This week on the show, Gunnar and Kyle talk about a recent, unprecedented run of roundtrip flights to Europe in the $400s, $300s, and even $200s. The guys ask the important questions like “What is going in here?!” - and more importantly, stress that travelers should run to book a cheap trip to Italy, Greece, England and beyond this year. Plus, we’ve finally got an end date for a workaround to turn Amex points into Alaska, we talk about Delta’s gross Basic Economy rebrand, and Kyle reveals the cheapest flight (or 10) he’s ever booked.
This week on the show, Gunnar and Kyle talk about a recent, unprecedented run of roundtrip flights to Europe in the $400s, $300s, and even $200s. The guys ask the important questions like “What is going in here?!” - and more importantly, stress that travelers should run to book a cheap trip to Italy, Greece, England and beyond this year. Plus, we’ve finally got an end date for a workaround to turn Amex points into Alaska, we talk about Delta’s gross Basic Economy rebrand, and Kyle reveals the cheapest flight (or 10) he’s ever booked.
00:00 - The cheapest flights Kyle has ever booked
03:20 - Something Hot: Why (& how) you should transfer your Amex points to Alaska…right now!
07:30 - Something Cold: Hilton hikes award prices…again
10:40 - Something Extra Cold: Delta’s gross "Basic" rebrand bait & switch
15:20 - A word from our sponsor (us): Sign up for free Thrifty Traveler flight deal alerts today - or use code: TTPOD if you want to upgrade!
17:10 - The Extra Mile: Breaking down a bonanza of cheap flights to Europe under $400 roundtrip!
31:23 - A listener asks: What will happen to my Hawaiian miles?
33:30 - On the Spot: The best beer Gunnar’s ever had
Produced by Gunnar Olson & Nick Serati
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo. I'm Gunnar Olson here with dog foster parent extraordinaire. It's Kyle Potter. Kyle, how's life with a puppy in the house? Our dog who I've talked about, Mika, is now Nye.
So having a nine week old puppy is a little bit different, a little bit different vibe in the house with a nine week old puppy. Yeah. But I've been following along on social media, and the photos are just adorable. It's perfect to see. That all that love in your house is pretty awesome.
Alright. I need to, find something out to get started today though, Kyle. So we've been on a nearly unprecedented run of cheap flight deals lately, specifically flight deals to Europe, which we're gonna talk a lot more about later in the episode. But it made me think, what's the cheapest flight that you've ever booked? I'm gonna give you an answer that you're not gonna expect.
I booked not just one, not two, but 10 different flights from Madrid to Malaga in Spain for $26.82 each way. And the reason why I did that is because way back in, I wanna say, 2018, the Spanish airline Iberia ran a promotion where they said, if you book 10 flights with us, we'll give you 9,000 miles for every flight that you book, and you don't even have to take it. It was clear that that was in the terms and conditions. So there was this really strange way to book flights and earn miles whether or not you actually take the trip, which is a wrinkle that typically does not exist for earning miles on flights. So this was a workaround way to easily earn 90,000 Iberia Avios.
So I booked 10 flights. We found the cheapest flights we possibly could operated by Iberia. I booked 10 of these flights from Madrid to Malaga. My wife did the same, and then we had 90,000 Iberia Avios to use to book trips to Spain and back, which we did in the February of twenty nineteen. No way.
That's brilliant. That's a good, good redemption. Also kind of cheating based on the prompt that I gave, but I think it makes sense. This is our podcast. We make the rules and I say it's good.
It is the cheapest flight you ever booked. So that makes sense. Mine was going to be, actually how I discovered Thrifty Traveler was you guys were posting on Instagram way back in the day $96 round trip flights from MSP to Denver, which I thought was not possible until I looked it up. And that's when I kinda realized the magic of, of Thrifty Traveler Premium. That was the first, like, cheapest flights I've ever booked.
But, yeah, the 27 what is it? $23 to Malaga from Madrid? Twenty Six Dollars in change, I'd say. Dollars. Yeah.
I mean, that is probably significantly shorter than flying from Minneapolis to Denver. And, again, I just need to stress, I did not fly from Madrid to Malaga once, let alone 10 times. So is it cheating? Maybe. But let's move on.
It's our show. And today on that show, we're gonna talk about the best ways to fill up your balance of Alaska miles. We're gonna break down a disappointing uptick in Hilton award prices. And in our featured segment called the extra mile, we're gonna talk about this ridiculous run of cheap flights to Europe in the 3 hundreds round trip and what it could mean for the industry at large. All that and more.
Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Alright. Let's jump into something hot and something cold. It's a bit of good travel news and a bit of bad travel news from the last week, and we'll start as always with something hot. Alright.
Oh, Kyle, Alaska miles, some of the most valuable rewards you can earn. You can use them to fly in kinda any cabin all over the world. They have a massive list of partners. There are a million reasons why we love Alaska miles, but they've been notoriously hard to earn over the years. But the recent merger with Hawaiian changed that.
What's the new best way to earn Alaska miles? I mean, this isn't just something hot. This is something red hot. So let's back up a little bit. The reason why AmEx points are typically so difficult to earn is that Alaska doesn't partner with one of the major banks.
So Delta partners with AmEx. You can transfer AmEx membership rewards over to Delta. Chase with United, same thing. And Alaska hasn't had one of those relationships until, as you pointed out, Alaska merged with Hawaii, and they're still in the midst of kinda finalizing that merger, and that opened up this backdoor way to turn Amex points into Alaska miles. Because while Alaska is not a direct transfer partner of Amex, Hawaiian is.
And that means you can transfer your Amex points over to Hawaiian. And as a result of this ongoing merger, kick them from Hawaiian over to Alaskan. And why this is so so red hot right now is we finally got word within the last week that that opportunity is going to end as of June 30, which means, you know, as this episode drops, you've got under, you know, bay basically just over a month in order to take advantage of this loophole. And, I mean, you listed just a tip of the iceberg of the ways that you can redeem Alaska miles for anybody who's thinking about Europe or South America or just a lot of domestic travel, flights out to Hawaii, the list goes on. You probably need to take a close look at this if you have some Amex points sitting around because transferring them to Hawaiian and then over to Alaska might be the best way to book many of the trips that you have coming up.
Have you done this yet, or do you plan to maybe speculatively? What are your thoughts on this personally? I think I have to. You know, my wife and I have been talking about, what to do in the winter of twenty twenty six, and at the top of the list is a trip to Peru and Machu Picchu. And the best way to do that is you wanna do it on a lie flat seat, fly from JFK and several other cities down to Lima for just 35,000 Alaska miles each way.
So to transfer just 70,000 Amex points to Hawaiian and again over to Alaska to book two business class seats, flying LATAM, I have to think about it. And even if it's not there, even if there is an award availability in January or February or March of next year, I think I'm probably just gonna proactively transfer 70,000, miles. So yeah. I mean, I think I have to think about speculatively transferring at least that amount of points over to Amex and again over to Alaska Because even if that availability isn't there to book a flight today for, you know, February or March of twenty twenty six, having that those miles in the Alaska account, I know I'm going to be able to use them whether I use them to book these flights down to Peru or for something else. What about you?
I have an okay stash of Alaska miles right now. Right now, I'm trying to fill up my wife's stash of Alaska miles, getting her in Alaska credit card as we're working on some house projects and everything like that. I'm not sure if I wanna speculatively transfer. I don't have that many Amex membership rewards right now anyway. So I think for now, I'll probably keep them flexible and, see what's, out there for me in the future.
But right now, I have enough to take advantage of some of those redemptions that I really like, including those LatAm flights. Those are also on my radar. Maybe I'll see you there. I'm gonna revisit this in mid to late June and see how your tune has changed because let us remind each other. You picked Alaska as your number two in our draft, which means you rightly pegged the value of those miles pretty highly.
I I bet you will change or two by the time this, windows really starts to come to a close. I might. I might. I need to check-in on my wife's stash of, Amex MRs as well and see maybe if she needs to send some over. But too much hot for now.
We're gonna have to go to something cold. Hilton honors rewards bookings have been very good for a long time now. You almost convinced me and kinda did convince me to to join the the Hilton pool, a few weeks ago on the show. But we're seeing some rates on our favorite hotels around the world tick up, especially this week, including a a new price increase on award bookings. Tell me about it, Kyle.
I mean, I'll put it this way. As soon as the news about this broke last week, I got a text from a friend, and all it said was, that Hilton podcast episode aged really well. And, Jim, you were not wrong. No. So this is now the third pretty substantial award rate increase that we've seen from Hilton in less than six months.
It's pretty brutal and, you know, I do still think there is a lot of value in Hilton honors points. I think if nothing else, you gotta keep it in mind and not just stay laser focused on Hyatt, but some of these are really rough. And I think most importantly, Hilton had set the cap for several years now of no more than a 50,000 points per night for a standard room redemption, and that includes, you know, the Waldorf Astoria and The Maldives and Koala Island, you know, basically a private island off the coast of Nicaragua and Hermitage Bay in Antigua. They would go no higher than a 50,000 points per night. You might see higher prices.
You might see closer to a million points, but those aren't standard award nights. So if you were booking a standard award night, if you can find it on the calendar, it was a 50,000 points a night. And overnight without an ounce of warning, Hilton pushed that all the way up to 200,000 points per night, which means the Waldorf Astoria in The Maldives now which used to cost to more than a 50,000 points per night when you could find that availability, 200,000 points a night, which means, you know, a week in The Maldives, which is what most people try to do if they try to pull off this really big bucket list redemption, costs a whole lot more now. And it's just really painful. And while, you know, there were a handful of properties that bumped up to that 200,000 threshold, including Kalala Island, which I mentioned.
There's a whole lot more, you know, definitely within the kind of top tier luxury redemptions, the really big bucket list trips that, you know, went from a hundred and 20,000 to a hundred and 90,000, went from a hundred and 30 to a hundred and 70. There's a lot of damage here, and I think everybody who's got, some Hilton points saved up is really smarting right now and rightfully so. Yeah. As we mentioned in that episode that Kyle's talking about, the Hilton versus Hyatt episode, Hilton points are a lot easier to earn. But I don't know.
Maybe our podcast is so massively influential that Hilton had to up their rates because of how we sung the praises of how easy Hilton points are to earn. This is probably our fault. No. It's not. No.
People people at Hilton HQ are not listening to us talk. No. They're not. Yeah. They have smart people over there.
Kyle, you're my boss so I'll run this by you. Can we do a special two parter of something cold? Because there is something extremely cold I still need to ask you about. Let's do it. Okay.
What does Delta main basic mean to you? Don't make me vomit on camera, Gunnar. It is it's really gross. Right? I think we all agree in the office that what Delta did with its basic economy fares in particular last week, it's just a little bit slimy.
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's marketing mumbo jumbo. I think it feels really confusing. So let's put the pieces together here. For the last more than a decade, Delta was the first US airline that introduced basic economy, which means you don't get to pick your seats.
You can't change or cancel your fares for free. You can't get into a Delta Sky Club. You can't earn Delta SkyMiles. You can't earn your way towards Delta Medallion status nor comp or benefit from complimentary upgrades when you have it if you buy one of their cheapest tickets. And what Delta did last week as part of kind of an overarching way of rebranding its fares is it changed the name from Delta Basic Economy to Delta Main Basic as opposed to a standard economy fare, which is just Delta main or Delta main classic.
And it just feels like they're trying to confuse people. I mean, I will tell you this. It took all of about seven or eight hours for me to get an email from a reader that said I accidentally booked one of Delta's crappy basic fares because of this change, because they now basically have the same name just with one different word. The part that infuriates me about this is and it's something we saw American Airlines do actually starting last year too is when you're checking out on their website, they're bucketing these fares under Maine. And then once you click on Maine with that lowest price on there, it says, here's main basic, here's main classic.
Is that what the new one's called? Main classic and then there's main, you know, extra or I don't actually know what it's called. But basically they're bait and switching people into clicking on a main cabin fare. And then once they click on it, then it says, oh, actually, here's main basic. It's really frustrating.
I think, it was better when honestly, I didn't mind it that Delta had basic economy and that they sell basic economy with SkyMiles. But at least put that on your site as here's what Basic Economy is, here's what Main Cabin is, they're next to each other, you know they're not the same. But now they're kinda bucketed into this the same fare class, I guess, which is just, you know, it just makes booking more frustrating and, it just feels like we're getting tricked, when we're booking flights on what is a lot of people's favorite airline. So I'm very frustrated by this so that's why I needed a double something cold. Am I right to be frustrated by this, or is this just mumbo jumbo people don't care about?
No. I think you are, and you're definitely not alone. I mean, I think it is, to me, a bait and switch that when you search from Minneapolis to Denver and you see a flight for a hundred and $49 and it says Maine from a hundred and $49 and then you click that and you see that the main fare, the one that lets you pick your seats and you can change and cancel it for free, is actually $209 and that $149 fare that you initially thought was Maine is actually a basic ticket that you can't change or cancel is is really frustrating and it's not sitting well with with me, with you, I think with plenty of others. You know, this is part of Delta's overarching plan to kind of create all of these additional tiers of fare. So there's not just basic economy and main cap and economy and comfort plus and premium select and Delta one.
But each one of these segments over time is going to have all of these different options including we know what Delta has hinted at, which is that they're going to start selling a basic business class fare. Now what that means? I don't know. But it probably means that you're you spend a thousand, 2 thousand, 3 thousand dollars on a business class ticket, but you can't access the lounge. You can't pick your seats or at least not until shortly before departure.
Just when we think airlines have found the bottom and that things can't get worse and they can't nickel and dime us more, they find creative, torturous new ways to drive us even more insane. You have to tap your card to get your seat lie flat over the ocean. You can't use the lavatory unless if you pay us a $24.99 fee. Now don't let's edit this out. Let's not give the people in Atlanta any ideas.
They'll definitely start doing it. Yeah. Well, that's, definitely something cold, Kyle. But I promise we have a lot of good news to cover, in our extra mile topic coming up. But first, let's take a break.
Today on the show, we're talking about flight deals, but we don't just talk about deals. We live them, we breathe them, and we find them for our Thrifty Traveler Premium members. I think they'll say it, but I will too. Thrifty Traveler Premium is the best flight deal service out there. So if you want some dirt cheap fares, if you want awesome business class and first class deals bookable with your points, this is what you want.
Gunnar, what are some recent finds that you've got in your inbox? We're gonna talk a lot about them, later on in the extra mile topic, but I'm looking at Greece and Italy under $4.99 round trip, nonstop flights to Greece and Italy, including some August on there, a pretty amazing deal there. We have some summertime Chicago fares, $76 round trip and peak summer from all over kinda the Heartland area on some of the shorter Southwest routes. And then I'm looking at, American Airlines business class, a nationwide deal to London that you can book for as little as 45,000 miles each way, including tons of summer on that one. That one is pretty stunning too.
That surprised our team, but we were excited to send all of those deals to our premium members. If you're ready to start getting deals like these in your inbox from your home airport, you can try it out for free. Sign up at thriftytraveler.com/premium. If and when you decide to upgrade and get 10 times more deals, rare mistake fares, and more, upgrade to premium. As a special treat for our podcast listeners, you can use the promo code t t pod for $20 off your first year of flight deal alerts.
That's thriftytraveler.com/premium. Use the promo code TTPOD, five letters, all one word, for $20 off your first year. Alright. Let's get back into it. Alright.
As promised, we're gonna get to some good news here in our extra mile topic where we talk a little deeper about something in the world of travel that we need to chat a little bit more about. This week, the answer is clear. It was this bonanza of cheap flights to Europe in the 5 hundreds, 4 hundreds, and even 3 hundreds round trip. We're looking at a time frame of about kinda August through next March, and its destinations all over Europe. It started with this crazy, crazy deal with flights in the three hundreds to destinations like Athens, Barcelona, Lisbon, Madrid, Venice, Zurich, even some Dublin in there.
It started with the one world carriers. There was a lot of Aer Lingus and Iberia and American, and then everybody started jumping in. We saw, for instance, there were so many European cities, but just to Rome, we saw flights in the three hundreds round trip from Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Philly, and DC. And then from there, the deal opened up even more because all the other carriers jumped in. United and Delta and all their partners needed to compete.
So they dropped their prices too. And all of a sudden, all of the nonstop routes that we usually see at about 1,100, 12 hundred bucks round trip, all jumped down into the 4 hundreds and 5 hundreds to places like Rome and Athens and Western European destinations like London, Paris, and Amsterdam, and then all the way up north to Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Stockholm, all nonstop in the 4 hundreds round trip. Take a breath, Gunnar. Deep breath, Gunnar. Okay.
We're gonna get through this together. This is good news. Okay. One more one more thing. The craziest part about all of this is that we are now five days after many of these deals have been sent, and they're still kicking.
A lot of them are right around in the same price range, if not, you know, less than a hundred dollars more. That means that your next flight to Europe is hopefully in the 4 hundreds or 5 hundreds round trip if you look and book right now. Alright. Of all those things I just said, Kyle, any of those fares jump out at you in particular? All do I say all of them?
It's hard to pick out one because I think we always see these really great deals. This is what we do. We find great flight deals. We find them year in and year out. So what stands out about this is that it's not just one.
It's a trend. It's a trend that's been going on for the better part of two weeks or more now. And it's not just, you know, a a random flight from, you know, a small city where American comes in and they and they target a Delta stronghold. Or United comes in and they target an American stronghold. It's all of these major US carriers and some of their foreign partners cutting a great deal to some flyers from their hubs.
So, you know, United flyers flying from Newark to Rome or know, Delta flyers from Minneapolis to Amsterdam. These are things that we typically don't see. And then when you layer on top of it the fact that we're not just talking about, like, November and December and January and February, which is when we tend to see fares in this price range. We're also seeing this in some cases in June and July and definitely in August, which is absolutely emerging as the sweet spot for cheap flights to Europe if you wanna go there in the summer. So when you add all of these things up, you know, it kinda goes back to that discussion we had a few weeks ago about what's happening with travel demand and what it means.
And, you know, I keep reminding myself that, you know, airline executives have been saying for weeks now that, yeah, travel demand is slowing down a little bit. We're got some headwinds, but it's all just domestic and it's short haul. It's to Canada and Mexico and domestically within The United States. And international travel, especially to Europe, is rock solid. Couldn't be better.
And you have to ask the question. If Delta is is selling fares from New York City to Athens in August for $374 round trip, are things really that good? When you keep seeing these fares and they last not just for an hour or two as is normally the case when we find these sub 400 round trip fares to Europe? They keep living on and and people are still booking them almost a week after we first found them. These are not normal times.
I think this is, again, evidence that something has shifted in in how Americans are traveling, what they're booking, and it's forcing airlines' hands to cut travelers a better deal, which is what we're all about, what I think everybody listening to this is all about. What's really interesting to me is is that, the airlines have been talking about how they had a capacity problem this summer. Too many seats flying to the destinations that people wanna go to, so they're not able to charge the fares that they wanna charge, which are those expensive ones that the people used to have to book, the $1,200 round trip economy fares to Europe. That's what they wanna be charging. They do not wanna be charging $300 to fly over there.
But what the airlines all said is that they've right sized their capacity starting in fall into next year so that they've, you know, basically created a a capacity environment that's more conducive to charging way higher fares. So just fewer seats flying across the Atlantic. Interestingly, almost all of these fares are during that time frame. So the first thing I thought was, well, maybe the capacity problems haven't been solved yet. But what I my theory of what's happening here is that they're looking to fill up those lowest fare buckets.
Right? Airfare is sold in buckets, so there's, you know, however many of the $300 round trip fares. And then once those are all gone, then they can charge a little higher in this next bucket of fares, and then they can charge a little higher in the next bucket of fares. I think they wanna get back to charging $1,200 for you to go to Rome. They don't wanna be charging 300, so they're trying to get all those lowest fare buckets out of the way right right now and then charge more and more and more later on.
So I think what this comes back to is, you know, it's important to have some urgency here. If you really wanna take advantage of some of these flight deals, I would say book right now or book very soon so you can get in on these kinda lowest fare buckets because from all indications, they have fixed they have right sized the capacity problem in the fall and winter. So that has to mean that at some point, they're gonna charge more for those flights if they actually have fixed the problem. Well and I think that's the $400 question. Probably a little bit more important than just $400 for these airlines, but a $400 question for everyday travelers is, have they fixed it?
And I think that hinges on what happens, not just what's happened leading up to this point, but what's going to happen over the coming weeks and months of you know, there is so much economic anxiety out there about, you know, what's what's happening with the stock market, what's happening with jobs, what's happening with inflation, and it's leading people to put off some near term decisions about how they spend money and definitely how they spend money on travel. I mean, for the first time in many, many years, fewer Americans are traveling than they were this time a year ago or so. So something is changing. We know that much. What what we don't know is what that's going to look like six months from now, and I think that's probably what what airlines are waiting to see before they adjust again.
But I think you're right. These deals are so good. They are unbelievably good, especially for, you know, a time like August and September, which is the really should be the peak of peak travel. And I would say, you know, if you can swing it with a school schedule, going to Europe in, you know, late August or early September, even late September is a much better experience if you can get the right price than it would be going to Rome in July. I don't. I've been to Rome.
Rome is lovely. I'm sure it's lovely anytime of year, but I don't think I really wanna be in Rome in July. That sounds really hot and, like, there's gonna be shoulder to shoulder pretty much everywhere you go. Yeah. How many times in the past week have I looked into my news feed wherever that is and seen x destination bracing for overtourism this summer.
You know, it's like kind of a typical May headline, but, you know, it's like today I saw the Canary Islands are bracing for overtourism. It's like if the Canary Islands are bracing for overtourism, then wherever you wanna go in Europe, that peak summer, you're gonna be fighting crowds a little bit. Yeah. Definitely go in that off season if you can swing it, especially if the fairs are this good. That's an excellent time to go.
I have one other theory on what might be going on here, Kyle, if you'll allow me to share it. What if I said no? You've never said no. I don't know. I just want your approval that I'm asking the right questions.
I think, a lot of the airline executives have talked about how the a three twenty one neo, this narrow body plane, is kind of the future of their Europe travel. Like, there's always gonna be the big wide body planes to take people to and from the busiest, biggest destinations. But I'm wondering that especially because we're seeing big sales on flights like Chicago to Naples, on American or, like, all of these these kind of, you know, these nonstop flights to smaller European cities that are still, you know, tourism hotbeds, but not, you know, massive cities like this. I wonder if the planes that are flying there are just too big. And I wonder if this kind of future of what Aer Lingus and Iberia are doing routinely now, which is flying long haul narrow bodies with flatbeds in the front, like I got to sample in February Iberias.
But I wonder if that's gonna right size their operations again. Because right now, you know you’re when flying a plane with, you know, 250 plus seats in it to a place like this, it's you're gonna have to charge low fares eventually. And I, as we know, the airlines do not wanna be charging low fares. I mean, I think on paper, you probably have something there. But in practice, I don't know that, you know, this new generation of ultra fuel efficient long haul narrow body planes is really gonna solve the problem for especially like Chicago to Naples.
But, I mean, the issue that a lot of airlines have come to and why they're flying Boeing seven Boeing seven eight sevens and Airbus a three thirties over to Europe, daily in the summer is that these new narrow body planes don't actually have the range to make these longer hops. You can fly from, Minneapolis to Dublin on an Airbus a three twenty XLR, which has the extended range beyond just what kind of your typical, Airbus a three twenty one plane can do, which you might fly domestically or some of the really, really short stuff to Europe. But you can't get a whole lot further than that, which means your range is really limited in where you can actually kind of deploy those planes. So Iberia, for example, which you flew on, Boston to Madrid, you can do something like that. But you can't go a whole lot further than, you know, the certainly, you might you can probably make Washington DC to Madrid.
It's a little bit further south than Boston, so it's gonna add some mileage. But can you make Chicago to Madrid with that plane? I don't know. It's probably pretty close. It's going to continue to improve, but we're talking about years, if not, honestly, a decade or more before things like that become sustainable.
So I think it's it's really hard to divorce kind of these these smaller decisions about where airlines deploy their planes and and which cities they're flying to from the overall trend that we've seen, you know, basically for the last five years, coming out of the worst of the pandemic, which is that airlines have thrown more and more planes, more and more frequencies, new markets, not just nonstop to, you know, Milan and Rome, but Naples and even Sicily where both Delta and United are flying. They have expanded so enormously into Europe, and it's hard not to see these fares and think that they have found the limit of how much capacity that they can add to Europe, which again brings us to the point. Airfare is all about supply and demand. When supply exceeds demand, that's when airlines tend to offer deals because they need to fill seats. The way they fill those seats is by cutting people a better deal on these fares and that's what we are seeing.
But that imbalance can only last for so long, which means, you know, if we're right and I believe we are, but if we're not, you can email us at podcast@thriftytraveler.com and tell us we're wrong and why we're wrong. But if we're right that what is driving this recent surge in Europe flight deals is there's just too much supply of flights that after, you know, explosive growth in travel demand, it has started to taper off and there are fewer Americans looking to take these big trips to Europe later this year than there were a year ago, then we're going to see airlines start to cut back certainly into late, you know, late twenty twenty five and and in for next year once we start talking about spring and summer twenty twenty six. And so we'll see. But for now, I I really like at least the way that things are looking for the everyday traveler who can for, you know, perhaps the first time. It's not a slam dunk, but your your chances of getting a great flight deal, you know, not just, you know, flying American from Minneapolis through Chicago or Philadelphia over to London or Paris or Amsterdam, but even, you know, at Delta nonstop for under $500 round trip or, you know, the deal that we just sent our subscribers to book, you know, non stops on Delta for 27,000 sky miles round trip in August, that says something.
That is truly pretty remarkable. I, I I I really hope the airlines never figure this out. We just keep getting fares like this forever and ever. We are on your side listeners, and, we're not trying to give them any ideas. I'm sure these are all things that, Ed Bastian and Scott Kirby and all of the airline CEOs have been talking about for a very, very long time.
So I promise we're still on your side. We want these low fares to continue, but just for the health of the airlines, it's just, curious to wonder what's going on here with fares being so low. And as a listener focused podcast, should we help a listener out here? Let's do it. Okay.
We have George b from San Diego who wrote us to ask us about the Hawaiian Airlines credit card, which is certainly of more interest to travelers now that you can transfer those Hawaiian miles to Alaska. But Hawaiian points do have some value on their own, and they can be supplemented at least for now by your Amex points account. So George asks us, Kyle, what will happen to my Hawaiian miles when the two airlines merge? That's a good question. We we've heard most recently that, Alaska and Hawaiians loyalty programs are going to combine at some point in August of this year.
So I imagine any miles that you have with Hawaiian are going to get immediately in instantly mapped over to Alaska. I wouldn't worry about some balance of mileage disappearing while, you know, president Joe Biden is no longer in office nor is his department of transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg. These two airlines, when they agreed to merge, signed, you know, some requirements of that merger being allowed to go forward. And one of them was that, you know, these mileage accounts had to be left relatively untouched. So I think we can safely assume that, you know, your miles are gonna be safe.
They're gonna get instantly mapped over to Alaska at some point. And whether that's a a huge win or, you know, basically business as usual, I think, is up is in the eyes of the beholder. Yeah. I think it's also important to note that from what we understand, AmEx points to Hawaii and that transfer is going away, but the Hawaiian to Alaska transfer is not going away. We've seen no signs also that the Hawaiian credit card is going anywhere.
So for people who are dabbling in this system of sending points back and forth from Hawaiian to Alaska, you're gonna be safe for now. Remember, we're just losing that American Express to Hawaiian transfer coming here soon at the June. I think that's enough for George. I think we helped him, though. Yeah.
George, you're in a good place. Don't worry about it. If you want us to answer your question, email podcast@thriftytraveler.com, and your question might be featured in next week's show. Alright, Kyle. What do you got?
It's my turn to put you on the spot, isn't it? Alright. I still owe you a beer from our draft. I have not yet purchased you one beer, which was the terms of our draft and your surprise win. So to put you on the spot, what's the best beer you've ever had?
That can be the beer itself. It can be the location of the beer. It can be a combination of the two. But you can't Frankenstein a beer and say, oh, I want a kokanee, but I want it in the Swiss Alps. Okay.
Okay. Wow. The, you had when you said the best beer you've ever had, I have, of course, my my top list of my favorite beers to drink. So you're carrying it around when it's here, you're gonna pull it out on a sheet of paper and read it out for me? And number one.
But then you added the context of it could have been a location. You know, I've had some just epic Kokanies in the Canadian Rockies. Beers I still think about. Kokanee, outstanding beer. Really just smooth classic beer.
Also so inexpensive, which is a important prerequisite for all my favorite beers. We I do need to pause and point out we are not sponsored by Kokanee. Gunner maybe on but that's his own side deal that he has going on, which is, from my perspective, the only reason to sing Kokanee's praises so loudly on a podcast. Yeah. I abused my influencer contract with Kokanee so badly that they actually cut me loose.
They said, we don't want you to promote us anymore. Please. It's too much. It's too gratuitous. Nobody believes you.
I I've had had a Kokanee sitting out a patio at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort in Alberta, which was just an unbelievable afternoon after a powder day, the sun shining on us at a little yurt. And the the bartender, when we asked she asked us if we wanted another kokanee, and she said, you guys are here from The States. Right? Yeah. She goes, so it's basically free.
So, of course, we got another round of kokanee's. And, I think kokanee makes me feel a very special way. So I think I would take a kokanee in the Canadian Rockies, now. I won't call it a good answer, but it's an answer. Alright.
We'll close with that. Thank you so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Rate us five stars in your podcast platform of choice if you would, please. Also, like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube. The show's a little different on YouTube.
You get to watch it over there. Also send this episode to somebody you know who needs a vacation. And if you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We would love to hear from you. Kyle, tell us about the Thrifty Traveler podcast team.
This episode was produced by our senior editor, Nick Serati, and your favorite Kokanee drinkin' host, Gunnar Olson. It was edited by David Strutt. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you later. See you.