I’m well versed in flight options from the US, but when it comes time to plan trips between different regions, I have to think about my options a little more. My boyfriend and I decided to plan a trip to El Salvador for the end of May, but I was going to Cuba right before as part of the last class for my MBA. He was able to snag great flights on Delta for only 14,500 miles roundtrip during one of their sales. Unfortunately, I was locked in to flying to Cuba with my class – which, thankfully was a cheap $90 flight that I wouldn’t have used miles for anyway. I decided it would make way more sense to fly directly from Cuba to El Salvador than to come back to the US first. As usual, I checked cash prices first. I was looking at around $300 for the one-way flight… ouch.
That’s when I turned to using miles. Flyermiler, one of my favorite tools, showed that I could book with Avianca LifeMiles for only 10,000 miles! It also showed that United would cost only 10,000 miles, but that’s not actually correct. United charges 12,500 or 17,500 miles for an economy class flight, depending on routing. Luckily for me, I had some LifeMiles, so I was able to get a killer deal on my flight to El Salvador!
For my return flight to Denver, it unfortunately wasn’t possible to get on the same Delta flights as my boyfriend without paying an insane number of Delta SkyMiles. Delta wanted 35,000 SkyMiles for the one-way flight. Remember that my boyfriend only paid 14,500 miles for his return flight! Crazy. Instead, I considered my other options. My options were to pay either 14,500 British Airways Avios or 15,000 American Airlines miles to fly on American Airlines. Even though booking with BA would have saved me 500 miles, I elected to book with American Airlines because I was having trouble getting the flights to load on BA’s site and didn’t want to call in. British Airways is notorious for their long hold times. The time savings was worth more than 500 miles to me!
All in all, I was able to book flights to both Cuba and El Salvador for 15,000 American Airlines miles, 10,000 Avianca LifeMiles, and $160. While my boyfriend was able to travel to just El Salvador for only 14,500 Delta miles plus about $60 in taxes.
What tips do you have for planning award travel between regions you’re not as familiar with?