We’re doing something a little different for the Saturday Selection this week. As regular readers will know, we’ve just returned from our “Flying by the Seat of our Points” last minute travel challenge. So, this week, I’ve asked each FM team member to relive their favorite redemption or activity from the challenge. Their answers (and some video) are below.
Check out our contestant journals, recap videos, and more here. And follow us on Instagram, YouTube, and this blog to find out about our future challenges!
The Team “relaxes” at a fish spa in Kuala Lumpur
For his Kuala Lumpur “relaxation activity, Greg chose a fish spa which was anything but relaxing, as the fish were huge and everyone was ticklish, (not to mention Nick hates fish). Carrie thought it was hilarious, however:
My favorite activity was (perhaps obviously) the fish spa because it satisfied the challenge requirement (of course a spa counts as a relaxing activity) while not being relaxing at all and instead triggering an all out giggle fit from 3 grown men. And it showcased a snapshot of what our team meetings sometimes look like. We truly enjoy hanging out with each other. Being eaten by fish on your own would be sad and scary and strange, but doing it with your friends is absolutely hilarious
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Arriving at LAX just in the Nick of time
Stephen’s favorite redemption wasn’t even a redemption:
To get to Los Angeles, Greg managed to snag a United first class routing to San Francisco using the Turkish sweet spot using only 6,000 net miles (after the 10% Citi rebate and 50% Turkish transfer bonus).
That wasn’t my favorite part of this though. What I particularly loved is that Greg took the particular routing that he did in order to catch the flight from SFO to LAX that was scheduled to land at exactly 3pm. That was fantastic gameplay due to our stipulation that contestants weren’t allowed to land before 3pm without receiving a 30 minute penalty. It wasn’t the best value redemption as he could’ve booked directly to LAX and not had to pay for a cash ticket from SFO to LAX, but it was my favorite booking in the challenge due to the creativity.
***Note from Tim: I also loved how Greg played this round, but for a different reason. In fact, Greg was so smooth, no one even noticed what I thought was some terrific gamesmanship. Can anyone spot what he did to sweeten his redemption?
A KLM business suite sets up Greg for success
While Nick and I were banging our heads against the wall trying to get across the Atlantic, Greg was setting himself up for success:
My favorite redemption was the business class award from Vancouver to Zagreb via Amsterdam. No, 72,500 Flying Blue miles wasn’t an amazing deal — sometimes you can book the same flight for as few as 50,000 miles. But I had an awesome flight and, critically, positioned myself well for entering stage 3. I had seen in advance that Qatar business class awards were available from Zagreb at just the right time for stage three and so I figured that Zagreb would be the perfect city to position myself to. That turned out to be exactly right. In the end, it meant that I was set up to easily book my favorite flights of the whole trip: Qatar business class to Doha followed by Malaysia Airlines business class to Kuala Lumpur for 75,000 Avios.
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LifeMiles get Nick to Bangkok in Thai Airways business class
Avianca LifeMiles wasn’t always Nick or my friend during the challenge, but it couldn’t stop him from lapping up the luxury in Thai business class:
My favorite redemption from Flying by the Seat of Our Points was the Thai Airways flight from Frankfurt to Bangkok for 78,000 Avianca LifeMiles (which began life as 68,000 Membership Rewards points before the 15% transfer bonus). Had I been able to successfully stack with the 10% rebate from LifeMiles+, I would feel a smidge better about having used 68,000 Membership Rewards points to get both that flight and 7,800 bonus LifeMiles. Had I been able to successfully book Frankfurt to Bangkok and onward to Kuala Lumpur for that same price and with that same rebate (as should have been the case!), then I would feel great about that redemption. I have a soft spot for Thai Airways business class even though it isn’t “best” in any one category — it is a “comfort food” in the sky thanks to warm service, food I enjoy eating, and a comfortable enough seat. If I had a bit more time to play with, I would have called Aeroplan and tried booking Frankfurt to Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and making Kuala Lumpur a stopover en route to Tokyo to catch my flight home and I’d likely be singing a fairer tune, but as things stand I have to be honest that I only feel lukewarm this time around about even my best redemption of the challenge. Of course, if we include our routes home, then I feel far better yet about having used 80,000 American Airlines miles for Japan Airlines first class from Tokyo-Haneda to Chicago-O’hare. I sipped that Salon champagne and enjoyed excellent service– I even had one seat made into a bed and another for dining thanks to the fact that there were only 2 passengers in first class to occupy the 8 first class seats.
Nick keeping us his spirits in spite getting “Morocco-ed”
I’m going to cheat a little bit with my favorite (and because I’m writing the post, I can). I love working with Nick: he’s smart, creative, determined and generous. But maybe one of his biggest superpowers, outside of a photographic memory for award charts and an amazing ability to function without sleep, is that he’s relentlessly positive…and that was on full display last week.
There’s no sugarcoating it: from the moment Carrie said, “Morocco,” Nick had a tough challenge. So much so that Greg the Frequent Miler coined the term “Morocco-ed” to describe having a really tough assignment where nothing goes right. And very little did go right for Nick as he struggled his way around the world…in fact, Carrie’s sister Annie (who did our marvelous video recaps) ended up naming him “short-end-of-the-stick-Nick.”
It’s hard to fully explain how tired we all get on these challenges. Most of us have our moments of grumpiness as a result. Nick tested the limits of even his vaunted capacity for sleeplessness and, despite nothing going right, he never flew of the handle, yelled, screamed or even seemed to be more than mildly irritated. In fact, he joked his way through the entire gauntlet and even corralled some useful tips to share with readers. It was fun to watch and undoubtedly added some good-spirited drama to the challenge. We’re lucky that we get to have him on our team.
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