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Via Secret Flying, direct round trip flights are available between Chicago and Miami during the month of April for $107 round trip on both American and United.
This fare sale becomes very hot if you have a Chase Ritz-Carlton Visa Infinite or CNB Crystal Visa Infinite and book for two people. One of the benefits of those two Visa Infinite cards (but not the Chase Sapphire Reserve) is a $100 discount on booking 2 or more passengers on a round trip domestic itinerary through the Visa Discount Air portal. The discount can be used an unlimited number of times. See this excellent post that Julian wrote last year for more information on booking this discount. Note that flights must cost more than $100 each before the discount is applied. and you need your first and last name and Visa Infinite number to search.
I just priced out two round trip tickets from Chicago (ORD) to Miami (MIA) on American Airlines from April 5th to April 12th. As you can see, the total for 2 passengers is $112.80:
Flights on United priced exactly the same:
Sample sets of dates that should work include:
Chicago – Miami
4th-12th Apr
4th-18th Apr
5th-12th Apr
5th-18th Apr
5th-19th Apr
11th-18th Apr
11th-19th Apr
Miami – Chicago
12th-18th Apr
12th-19th Apr
There may be more dates available. I’m not sure whether these are bulk fares or not, but they may earn miles on top of the great prices.
HT: Secret Flying
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I’m sure it’s a normal fare
Fares from Miami are often matching fares from ft lauderdale
Spirit regularly flies from FLL to ORD for $100 found trip. United , American and even southwest regularly match these fares for some of their flights. AA , frontier and United even match them MIA as well.
You may well be right on the fares. What makes this one particularly good is the fact that it meets the purchase conditions for the Ritz-Calrton / CNB Crystal airfare benefit (at least $100 RT before the discount, domestic RT) — making it $56.40 each round trip if booking for two people.
A couple of differences to keep in mind vs Spirit:
1) AA / UA credit card holders will get a free checked bag for each person on the corresponding airline.
2) These fares may earn miles. I believe the United tickets would earn 1 mile per mile flown if credited to Singapore Airlines. That’s 2,394 miles. If we only value those at a penny each (I’d argue that they’re worth more), that’s at least $23.94 worth of miles each on a $56.40 round trip.
Comparison to Southwest adds the value of 2 free checked bags per person on the Southwest side. At the moment, the first couple of dates I checked with Southwest would be ~$125 RT per person and would earn 544 Southwest points. Based on the Frequent Miler reasonable redemption value of 1.6 cents per point on Southwest, that’s about $8.70 in points earned on the $125 ticket.
With Southwest, for 2 people that would be $250 total out of pocket with about $16.40 worth of points earned.
If you have a Ritz-Carlton visa or CNB Crystal Visa Infinite, this deal would be a total of $112.80 out of pocket with at least $47.88 worth of miles earned.
Obviously if you don’t have one of the Visa Infinites or aren’t booking for two people or don’t have a card that would enable free bags, that may tip the scales in favor of Spirit/Southwest/something else. The math will certainly work out differently for different people.