It’s time to talk to the Oz of our flight deal service: Jon Shallbetter, aka Jonny Nonny. Gunnar and Kyle bring Jon on the show to talk about his wizardry of all things Google Flights, finding and sending flight deal alerts, his favorite flight deal ever and worst-ever travel mistake, and more. Oh, and the guys grill Jon on the allegations that he drank Emirates dry … and he does an Admiral Ackbar impression?!
It’s time to talk to the Oz of our flight deal service: Jon Shallbetter, aka Jonny Nonny. Gunnar and Kyle bring Jon on the show to talk about his wizardry of all things Google Flights, finding and sending flight deal alerts, his favorite flight deal ever and worst-ever travel mistake, and more. Oh, and the guys grill Jon on the allegations that he drank Emirates dry … and he does an Admiral Ackbar impression?!
0:00 - Did Jon actually cash Emirates’ supply of Dom Perignon?
05:47 - Something Hot: Jon’s favorite deal of all time (it cost $62)
07:52 - Something Cold: Jon’s worst travel mishap
09:18 - Honorable mention: The worst travel pillow ever (ft. Admiral Ackbar)
11:23 - A word from our sponsor (us … and the awesome flight deal service that Jon runs)
13:14 - How Jon got started in travel and finding flight deals for living
16:50 - The art of finding flight deals, mastering Google Flights & expanding into award travel
23:04 - A quick primer on TT lingo (and the Delly nonny to Honny)
25:55 - Lightning round with Jonny Nonny: Google Flights tips, the secrets of MSP & puppies
30:27 - Listener question: Will this be a good year for flight deals?
33:43 - What do Jon & Kyle really think about their coworker?
Produced by Gunnar Olson & Jackson Newman
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo. Welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olsen. With me as always is Thrifty Traveler executive editor, Kyle Potter, yada yada yada. But today, we are pleased to be joined by our chief flight deal analyst, the head of Thrifty Traveler Premium.
His parents named him Jonathan nonstop, but we call him Johnny Nonny. It's Jon Shallbetter. Jon, welcome to the show, man. Hey. Thanks for having me.
Appreciate that warm welcome. I'm not sure if my parents actually named me that, but we'll run with it. So thanks, Gunnar and Kyle. Thanks for having me. You could, however, legally change your name to Jonathan nonstop.
It's been thought about many times. So that's up in the air. Yes. Well, Jon, to get started today, I need to find something out. So you recently just did something many travelers have on their bucket lists, and that's flying Emirates class booked with points.
But there's a rumor going around that you and your fellow passengers finished off all the Dom Perignon on the flight. Care to address those rumors? I would like to address those rumors that, thank you for bringing that up. It is true. We were informed a few hours into the flight that Dom Dom Perignon is no longer available.
Just hang on. Not a few hours before landing. A few hours into the flight, you cashed the entire supply of top shelf champagne. Yes. You're correct.
A few hours after departure was when the warning was issued. But, yeah, it was a lot of excited people in the class cabin. The Dom Perignon went very quickly, but we were surprised with the vintage 2004 bottle to end the champagne campaign. So do you take any kind of personal blame or responsibility for the fact that about one month after you landed from that flight, Emirates killed off class redemptions by requiring people to have status in order to book it with Miles? I have no redemptions about it.
See a deal, book it when you do, and I'm glad we got to check that off the bucket list while we could very easily. So other than the Dom, which went quickly and I don't know, maybe they didn't run out. Maybe that was just a little warning shot at you guys. But other than that, what was the experience of Emirates class like? Yeah.
I'm not sure if it was a false warning or what, but, the experience was great. I mean, from boarding to getting into our seats, I mean, the flight attendants were right at us right when we started. What do you wanna drink? What do you wanna eat? You know, welcome aboard.
It was just great. The seats were phenomenal. Huge TVs, everything else. Just amenities everywhere you look in Emirates class. So, the experience was incredible.
You know, after the four hour warning of no more Dom Perignon, we decided to go to the back and investigate some different beverages at the bar. So we met a nice couple from Philadelphia who had studied the menu before the flight, and they had priced out every single item in the menu. So it's pretty interesting. They said, no. Let's get this.
Let's get this. This is $400. This is $500. So, you know, just despite the champagne being depleted, we still had a nice time at the bar. And then, I'm kind of, like, more of a beer and a burger guy.
But when you're on an Emirates flight, I think you need to get champagne and caviar, which, wasn't quite sure what I was eating, but it was delicious, I think. And, you know, tap the whole thing off with, with the shower and, really surreal experience when you're up in the sky and then you're taking a shower. And that was that was great. I mean, the whole thing was great. Did you ask for a shower beer?
Has anybody ever asked for a shower beer? We have an opportunity here to perform some real science. It crossed my mind, but, I think I just wanted to get in the shower and and and go for it. So the beverages did not join me for the beer shower. I would have just loved to see the flight attendant's face when you ordered that Coors Light, see what they would say to you after that.
John, tell us about how you booked it. Yeah. So my wife and I had never been to Italy, and sometimes you just let the flight deal guide you. So I think last summer, there was a Premium alert that went out from Unicorn deal, fly Emirates class to and from Milan. We ended up booking it through Qantas.
I transferred miles from Capital One to Qantas. 108,000 miles per person each way, but there was a bonus, so we booked it for 90,000 Capital One, member or Capital One, venture points. And we joked before about that. You may have killed off Emirates mileage class, which I stand by might be possible. I don't think we can rule it out on this podcast, but the way that you outlined still, at least as we're talking right now, as we're recording, is still possible.
So, no guarantees about how long the Dom lasts. It depends on if John makes his way back on your flight, I think, and his friends from Philadelphia and his wife. But as long as they don't make it back on that flight, you should have a couple of hours of Dom Perignon on your flight, and be able to book that through Qantas by transferring Capital One or AmexPoint. Yeah. Absolutely.
Great point there, Kyle. Probably no worries about the champagne situation for most passengers either. That's awesome. It sounds like a great trip. Alright.
Today on the show, we're gonna talk more to Jon Shallbetter about his career in flight deals, some of his favorite deals of all time, maybe his worst travel mistake, and all things Thrifty Traveler premium flight deal alerts. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast.\
Alright. Welcome back. Let's jump into something hot and something cold where we look into the good and the bad news out there for travelers from the last week, and we'll start as always with something hot.
Alright, Jon. For something hot, what's the best flight deal you've ever sent to our Thrifty Traveler Premium members? Yeah. There's been some good ones a few years ago. I think my favorite one, the best one I sent was probably that mistake fare to Santiago, Chile.
The cheapest price this was all flying Delta. The cheapest price was $62 round trip out of Atlanta nonstop. Kind of a comical one. Yeah. You could get to Chile, cheaper than, most of The US out of Atlanta.
The great part about this was there were, you know, probably 50 to a 100 cities for about a $102,100 bucks round trip. A ton of activity from premium members. A lot of people are super excited to book it, so that one really rings a bell for me. Yeah. The screenshot of that $62 fare is still one of the crazier things I've ever seen.
It seems fake at this point because we're so many years removed from it. But, obviously, peak COVID pricing there, and Delta was just trying to do anything they could to get some money in the door, and, it worked. We heard from a lot of people who booked it. Right? Yeah.
A ton of people booked it, including myself. You know, we had high hopes, of being able to travel. It didn't happen for most, but still a phenomenal deal and and a lot of excitement behind it. Well and, I mean, just to put a finer point on this, $62 round trip, not each way, round trip for a nonstop flight of, what, nine to ten hours? Yeah.
For sure. About that long. So it's on par with a flight to Europe, if not longer than some flights to, you know, like Madrid or Amsterdam. And in a round trip fare that would typically, flying Delta nonstop from Atlanta or wherever, would typically cost you 900, a thousand, sometimes closer to 1,200 or more. I think you're spot on there.
Yeah. Just pretty crazy what we saw, and I know a lot of people booked it. It stuck around for maybe two hours, just enough time for people to get their hands on it, but, that was a great one for sure. That's awesome. Alright.
We gotta pivot though to something cold. I like to ask travelers this because everybody has one story even from us experts. What's the worst travel mistake you've made? Yeah. This one was many years ago.
I was studying abroad in Melbourne, Australia. I had a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney to Melbourne. And, you know, being 19 years old, wasn't listening, wasn't thinking, half asleep. So I got to Sydney, and I didn't realize I needed to gather my luggage and recheck it before flying to Melbourne. I showed up in Melbourne you know, all by myself week down there, and I had no luggage For probably, I think, three days, for some reason, it had to be put on a courier.
So what did I do? I, you know, I put some cash together and went to, Kmart and got some essentials, and I had a backpack and some shorts and a t shirt for the few days in Australia. So it was a good, good mistake for sure. But I do have another mistake too if you have time to chat about that. Oh, man.
But well, sir, I've actually never heard that story. That's so funny. Your stop was Kmart, and you just went through three whole days in the same t shirt? Probably had two or three t shirts, and, yeah, I think, Kmart was the wise choice when, cash was tight. So that's what we went with.
It was summer down there, so I didn't need too many articles of clothing. Alright. Honorable mention, worst travel mistake. That one is gonna be pretty tough to beat. Yes.
This one is much more recent, and I think you guys are probably aware of this. But, I made a pretty big mistake trying out a travel pillow, and I'll display it for some people, for our YouTube channel here. Gunnar, can you hang on to this? Oh, yeah. Oh, it's just a beautiful travel pillow.
Oh, no. Alright. So now you have to talk through this. So if you're not listening on YouTube, you really need to be. And if you just refuse to, John is wearing what's called the ostrich pillow, which we made him try out on a flight last year.
And, the photos of John and his friends on a flight from Minneapolis to Las Vegas in this monstrosity of a pillow have gone down in infamy. So, I think I can actually talk through this maybe. Yeah. I can't really see much going on. This was, this was a struggle to to wear on on a short flight, so it didn't stay on my head too long.
But, yeah, the ostrich pillow didn't make it too far. You know, I feel like for those Star Wars fans out there, I feel like Admiral Akbar in this. That's a trap. And I kinda just feel like a Star Wars character. So this was the only time I wore this, and this was a secondary major travel mistake for me.
It's a beautiful, beautiful mistake. I love especially, again, for our YouTube audience, the armholes on the top where you could put your hands in so you could sleep at your desk, I think, is the idea. That's how everybody sleeps, I think, is with their hands, on top of their scalp. Yeah. That’s how Jon sleeps.
Yeah. Normally. They did leave the essentials there. So you can, you know, you can have a beverage. If you you wanna get some Dom Perignon in here, you can have a beverage.
I do not think that pillow is allowed in Emirates class. I think you'd get a shower beer before you get that pillow on. I think you're right. You know, I've wanted to wear this into, like, a Delta Sky Club just to see how they react when I enter, but I haven't done that yet. Up in the air still.
Next time. That's perfect. Well, John, we're gonna let you extract yourself from that pillow, and we'll be right back. We've said it before, but I'm gonna say it again. If you want flight deals, Thrifty Traveler Premium is sending the best flight deals in the world, and it's all thanks to the guy we're talking with on this week's show, Jon Shallbetter.
We send out more flight deals, cheap flights, cheap domestic flights, mistake fares, business class and class award availability book bookable with your transferable credit card points every single day. Gunnar, will you pick out two deals we sent to premium members in the last week or so and let us know which one stood out to you? Yeah. I think, Qsuites always jumps off the page or jumps out of the inbox, I guess, in this case. But we sent this Qsuites deal very recently, Maldives, Doha, and Southeast Asia from 73,000 points each way.
That includes, if you wanna go to The Maldives, connections, which is pretty amazing, obviously, for a few more points there. But, anytime we can get people in QSuites, it's always a a joy. We love searching for those and finding those for our members. We also sent, one of our our patented Nerd Alerts, which, I know gets Jon and the team fired up, but we sent one, from Chicago to Tokyo in, Jall business class, Japan Airlines business class for 60,000 miles each way. It was a nerd alert because the return availability wasn't quite there, but we wanted to make sure we got all that availability in front of our members anyway.
And, if you could find your way back from Tokyo, which is not terribly hard to do, that's a pretty amazing deal as well. If you want deals like that and many, many more, sign up today at thriftytraveler.com/premium. As a special treat, our podcast listeners can use the promo code t t pod for $20 off the year of flight deal alerts. That's thriftytraveler.com/premium. Use the promo code t t pod, five letters, all one word for $20 off your year.
Back to the show. Alright. We're back and it's time for the extra mile where we dig a little deeper into a topic, a travel topic. And in this case, we have the best topic of all. We're interviewing Jon about, what is now a career in travel.
So, Jon, take us back to the beginning. How did you get into travel at all? Yeah. Good question. You know, I guess this story piggybacks off one of the mistakes I had.
You know, when I studied abroad in Australia, it kinda really opened my eyes to the travel world. Met a lot of people from all over the world down there. And I loved it so much. Actually, after college, I moved back to Australia. I lived there for a year.
I worked down there for a bit and just had a great time and decided let's keep travel going. So I went to Southeast Asia for two months, threw a backpack on my back, and saw several countries. And that was kind of the moment where I was like, I need to do this the rest of my life. This needs to be a fixture in my life. No matter what I'm doing for a job, I need to keep traveling.
So that's kinda what all started it back there. I think a lot of people have that moment with travel, whether it's Southeast Asia or Japan, but just in that region of the world, it just sets off something. It changes something in the way that you view the world and what you care about. I'm not sure that I can really describe it, but it sounds like that's kind of the experience you had with, like, kind of a formative experience traveling around Australia and then Southeast Asia. Yeah.
I think you're right. I agree with an aha moment. I think definitely in particular Southeast Asia, you just realize what you can do for so little in cash, what you can see, what you can eat. I mean, it's just that region to me really, really speaks to me. I know you like it as well, Kyle.
Like, Vietnam and Cambodia in particular for me were were incredible places. I think the people in Southeast Asia are tremendously welcoming as well too. So that's kinda one of the things where I was on that trip, and I figured I need to keep doing this, you know, whether it's just for fun or or somehow it turns into a career. Yeah. That's awesome.
So like you said, it is now a career. It wasn't always, though. Tell us, tell us how you got to make travel your career and how you joined Thrifty Traveler. Yeah. You know, maybe, I don't know, ten years ago, I just saw Thrifty Traveler started to poke up on Facebook, and I got really attracted by some stuff that I saw in there.
So I became a member when I could, and I started pretty much annoying Jared with messages. I would send him emails and say, hey. I love this deal, but have you seen this? Hey. You know, Jared, this is cool, but have you seen this hot deal here?
And my continued pestering of him turned into a part time job, So I would help him out on the weekends just writing premium emails and finding deals. And then, you know, a couple years later, it turned into a full time job offer, which, which was great. It's kind of a dream come true. That's a such a good origin story. You're just annoying the founder of the company enough that he decided to hire you.
So he went from having you as as free labor to now paying you. So terrible job, terrible deal, Jared, honestly. But that's a shockingly common thread behind those of us who started at TT, you know, seven, eight years ago is that we basically just bug the crap out of them until they paid us a little bit of money and then a lot more money after that to work full time. It's, if you're listening right now, you clearly know what works if you wanna work for us. Yeah.
Just spam Jared's email inbox, and you might get a job out of it someday. So, Jon, I think what makes you kinda uniquely good at this and finding flight deals for people and and kinda, you know, our bread and butter, which is still cheap flights, is that you're just better at Google Flights than everybody else. When did you realize that you were better at Google Flights than everybody else? Yeah. I wouldn't say better.
I would maybe say more obsessed. And probably about the same time, maybe ten years ago, I think it turned into me just realizing how much time of my day I would spend on Google Flights. You know, my wife would say “what are you doing at dinner?” I'm on Google Flights. What are you doing before bed?
I'm on Google Flights. So I think anyone can be good at Google Flights once you start to understand it, but the obsession, you know, for eight hours a day turned into something a little different for me, I suppose. It's and we're all better off for it, man. You've you've taught me almost everything I know about Google Flights, and, obviously, everybody on the on the premium team is now, super experts at it as well. But, you know, obviously, we started mostly doing cheap flights at Thrifty Traveler Premium, and then over the past kind of five years or so, we've expanded it in huge ways.
So we've added lots of points and miles stuff and lots of business class and now even hotels onto the service. So what has it been like to kinda broaden the service over time? I think it's been great. You know, when I if I hit rewind for a little bit and think about, like, the evolution of premium, it's, you know, originally, the couple years, it was really a high focus on just cash deals, international cash deals. And, you know, the pandemic came around, and we pivoted the service to include domestic flight deals, added some award deals too.
And like you said, Gunnar, I think the addition of hotel alerts along with points and miles has been great for our customers. I mean, I know I'm much more excited about points and miles deals than I have ever been. I know a lot of subscribers are too. I guess the point of premium is to reach any customer, whether they're one a $100 flight to The Caribbean or they have 5,000,000 miles and they wanna stay at fancy hotels and fly fancy aircraft.
So I'm gonna admit something here. I think I said on the episode where, Gunnar, you interviewed me that I had been a premium subscriber long before working here, which is true. But I was a premium subscriber for years without actually booking a premium deal until after I started working here full time. And yet I continued paying for the service. And part of how I made that rationalization was not just that, hey. These flight deals are great, and I'm gonna book them, which I really should have, but I just didn't.
I just ended up making some other kind of trips work. But just that they showed me, oh, that's how cheap a flight from Minneapolis to Madrid can be. Or, oh, you're telling me I can use these miles to book that flight to Europe or down to South America. Just not just the value of a cheap flight, but the value of the education of learning more about the world of airfare and what you can really do, I think is to me, has always been one of, like, the biggest parts of this. And I would bet that a lot of the people out there listening, if you're on our premium list or just signed up for our free mails.
I would bet they feel the same. I mean, how much have you learned, John, just by digging into more of this and putting these deals together with the help of Gunnar, Katie, Peter, everybody on our team? Yeah, Kyle. I learn something new every day. It's always changing.
There's always something new going on, whether it's a new aircraft, new route, new transfer partner, whatever it may be. It continues to be a learning experience for me. And like you said, that even if you're not booking the deals, just seeing those emails hit your inbox can be really fun for a lot of customers as well. Yeah. I love the the educational piece of it where it's, you know, I might not have the miles right now that I need to book q suites.
But by reading a Thrifty Traveler premium deal, you can see exactly what miles you need and the process that it will take to book that deal in the future. And luckily, a lot of the stuff is pretty cyclical. So some of the deal that you see a deal and it kinda gives you that inspiration, and then it comes around again and you're ready and you can book it. And I've done that several times. Like, I you know, for this Christmas, we're going to Finland.
We booked Finnair. The time we sent a deal, I was not ready, and then the idea came into my head because of the deal. And then the next time it came around, I was able to secure it. So it's that kind of the piece that I love the most. And a lot of people we hear from also just love it because it does just give them ideas, of new places to go and different trips they can take.
And, obviously, we try and heavily personalize all of these deals. So, John, I guess, for people out there who don't who don't necessarily know, what makes Thrifty trap or Thrifty Traveler Premium different? I think there's a big human element in this. You know, we send out emails for things that we would book. They're realistic to book.
They're two passengers for a lot of these biz for almost all business and class deals. So it's just the human element, I think, really takes Thrifty Traveler premium to the next level. You know? The destinations we send are well vetted. It's just there's a lot of back work that we do that makes it very easily received by our members, I think.
Yeah. I think, we talked about it on a recent episode as well, but we call him Saint Peter for this. But Peter Thornton spends so much time on hold with airlines, making sure that that award space is actually there, making sure that these things are bookable. We'll book them ourselves, and then cancel within our twenty four hour window just to make sure that we can actually, you know, ticket these seats and make sure we're not sending people to, to phantom space or deals that don't exist or things that are are too difficult to book. But it's I think just the fact that we have, Peter Thornton and Katie Rollins specifically going into every single minute detail of every single deal.
We're never sending people deals that don't work. Right? And that's kind of what I think makes it special. I'm ow a very small part of the premium team, but I'd love, you know, having that detail that attention to detail and making sure that we're giving people deals that are absolutely ironclad. And, you know, that's the kind of thing that you and Peter have brought to this, service for sure.
Alright. I have a different question. Changing gears. What's a nonny? A nonny is a nonstop flight.
Nice. Okay. What's a Delly nonny? A Delly nonny would be a Delta nonstop flight. That's right.
And what is a Faroe Izzy's Busies? A Faroe Izzy's Busies is a business class flight to the Faroe Islands. These are some good examples, Gunnar. Nice. So for context, the three of us sitting here in our actual office, this is where our.
Hey. Hey. Hang on. Don't lump me into this. I am not a part of this just botched language that you two have created and somehow roped Peter and Katie into.
Yeah. We have Peter and Katie came to Thrifty Traveler Premium as, like, fully formed adults, so we've just eroded that over time. But we love shortening things. We love a good nickname. And, it started with nannies, John, who earned the nickname Johnny Nanny, as I described at the top of the show.
Loves himself a nonstop flight. Who doesn't? And then obviously, a Delly nonny is a Delta nonstop. Who doesn't love one of those? And, over time, you can pretty much turn everything into a nicknamed deal.
And sometimes the premium Slack channel just devolves into, just decoding. It's not a good use of our time, honestly. So it's a lot of decoding each other, but, now we've we've got it down and we've poisoned everyone else in the company. So this is what our chats are like. But, where like, did you start this, John?
Where did this start? II think I must have. I think it all started with Anani. I mean, this like you said, this goofy habit of shortening words has I'm not sure if it's helped or hurt the team. It's almost creates riddles in our, in our chats with the team members that people need to decode and figure out what the heck is coming out of my mouth.
A lot of the times, it doesn't make any sense. Sometimes I need to be careful what I say, but it's, usually, it's pretty good. It's like, merging locker room talk with travel lingo. Because, like, you know, every hockey player isn't, Matt Boldy. It's Bolds.
And, it's not it's, not Matt Zuccarello. It's Zuccyi. Everybody's got, like, a shortened nickname, and John just kinda took that mindset and applied it to every single term in the travel industry. And I'll just add a few more in while we're on topic here just to have fun with it. So an outbound flight, we call an outtie.
An inbound flight, we call an innie. A connection can be called a Connie. So, like, if I were to use this in a sentence to annoy you guys even more, it would like, if I wanna translate a Delta nonstop flight to Honolulu, I would say the Delly nonny to Honny. Easy enough. Right?
Sure. Yeah. It's perfect. I love it.
Or, the nonstop flight to San Juan is the Nonny to Juanny. Another great one. Yes. We love these. We love these.
Alright. I got some lightning round questions. You ready for these, John? Here we go. What's your number one tip for using Google Flights?
Really get used to the explore map. I think using the explorer map can find you the cheapest, the best. If you're flexible and you don't care where you go or when you go, you can really dial in some amazing things using the explorer map. Alright. What's your best MSP airport hack?
Oh. Best MSP airport hack. I do this on return flights, and I hope I don't break the process here by telling people. But when I return and I have access into Terminal 1 on a return flight, I go to the PGA Lounge and I go get food on the way out using my priority pass. So then when I get home, I have a salad or a sandwich, and I don't have to worry about food.
But I use the on arrival priority pass. So if this if, priority pass or the PGA Lounge ends this practice, John's email address when you get angry is jon at no. No. This is you are not alone, John. So in this particular instance, if if and or when this particular benefit ends, I think you're on solid ground here.
Well, that's good because I do enjoy swinging in. Alright. Waiting for that. Important serious question now. One beer to rule them all.
What's your what's what's your one beer order? Oh, man. One beer to rule them all. I I gotta go I gotta go surly furious. Just Woah.
Just feel nice. Yeah. I mean, it's just a great Minnesota beer company, and you can't go wrong with the Furious bold flavor. I love it. That was not the answer, actually.
No. I wouldn’t have picked that one out of, you I could've taken a 100 stabs at that. I wouldn't have gone with furious for you. I like it. Alright.
Another hard hitting question. Tell me about your dogs. Okay. Two dogs, golden retrievers. Their names are Hank and Gary.
They're great little boys, kind of red coated golden retrievers, and, you know, they're they're great to have at home and and fun little boys for sure. Alright. Good. I I've, I got a great answer out of Kyle when I asked him that question, in a recent episode too. So I knew I had to rerack the tell me about your dogs question.
That one's gonna be an evergreen. Just tell me about your dogs. Yeah. Very lazy question, format, but I really always love to hear it. And people always light up when you ask them too.
Alright. Favorite and least favorite airport? Least favorite airport? Chicago, O'Hare. I just think Great answer.
Tiny and busy, and, you know, there's probably some good parts about it. But every time I'm in there, I just kinda feel lost and there's just I kinda feel like I should be on home alone just running full speed screaming things when I'm in that airport. Well, and the thing is that airport has not changed since they filmed Kevin McCallister running through O'Hare in, 1989 when they filmed Home Alone. So you would not be out of place. It would look exactly the same.
You're just you've got a couple inches on, on Kevin McCallister. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. And then the other part of the question, my favorite, I think I have to go Doha.
I love Doha. Just, you know, Kyle and I had the privilege of flying, Qatar, class and got to get in the Al Safa Lounge and never seen a lounge like it. And the airport is gorgeous overall, so probably Doha. Yeah. I'd that.
Last, lightning round question. What's your next trip, or do you have anything on the radar? What do you got coming up? This is a big one, so buckle up. I'm going to Indianapolis in, in just over a month to see, an artist called Dave Matthews.
Not sure if any of you guys ever heard of him. But, yeah, I'm going with a group of buddies. A long flight from Minneapolis to Indianapolis. Should be a great great journey. time seeing DMB?
I I probably 40 something. So, yeah, you could say one of the Do you actually know the count? How many Dave shows you've been? I did talk to our coworker Jackson about it, and I think I'm getting close to 40, honestly. So, yeah, up there.
That's pretty good. Make sure, you bring the ostrich pillow on that flight to Indeed. And, compression socks. Yeah. Compression socks, the whole thing.
Don't get too stressed out about that flight. Good point. Alright. Let's, hear from a listener. We have a listener named Kevin who asked us a question I think John's kinda uniquely positioned to answer.
So Kevin asks, will 2025 be a good or bad year for flight deals? He says, my social media feed is full of comments from folks saying they're not going to fly again given the recent high profile accidents in the aviation industry. Combine that with the current economic outlook, and there may be less people flying. That being said, demand for premium cabins is at an all time high, and the airlines are scrambling to add premium seats to their fleets. Could we see a larger separation between prices for economy and premium cabins?
Very detailed question from Kevin, but let's go broad Will 2025 and, I guess, early twenty twenty six now be a good or bad year for flight deals, John? Yeah. I'll start. I think we if we're not there yet, we're approaching one of the best times to book flights. I mean, just the recent stuff we sent, whether it's economy or business class or class.
I mean, domestic economy flights all over for less than a $100, you know, fares to Europe for around $300. And then on the awards side, it's just a constant stream of releasing award space. I mean, I feel like every program, it's something new every week. So we're really in a sweet spot right now, I think, to get really good travel deals for this year and into next. Yeah.
I mean, we have the benefit of sitting here talking when, 2025 is close to halfway over. And if the rest of the year looks like that, I think, yeah, John is right. This is going to be one of the best years of booking flights that we've seen. Certainly, I would say, since pre pandemic, considering, you know, some of the 2020 flight deals that we saw, a lot of people couldn't actually take those trips. This one, people are actually going.
You know, travel is back to 100% and then some. And then on the award side, I mean, to be able to say that we found, what, six or seven Qantas business class deals and a Qantas class deal within the last month or so, something that we hadn't seen in several years, I think says something about how the entire kind of airfare environment has shifted just within the last four or five months. Yeah. I think you guys nailed it. The only thing I would add is just a bit of a sense of urgency to everybody out there.
The getting is really good right now, but we saw, you know, starting in the fall and into next year, the airlines are kinda right sizing their capacity. They're cutting flights, so that they can charge the prices that they actually wanna charge. The airlines do not wanna fly you to Europe for $300. That's what we want for you, and I promise we'll find it when they do. But they wanna charge you way, way more than that.
And I think they think they're starting to turn the corner on right sizing their operations so that they can charge much, much higher prices again. And, you know, your points aren't getting any more valuable sitting in your account. We've seen pretty much every single program raise rates. So, I would say use those points and miles right now. Book those flights you want for the next year because, I would say time is of the essence.
Gotta I would say book by this summer to, to get some of the best rates out there. If you want us to answer your question, email us at podcast@thriftytraveler.com, and your question might be featured in next week's show. Alright. I get to put you guys on the spot. You ready?
Ready. Let's go. People listening to this may or may not know that John and Kyle are both my bosses. I report directly to both of them. So let's get it all out there.
How is it to have me as an employee? Oh, you're the worst. Not as an employee. You're a great employee. You're the worst for asking us to answer this on here.
Yeah. That’s a tough question. I mean, I'll be honest. I think you're kind of a Swiss army knife. You excel at content.
You know, this podcast is great with you and Kyle. You are involved with the premium team more than you think, and, you know, it's a great asset to Thrifty Traveler. Yeah. I think Swiss Army knife is a great way of putting it. So Gunnar kinda serves a dual role on the team, which not a lot of companies our size do.
Gunnar's got, like, one foot in premium finding and sending flight deals and helping John and the rest of the team proof deals and get them out out the door and into people's inboxes. And then, you know, writing stories for our website, doing this podcast now, which we've been doing for a couple of months now. And having those two things, I think, gives you just, like, the awesome perspective of being able to look at what's happening on the flight deal side and translate it into a podcast and talk about it in, like, a sensical way, which not a lot of people can do, and kinda tease out those trends and say, you know what? It's we've sent a lot of lie flat deals to Australia lately. We should probably be talking about this.
And everybody else in the room is like, thank you, Gunnar. No. None of us would have drawn that, connection had you not brought it up. So it's it's honestly it's a treat. I'll get back to insulting you in a in a future podcast, but for now, we'll end it on a on a high note.
And I think the other good part is you like my shortened words a lot more than Kyle, so you're you're easier to work with with my, jargon. Appreciate that. That's true. Unintelligible, our conversations in the office most of the time. That's not how I thought that on the spot would go.
I honestly thought you guys would, rip me apart a little more, but, I'm just gonna go ahead and play this segment at my next performance review. So this works out just great for me. Thank you everybody for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. If you would please rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice, we'd much appreciate it. Like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube so you you can see John wearing the ostrich pillow in today's episode.
Also send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation. We're we wanna help them get there. If you have feedback for us, just 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, Jackson Newman, and begrudgingly, my favorite employee, Gunnar Olsen. It was edited by David Strutt. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tiso. See you later, guys. See you, guys.