Ever wonder how to leverage points, miles, and credit card benefits to enhance your family travel? This week on Frequent Miler on the Air, Greg and Nick discuss strategies and share tips to help you find great awards and make the most of the things that matter for your family vacations.
Elsewhere on the blog this week, we discussed the genius of AA Loyalty Points, how to make sure you’re eligible for the best offers, the chance to GoWild! with Frontier, a parlay play that could get you a free cruise on Royal Caribbean, and a lot more. Watch, listen, or read on for more from this week at Frequent Miler.
1:30 Giant Mailbag
6:06 What crazy thing…….did Frontier do this week?
12:44 Awards we booked this week
18:51 Points for family travel
19:25 Lap infant tickets
24:31 Award availability for families
28:18 Flexible stopover
32:30 Companion Tickets
39:03 Vacation packages
42:00 Lodging – Vacation rentals (Vacasa)
47:42 Airbnb
51:27 Hyatt suite awards
54:00 All-suite brands
57:38 All-inclusive resorts
1:02:25 Choice Privileges
1:03:46 Rental Cars (National Executive)
1:05:12 Corporate codes
1:08:37 Airport lounges
1:11:57 Question of the Week
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This week on the Frequent Miler blog…
Business class for 4 or more: finding multiple seats for family award travel
Greg wrote a post this week looking for suggestions about what to do for our next Frequent Miler team challenge (the next post below). It is clearly apparent that many readers find family travel challenging and want to see us do a challenge with multiple travelers. That inspired me to write this post about how I tackle finding award availability for four passengers. Ironically enough, later that same day, I booked four of us in business class to Europe for less than 50K miles each and back from Europe to the US for 25.5K miles per passenger (yup, in business class) during peak summer 2023 dates. I have no idea what we’re going to do in Belgium, but I look forward to discovering what there is to discover.
Frequent Miler’s next challenge: What should it be?
We have a long history of challenges around here where we try to push the boundaries of miles and points in the hopes of discovering new sweet spots or highlighting how we’ve pushed existing ones to the max. We recently wrapped up our 3 Cards 3 Continents challenge and we already have an eye toward designing the next one — but we want reader input. We incorporated many reader suggestions in the 3 Cards challenge and I expect we will once again with the next one, so please leave your feedback and ideas here. We’ll revisit the comments on this post when it is time to design the next FM challenge.
Chase Ink Cash and Ink Business Unlimited: Best ever 90K offers online
I don’t usually include credit card bonus quick deals in the week in review post, but these offers seemed worth a special highlight given the incredible return available on these two business cards. If you have a business (and you probably do even if you don’t realize it), these offers should be on your radar.
Chase 5/24 Rule: How to Count Your Status (3 Easy Ways)
Of course, if you want to get in on any of the recently-increased Chase offers, you need to be under 5/24. What does that mean? And how do you determine your Chase 5/24 status? This post has everything you need to know to position yourself for success.
Frontier GoWild! All-You-Can-Fly Pass Coming Soon – Take Unlimited Flights For 12 Months
Do you love flying Frontier airlines and have a lot of flexibility? Are you just the type who can’t contain your curiosity? Either way, you’ll probably want to sign up for Frontier Miles, the loyalty program of low-cost-carrier Frontier (free to join) to see what happens with their GoWild! pass. Apparently, Frontier intends to sell what will surely be an ultra-limited number of “all-you-can-fly” passes that are good for a year — with more strings attached than a store full of tennis rackets (is it unfair to compare Frontier’s latest scheme to a racket?). We don’t yet know all of the details, but from the carefully-worded hints, it sounds like this thing is going to come with a lot of restrictions. Make sure you read carefully before you hop on this whenever they put it on sale.
“Free” Royal Caribbean cruise match offer & kids sail free stack (parlay that Carnival offer)
If you have a Wyndham credit card that grants Diamond status, you’ve probably previously matched that status to Caesars Diamond (which can be done online if you have a Caesars account) and then matched Caesars Diamond to Carnival for a “free cruise” offer (most of us eventually got offers for a free balcony room). If you did that, the next step is on: match that offer to Royal Caribbean for a “free” balcony room on a cruise of up to 5 nights — and if the stars align and your match comes through very quickly you might be able to stack with the current “kids sail free” promo, but you’ll have to get lucky at this point since that promo ends 10/31 (but this match should extend beyond Monday).
The genius of AA’s Loyalty Point scheme (On Greg’s Mind)
I totally agree with Greg’s sentiments here: while some long-time American Airlines loyalists surely bemoaned how AA would swell the ranks of the elite with the change to Loyalty Points, I think this was brilliant all around. As Greg says, American has people spending more through their portal and offers just to earn status — many of whom will never collect on the benefits of status. And those who do need to fly are more likely to fly American even if it costs a little more. Furthermore, those who have earned X number of miles through all of these pursuits are more likely to become somewhat “addicted” to their AA miles — which seems to open the door to AA getting more credit card sign ups (and we all know that they earn more money selling miles to the banks than flying people). Brilliant all around.
American Airlines systemwide upgrades now work on British Airways (and vice versa)
Of course, if you earn high level American Airlines elite status and you do fly AA enough to earn systemwide upgrades, you’ll be glad to know that you can now use them on British Airways. I recently flew British Airways in their new business class suites from New York to London and it was a lot nicer than I’d expected. I’d gladly use a systemwide upgrade on British Airways if all else were equal.
Southwest Companion Pass Complete Guide 2022
It is now officially Companion Pass Season — meaning that now is the time to start thinking about getting Southwest credit cards if you want to earn a Companion Pass for 2023 and 2024 (just make sure you wait to meet the spending requirements until January 2023 so that you earn all of the bonus miles in the same calendar year and maximize the length of time on your Companion Pass). This guide has what you need to know about one of the most interesting deals in domestic travel.
How to spend a scenic day in Singapore – Gardens by the Bay and Changi Airport [Video]
Stephen spent a terrific day in Singapore on our 3 Cards 3 Continents challenge and we had previously missed some of the video footage of his time there. In this post, you can read a bit about his day — or better yet, watch the video to follow along with how he made the most of his short time there to do some sightseeing and enjoy some awesome things you may not have seen in the Singapore Airport if you’ve been stuck in a lounge on your previous visits.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye out for this week’s last chance deals.
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Ever wonder how to leverage points and miles for family travel?.. For some of us, that’s ALL we wonder about.
I’m a little surprised by the Hyatt Oak Brook discussion. I agree the outdoor spaces are pretty. I remember our room being fine. They did try to charge me to use the gym one morning which I was annoyed with. But OMG the McDonalds inspired paintings throughout the property–a few of them are creepy. I do not know what the management is thinking. For context, it is attached to the McDonalds Hamburger University, hence the cross promotion.
I had heard about some of the creepy ones from a friend before going, but it still surprised me. I texted a few of them to people I know while I was there and they all suggested I leave. I know I sound dramatic, but if you search Tripadvisor, several other people use the term creepy to describe them, its not just me.
Most of the art is gone and it is no longer branded with McDonald’s (I don’t think the McDonald’s campus is there anymore).
I did stay there years ago when it was branded as Hyatt Lodge at McDonald’s Campus and I found the decor quirky, but not creepy.
I wonder in the photo above was your younger son ever afraid to be in a seat that is separated from you? I want to book some business class seats, but am afraid my 3-year old will not like it if she cannot be right next to us (I guess it depends on the seats. As more and more business class seats are becoming private often it means you can’t see anyone from your seat, which would obviously not work for a young child). Love the podcast and blog. Thank you!
Good question! We wondered if that may happen, but both of our sons have been pretty good with flying. We make an effort to really limit screen time in the days leading up to a flight, so when they get on the plane and they can actually watch something they are typically mesmerized for the first long while (a family member does not allow her kids any screen time except on planes and reports that her kids are excellent flyers lol). Occasionally during a flight he wants to sit with one of us for a while and that has been fine — he just sits on my lap or my wife’s lap for a while and then goes back to his seat also without much difficulty. No trouble getting him in his seat for takeoff and landing with a video on that he wanted to see. And in fact he was pretty tired when we boarded that flight to London — once the seatbelt sign went off I changed his diaper, reclined his seat, and closed his suite door and he was asleep in under 2 minutes (literally).
You’re right that some airlines lend themselves better to traveling with a young child. On the way home from this trip, we flew United Polaris, which alternates with seats in the middle right next to each other every other row (the pic all the way at the top is the youngest and me in Polaris business). I intentionally chose those seats for us because it was a daytime flight (and he did end up sitting on my lap or my wife’s lap for a bit during that flight). If you’re very concerned, you could be selective like that and only pick airlines with seats that are reasonably close to each other — a number of airlines use a setup where some seats are more adjacent and others are farther apart.
Truthfully, this was more of a concern for our younger son since, being born in the first year of the pandemic, he is very accustomed to being right near us all the time. Our first son was fine sitting on his own from an early age. At 21 months, we flew Hong Kong to Newark on Cathay Pacific — he was a lap infant, but there was an empty seat in the cabin that they let us use, so he laid down and slept in a flat bed seat by himself for more than 10 hours. He’s now almost 5 and totally fine sitting on his own. Our younger son can be a bit more clingy at times, but it hasn’t been an issue.