • Southwest has a fixed value redemption (Southwest doesn’t fly to Asia. Can you imagine traveling to Asia on a Southwest 737?)
  • American Airlines’ fixed award chart is much cheaper than major competitors (Asia will cost you 120,000 AAdvantage miles, with great availability)

For the most part this is illustrative of awards to just about any international destination, we’re stuck in a situation where AAdvantage offers much, much better value than its major competition and on top of that they’ve said they’re moving to a variable redemption scheme. This means that they’re almost certainly going to devalue, and it’s almost certainly going to happen very soon, just as predicted by reversion to the mean. In fact, I’d call this event the catalyst for devaluation and cynically declare it’s a last ditch money grab by AA before the chart gets materially worse (and variable).

My advice to you: Yes, Thank You Points conversion to AAdvantage miles is an exciting development, but don’t go too far with this, transfer the number of points to AA that you need for the next six months or so and plan on an AA devaluation. Don’t be surprised when the rug gets pulled out from you at the end of the year. At that point, I fear we’ll all be thinking of Thank You Points as being worth a cent again.

My Citi Thank You Points award redemption eye fork.

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?

1. Register here for Hyatt Bonus Journeys. You’ll earn 3x Hyatt points on stays of at least two nights when you checkout between July 20 and September 15. Don’t procrastinate just because you think you may not be traveling. Register anyway in case something happens.

2. The new AmEx Platinum changes are being probed and a nice hack has already surfaced: United and Delta frequent flyer members get discounted Clear membership of $119 even with no status, and you can add a Player 2 for an extra $60 which happens to exactly equal the $179 credit. So, your one Platinum credit is good for at least two people with almost no work.

Side note: It’s against the T&Cs to sell the Clear credit (I assume it is anyway), but you can almost certainly cash them out with a quick post on your Facebook page saying something like “I’m selling one year Clear membership for two people for $125.”

Fuel points have become a big part of the manufactured spend landscape because they’re really valuable and as fuel prices go up, the market for them goes up too. Kinda like the ocean went up (in flames) this weekend. Oh, too soon?

Now, a software bug at Kroger means that since Wednesday, gift card purchases are earning 6x instead of the expected 4x promotional rate and as a result, the fuel points chatter in various MS groups has blown through the roof. Kroger appears to be trying to fix it — multiple times for multiple hours on Friday and Saturday only 2x, or sometimes 0x, was awarded at the register. So far though no permanent change has emerged.

There’s a further rub too, on Friday reports started coming in that say Kroger is shutting down accounts that generated huge fuel point balances, and it seems to be triggered by calling them which puts eyes on your account.

Side note: a hack that some take advantage of but I never felt comfortable with is that you can call Kroger, let the automated system know you’re missing fuel points, and as long as you tell it that 2,000 fuel points or fewer are missing, it would auto add them to your account… until last Thursday that is. Now reportedly the system transfers you to an agent after you tell it about missing points, and likely that puts eyes on your account.

Where am I going with all of this rambling? Now is a good time to earn fuel points, but keep your balances reasonable and keep eyes off of your account when you game the system. That last bit is good advice in general.

The boat in the upper left is the Kroger IT Department trying to put out the fuel points fire

There’s a lot going on to take you into the weekend. If it’s your thing, get out and enjoy the weather this weekend. I certainly will.

1. Yieldstreet is paying a $500 bonus for parking $10,000 with them for 60 days. I’ll be doing this one for sure; a few caveats: It seems like referrals aren’t eligible for the bonus so don’t use them, and their investments are possibly of dubious quality so make sure you’re confident in what you do. For me, I’m going to park $10,000 in their FDIC insured account and skip their investment options. My return will be the $500. Thanks to reader DC Domer for bringing it to my attention.

2. Staples has fee free Visa Gift Cards from Sunday through Saturday, limit 5 per transaction. Before buying though, make sure you can liquidate them somehow. There are definitely still ways out there, the absolute highest fee version of which is Bravo — but you can do better.

3. Check to see if you’re targeted for 30% or 40% back at Amazon when using at least one Discover point at checkout. I was targeted for 40% off, and I’ll be buying a BestBuy gift card which I think you could have seen coming from a mile away.

4. The Free-quent Flyer has a great article about where to credit flights when flying American, Alaska, or JetBlue now that weird partnerships have become the norm in the US. I’d recommend setting aside five minutes to read it sometime this weekend.

Have a great weekend!

Shouldn’t tennis doubles be tennis quad? I bet you didn’t see that coming from a mile away.