This week, we have on the most interesting man in travel: Peter Thornton! As Thrifty Traveler’s Senior Award Deal Analyst, Peter is responsible for finding all the best uses for your points and miles, but his long career in travel has touched nearly every aspect of the industry. From being a flight attendant to finding mistake fares for Airfare Watchdog and now analyzing points and miles deals, Peter knows more about airfare than anyone out there. And he’s the only one who played guitar for Ja Rule, Paul Walker, and Vin Diesel at MTV Spring Break 2001…yeah, we get that story on the pod, too!
This week, we interview the most interesting man in travel: Peter Thornton! As Thrifty Traveler’s Senior Award Deal Analyst, Peter is responsible for finding all the best uses for your points and miles, but his long career in travel has touched nearly every aspect of the industry. From being a flight attendant to finding mistake fares for Airfare Watchdog and now analyzing points and miles deals, Peter knows more about airfare than anyone out there. And he’s the only one who played guitar for Ja Rule, Paul Walker, and Vin Diesel at MTV Spring Break 2001…yeah, we get that story on the pod, too!
Special shoutout to the sponsor of this week’s episode, Abundo Wealth!
00:00 - The worst airline websites that expert Peter Thornton has to deal with
04:50 - Something Hot: Peter’s favorite flight deals of all time - including some classic mistake fares
09:50 - Why you should never drive in London – and what not to put on your immigration documents
12:10 - This week’s show is sponsored by Abundo Wealth!
13:00 - Road tripping, the Rand McNally Road Atlas, and falling in love with travel with Peter Thornton
15:25 - Becoming a flight attendant and getting into the industry with North American Airlines
18:15 - Joining Airfare Watchdog and pioneering the cheap flights game
21:00 - Accepting his job offer to Thrifty Traveler at Carnival in Rio de Janeiro
22:30 - How to find points and miles award availability as TT’s Senior Award Analyst
25:00 - Calling the airlines so you don’t have to – and the worst airline hold music
28:00 - What do you wish more travelers knew about award travel?
32:00 - What’s to blame for what Gunnar calls “Hot Flight Summer?” Why has points and miles availability been so good?
35:00 - Looking forward: Making predictions about airfare, points and miles availability, and more in the world of travel
39:15 - The legend of “Cave Matthews Band” and why Peter was featured on a game show called “Dude This Sucks” for MTV Spring Break
42:15 - Listener Question: How far in advance should you book award travel to get the best rates?
46:00 - On the Spot: Overlooked destinations that should get more love than they do
Produced by Gunnar Olson
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olson here with Thrifty Traveler executive editor Kyle Potter, but that's not why you all clicked play on this episode. That would be for our guest today, the most interesting man in travel, the man who's forgotten more about airfare and award travel than you've ever learned. He calls the airlines so you don't have to. It's Thrifty Traveler Premium's brains, beauty, and brawn. It's Peter Thornton. Peter, welcome to the show. How's it going? It's going well, Gunnar. Glad to be here. That's quite the introduction, eh? Yeah.
We are so excited to have you. We've been waiting for this episode for a very long time. And first, we're going to dig right into your wealth of expertise because we need to find something out. And I think you two may be best positioned to answer this of anybody on Earth right now. What are the worst airline websites? Whose booking experience? Whose customer support? What are the websites that just fry your brain when you use them? That's a Peter question. St. Peter, you're on bat. All right. Well...
The one that is bugging me the most lately is QatarAirways.com. This is one of the most buggy websites that exists today. They revamped it not too long ago, and it just keeps getting worse and worse. I mean, it was better for a bit, and now the dual, whatever, two-factor authentication login, and they automatically log you out after two minutes of being idle.
Now, you can't even search for partner awards on their website right now. It's just...
It's a mess, basically. Wow. Yeah. There are so many websites that look nicer and have gotten significantly worse just within the last three or four years as they've implemented these anti-fraud measures, like two-factor authentication, but they just do it in the most atrocious, hindering way possible. I mean, the worst one is Air Canada, which has done so much of this to their website. And it's such a useful website for finding and booking award space using your points and miles. Yeah.
But some of their like anti-fraud measures have just gotten ridiculous. You know, the elephant in the room is Avianca Life Miles, but that's not even the first, not even the second one that comes to mind for me. The most annoying one to me is Air France and KLM because...
Sometimes it works and you can book a ticket no problem and it's like a flip of a coin. Other times it doesn't and then you try to use the app and sometimes that works better and other times it doesn't. So it's just really frustrating, I think, especially for people who are like just getting into this and booking some of their first award tickets using their points.
And if the first experience you have is trying to book, you know, a cheap economy award over to Europe or a cheap Delta flight or a 60,000 point business class award to Paris or Amsterdam, and it errors out,
I mean, if that were me, my first assumption would be this is all a joke. This is a scam. I got scammed for earning these points. So it's just really, really frustrating. Yeah, especially because here in the US, the three major airlines do have pretty, pretty clean operations on their websites. And then you go to some of these foreign carriers where the
actual value exists and then yeah you're stuck dealing with a website that doesn't work and then you know if you need to call customer support sometimes that can be a little painful too yeah my answer was obviously going to be avianca i've told the gunner olsen olsen olsen story on the podcast before but every time i called customer service to have them remove an olsen from my last name they added an olsen to my last name and until finally i got someone on the phone
who could help me out. But as two guys who vet award space more than perhaps anybody else, I thought you guys would be well positioned to answer this question and help people out and let people know that you're not crazy. All right. No, you are not really stink. You are not the only person that is having problems with Qatar Airways or Air France or Avianca or Iberia, which would be my number two.
Iberia too, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just the basics of it is airlines are not putting their resources into website IT. So it's tough to get through. You just, you got to get through the quirks. If you want to learn the quirks of the website, you just got to, got to struggle through it basically. Or you pay Peter to do it for you. Have Peter do it for you or millennials cover your ears. You got to pick up the phone sometimes and just get it done that way. So.
All right, today on the show, we're going to talk to Peter Thornton about his winding road through working in aviation, studying airfare, and now building out the foremost award availability alert system in North America. And then if we have time, Peter's going to let us know how he found himself performing in front of Ja Rule and Paul Walker at MTV Spring Break. That's a true story. All that and more. Welcome back to the Thrifted Traveler podcast. ♪
All right, let's jump into something hot and something cold. It's something good and something bad out there for travelers. And this week's can be focused all on Peter. And we're going to start with something hot. Peter, what are some of your favorite flight deals from over the years? You've had about a decade of experience finding and booking great flight deals. Tell us which are the ones that are kind of the best highlights. Yeah, one that really, really come to mind when you asked me this question is 2013. I think this might have been right around or before Thrifty Traveler started even, but
I remember the day after Christmas, I was looking for airfare deals for my previous job. And all of a sudden I see, oh, Delta economy flights are like $48 a round trip every single route nationwide, even New York to Los Angeles nonstop. There was stuff to Hawaii for like $150 a round trip, stuff to Europe in the hundreds round trip. It was just insanity. Yeah. So we got nuts, like signing a bunch of those deals.
And turns out they were honored. I mean, Delta honored those fairs. It was a news story back then. It was a huge, huge shakeup. You know, obviously a mistake fair. Yeah. So that was one of the most exciting. I didn't book it, but. I didn't book it. I booked 18. I went to Hawaii four times and I went to Amsterdam eight times. How long did it last?
I think like half a day. I don't recall exactly, but I think about that, yeah. Different times, right? I mean, we find and send mistake fares a couple of times a year now. And even now, sometimes it's kind of questionable. Is this a mistake fare or airlines are just trying to fill seats and they're getting crazy? But that, the scope of that, that it wasn't just nationwide domestically, but, you know, out to Hawaii, over to Europe, that is like beyond anything that we've seen within certainly the last decade, right? Yeah.
Oh, yeah. That was the biggest that I remember for sure. System-wide almost. That reminds me of that Polaris deal. Was it last year when it was the very last day of the calendar in March sometime? Every single Polaris route became available all at once for booking with Points and Miles, United Polaris business class. That was one of the craziest deals that we've ever sent. The deal was just like, search whatever route you want. It's there. Go find it. One day only. I hope you want to fly on March 1st.
Yeah, it was like a week in March, like one week. We're not going to send all the cities because it would be a wall of text. Any others that come to mind of some of the best deals from over the years? Well, there is one I booked. I can't recall the year, maybe 2015, somewhere around there. It was Dallas to Melbourne, Australia for like $150 a round trip. Whoa. Yeah, I think it was flying, but Delta connecting to Virgin Australia.
which they used to be partners. Yeah, it was clearly a mistake. This one I booked. I was like really excited. I'm going to go. And unfortunately, this one was not honored. They canceled the ticket. So it was exciting to book. I mean, part of the thrill is booking for me. I mean, it's like, oh, wow, I'm going to do this. I mean, just because I knew it was a mistake and everything. I didn't take it. I wasn't terribly upset because I always thought that was an option.
But yeah, the thrill is great. It was fun. That's an awesome one. Anything up front in business class that you've loved over the years? Yeah, and most recently, this is a really cool quirk that I kind of found just here, searching for deals for Thrifty Traveler. Flying nonstop from Dublin back to LA in business class on Aer Lingus, peak summer,
where they normally have a higher price for the peak seasons with Avios using Aer Lingus Avios. There's a weird quirk where the longer routes going all the way to LA, which is close to where I live in San Diego, for 47,500 miles one way. And I think I had a transfer bonus at the time, so it probably dropped it even lower. But yeah, normally you book that with British Airways Avios. So if you book that with Aer Lingus Avios, I think it would be like 75,000.
So save like over 20,000 or maybe not over close to 20,000 miles just by booking with British Airways Avios. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, that's got to be 70, even close to 80,000 for not just all the way from the West Coast where, you know, the longer you're flying, especially from the West Coast over to Europe, the pricier it's going to get using miles, but also in peak summer when the airline typically. So they just like flipped it on its head and they said, yeah, peak is off peak for today. No, that's that's wild. Yeah, it's a weird quirk. Yeah.
For summer and the longer routes, you book with British Airways, obviously. Yeah. Yeah, you save some. It's funny. I'm trying to logic it out, them thinking that maybe peak is the winter in LA, but it also works up and down the West Coast, you said? Yeah. Yeah, San Fran. I don't know. That doesn't really work. It's just a pricing quirk. Go get it while it's still there. Yeah.
It's not all beautiful in travel, Peter. We've talked to every guest we've had on the show about some of their travel mishaps. Anything from your travels over the years that jumps to mind? Yeah, one thing is I was going to London to visit a friend. This was when I was in college. And I rented a car. We were going to go to Liverpool, I think, when I landed. She was going to meet me at the airport. We were going to drive out there and check out a new city. Turns out I had...
I, for some reason I put on the immigration form just like my friend's house. And the immigration officer didn't really like that. So he's like, where are you staying? And so he was trying to call her and this was before we had cell phones. So I'm like, she's meeting me at the airport. You're not going to get her on the phone.
So there was a couple hour, an hour hold up at immigration just for that, just silly stuff. But eventually I get out there and it's too late at that time. So we're like, oh, we'll drive into town, just stay in town tonight. And yeah, I should have just gave up on the car because I parked it, didn't move it in the morning. I thought I read the sign, but apparently not correctly. And
There you go. It's like 500 pounds. Oh, no, no. $500 about, I think it was. Yeah. Yeah. It came out to like over $500 for a towing fee.
And we just went and got it and we drove to Stonehenge the next day. So we did use the car, but I don't recommend driving in central London. It's not a good idea. Just so we're clear, I think all of us would recommend not writing my friend's house on customs and immigration forms as well. That's another mishap. That's a pro tip right there. Just use their name, Kyle's Place. Great.
I'm crashing with Kyle. That's funny that even without cell phones, too, you can't even figure it out. You can't look on Google Maps. I feel like everything I do is always saved under my Google Maps before I go anywhere. Yeah, right. You're just cold calling someone's landline to see if they can give you an address. That's a great story. All right. We're going to have plenty more stories in this podcast from Peter here. But first, we're going to take a quick break.
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All right, welcome back. Let's get into the extra mile where we dig a lot deeper on something in the world of travel, and that something is Peter Thornton this week. We're going to need a lot of time to dig this deep into Peter Thornton. Buckle up, folks. Of all the Thrifty Traveler employees, I think you have the most interesting backstory among us. What sparked your love of travel to begin with? How did you get started on this long road?
So, it's funny you say road there. It all started with road trips, to be honest. I was really big into road trips as a kid, and part of that probably came from both my parents grew up in Buffalo, New York, and raised our family here in Duluth, Minnesota, a little bit north of here, but...
Yeah, so we would drive back and forth between Duluth and Buffalo every single summer. And I was obsessed with reading the Rand McNally Road Atlas. I would study the maps, like every state, the whole interstate system. I just got obsessed with maps on these road trips. And I was like, oh, I want to go there. I want to go there. I want to go there. It's just, it was a weird, weird obsession as a kid. But it kind of just developed into a world of travel, I guess, in the future. I mean...
And then I decided I'm going to go away for school. I'm going to do study abroad. Yeah, it just kind of developed from there and just kept continuing on to bigger things. Yeah. It's funny you mentioned the road atlas. My dad kept a big bound road atlas in the car, and I would always be grinding through that thing all the time, doing the same thing, just driving.
like looking at these little pockets of the country and wondering what could be. And my dad still travels around with a road Alice. He's a printing out MapQuest directions guy still won't, won't put it on the screen in his car. The screen in his car is like 25 inches large and he still won't put anything on it. MapQuest.com. But the maps, I think motivate a lot of us. And now, you know, we spend a lot of time looking at the Google flights, explore map. And now it's, I feel like I'm a kid again. Yeah.
You guys are making me feel really bad. I was just on my Game Boy in the back of the car the whole time. Not broadening my worldview. I was just crushing Pokemon. That's kind of how you discovered travel and road trips. Take us through some of the jobs that you've had in travel because they haven't just been award analysts, right? Haven't just been award analysts. No. I guess what really took my...
my travel to the next level was starting to work in the industry and that happened shortly after college after another very long road trip where i went to south america and back after i finished college my first like i guess real job after college was just being a flight attendant for a charter airline it's called north american airlines and yeah we we went all over the world i mean it was
It was just wild. And I never expected I would be a flight attendant. I just honestly, I was just telling the story to some of our colleagues yesterday. And I was like, yeah, I saw an ad on Craigslist. I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. I kind of want to get in the travel business. Like, I think I was looking at like travel agencies, too. And then I saw that I was like, oh, I'll show up to that open house and see what it's all about. And sure enough, I think I got hired just because I had traveled a lot. Yeah, to be honest.
And, yeah, I just never looked back. That was my, I guess, introduction to the airline industry, too. And I just loved it. I just fell in love with planes. You know, all the ins and outs of the industry in general just fascinated me. Fascinated me. Let's just pause and appreciate that after dozens of episodes, many of which Gunnar and I have had to add in the disclaimer,
We haven't worked for airlines. We can finally say we've got an industry insider. Peter Thornton, former flight attendant, has worked in the airline industry. Yeah, you got me. I had enough of it after three years just flying for work. It can be tiring and a little annoying. So I moved to Mexico for a bit. I thought I'd be an English teacher, but no.
Something called me back to the airline industry. I tried that for a little bit. I didn't really like it. And I moved back to New York and I got back in the industry, basically. You couldn't quit it for long? No. No, I couldn't quit it for long. Like I told you, I just... And ever since I got back in it now, I haven't looked back. That's when I got the job more in the media side, finding flight deals for my previous company, Airfare Watchdog. And I stuck with that for a good decade, so...
Yeah. Going back quickly to the, the, you know, charter flight attendant gig, what kind of places did you go see? What kind of charters were you running? Were they pass it? Was it all passenger? Was it some cargo? Like what was, no, it was, yeah, it was mostly all passenger. Um, they did, they did, you know, like companies would sometimes charter the charter flights somewhere. Uh, primarily it was military charter though. That was a primary charter.
Primary flights we did. We also had some scheduled service into Africa. But yeah, it was just primarily charters. Cool. That's pretty awesome. So you head to New York, you start writing for Airfare Watchdog. What year was that and what's the kind of airfare climate like at that point? That was 2009, I believe.
Airfares, this was back when Travelocity was one of the best tools to find cheap flights, to be honest. Wow. Throwback. Throwback. Good old Travelocity. That was one of our go-tos. I mean, it would tell you all the fare rules. Flexible, you had a calendar view, all this stuff. It would give a lot of details about every single fare. It was consumer-facing, so it was really nice. I think Allegiant was just starting around this time. I mean, Southwest was...
was still really, really king. Still is, I'd say. But as far as airfare sales, so I mean, a lot of that moved everything for the most part. And you could only obviously, until recently, book on its website. So it involved a lot of, you know,
A little work, a little labor. Yeah. Yeah. So looking in totality from, you know, when you first got into the industry and started paying really close attention to airfare in 2009-ish to today, I mean, you've got more than a decade, a decade and a half of experience. Does it feel like...
like how airlines set prices and what dictates what you paid flying from point A to point B. Does it feel like that has changed a lot over the last decade and a half? Or do you feel like the same dynamics are kind of there? It's just like the circumstances change. I mean, I would honestly say very similar dynamics now. I mean, maybe around, you know, during the pandemic, it might have changed a little bit, but I think it's slowly coming back to very similar dynamics.
Similar pricing schemes requiring you to stay over Saturday night to book a round trip to get a cheaper flight a lot of times. As you broke recently, the whole one passenger thing, that does seem kind of new actually, but it's just the same end result. They're trying to charge some people more and get the leisure travelers to pay what they're willing to pay to fill their seats basically.
So you had a good long run with Airfare Watchdog and looking at cash fares, and obviously you're still doing a lot of that with us. But before you tell us what exactly you're doing here, tell us about the day that you were hired at Thrifty Traveler. Where were you? Oh, yeah. That was a very fun day. If you remember. Yeah, I kind of remember. It was a memorable day. It was fun.
I was, you know, down in Brazil, you know, celebrating my birthday. I had a great time to be in Brazil. It was in February and carnival was going on. So that was a fun thing. Yeah, I was meeting with, I don't know, about 10, 15 friends, Rio de Janeiro. And I think I did the first interview like before I left for this trip. I had this trip planned and then
I get down there and I do another video interview and I'm in my Airbnb. I got the kitchen sink behind me. It was a beautiful kitchen sink. I was on that video interview. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, I'm in Rio de Janeiro. I didn't tell him beforehand, but yeah. I was like, oh, yeah, I'm in Brazil right now. Like, oh, wow. Which just for anybody who does want to work for us, that is a positive. Yeah. He's one of us. Yeah.
So, yeah, and then it was a glorious day, I'd have to say. I got the job. When I finally accepted it, it was on my birthday. And then I went out, I met my friends, and I enjoyed it.
What is Brazilian Carnival? Yeah, that's awesome. I love that story. All right. So then you land at Thrifty Traveler. You're here with us full time. Tell us about your job. Tell us about your day to day and what you're doing for Thrifty Traveler Premium. Yeah. So basically my day is tracking award availability. That's the primary goal.
So just tracking a ton of different routes and seeing the trends, seeing the changes. When something super rare pops up, it lights up a lot of things in our premium team. So yeah, and then also just paying attention to nuances in airline websites, changes in how airlines are releasing availability to book with partner airlines, which is generally where the sweet spot is.
But yeah, just keeping on top of all the news as well, especially when there's new routes going on, digging into that really, really quickly because that can create award space basically a lot of times. So new routes is a big thing we try to keep our eye on. And yeah, just vetting all the details for subscribers to make sure they can book them. I think there's an assumption, and it's probably...
It's understandable. And I think it's probably in part because just within the last few years, we've seen an explosion of digital tools to help people find award space that they can book with their points and miles. So I think that there's an assumption that services like ours are just digital. It's a tool that scrapes the Internet and finds deals and sends them out.
And what we talk about together all of the time, and you are the pinnacle of this, is just how manual the work that you do is, the work that you and Katie and John and Gunnar and the rest of the team is, where, I mean, in most cases, it involves actually going to QatarAirways.com and dealing with that
you know, frustrating dumpster fire of a website or Air France and manually running the searches to confirm that things are there and to find the award space that pops up when, as you said, a new route pops up or an airline switches aircraft from like a Dreamliner to an Airbus A380 with tons more seats and all of a sudden there's award inventory there. I mean, the... I don't even know if this is a question. This is more like a thank you, Peter, as I'm getting through this because it...
I mean, it truly is so, so much manual work to churn out these deals and find the good stuff. Yeah, no, it just, it takes a lot. And it's something that the vast majority of travelers are just confused by. And they're not, they're going to have trouble going to the websites themselves and booking it. So basically, yeah, what I try to do is test everything out, make, you know, because things change every week as far as how these things are actually booked.
And just, you know, make sure it's going and explain how to do it. Yeah. I joked at the top, and we've talked about this before, but we call you St. Peter because of how much time you spend on hold with the airlines. And it happened today. I was sitting over there, and all of a sudden I hear you say, hello? Yeah. Okay. And I look at John, and he goes, it's Finnair. Peter's spending 30 minutes of his day calling Finnair, so you don't have to. On that note, do you have any airline hold music memorized? No.
Oh, man. If so, what is your favorite and least favorite airline hold music? I would say Virgin Atlantic is probably the most annoying because I've listened to that a lot. Yeah.
So, yeah, I think I do. Like, oh, yeah, I remember this song. So, Virgin, if you're listening, please, for the sake of Peter, change your hold music. Yeah, just mix it up, you know? Give them a rotation. You know it's Peter call. You know, they're passing it around the switchboard being like, yeah, it's starting again.
All right. So obviously those are kind of the painstaking man hours that go into it. What's your favorite part about all this, though? Like, why do you love finding and sending award deals?
My favorite part is getting the replies from people that book it, to be honest. Just opening their eyes and the excitement so many people have, especially when it's their first award booking. It's just amazing. It's an amazing feeling. They're like, oh, I'm going to visit this country for the first time. I'm looking so forward to the trip. Even on cash deals, too, when we find crazy cheap cash deals. Yeah, just hearing the feedback from the customers. Also, if they do reply and they need just a
a pointer on where to look, you know, if they're confused by something, I just give them a link and help them out a little bit and they're thrilled. So that's, that's my favorite part, I guess, getting, getting people to travel more.
Yeah. You always, you always share those, uh, those replies with us, especially when it's, you know, you do something that like really opens someone's eyes. And it's always, we always, it's always funny that the replies that you get are always like, wow, Peter, you've, you've changed my life. And then sometimes the replies I get are like accidental replies where it's someone being like, Hey, Brenda, we should go here. It's like this, you replied, you didn't forward this, please, please pass this on to Brenda. But if I am invited, I will be there, Brenda. Um, but,
but I love, I love hearing from people who book deals. And I think, you know, just to toot our own horn one more time, I promise this won't be the whole show. But,
But just the level of detail in the booking instructions, the how to book section of every deal will take you exactly step by step through what you need to do. And in almost every award deal, we're also just giving you the exact dates that you need to look for. There's so much guesswork taken out of it. And if you hate using airline websites that really stink, you pretty much don't have to as long as you can get logged in and press the date that you need.
we can get you there the rest of the way. And that detail is all because of you and Katie Rollins on our award team. You guys do such an incredible job with it. So, um, one more question for you and maybe I'm springing this on you. What's something you wish more travelers understood about award travel? You know, is there like a pain point that comes up over and over again, or is there, you know, something that people are just overlooking, I guess?
I want to say the biggest thing is I wish people knew that you do sometimes have to call the airline to either get a better deal or to get something to book because the website's not working, as we've been discussing more. That's probably one of the biggest things I wish people understood. If it doesn't work online, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. So don't be afraid to pick up the phone. The other thing is just...
The fact that it doesn't matter how many points you have sometimes, the reason you can't book something is because it's just not available. You can't book it for a higher price sometimes. This is very true with partner awards, which are the best deals overall. If the airline that you're trying to fly is not releasing the seat to be booked by the partner, you won't be able to book it at all. It doesn't matter if you have a ton of miles. It just won't work. Yeah.
You can buy your way out of problems with like SkyMiles, right? Right. If the seat is available, you can book it. It's going to be astronomical, but you can just, you know, pay your way out of issues. But, you know, with some of these transferable or with some of the partner awards, like you said, it's either there or it's not. So, you know, you can't just having 700,000 Virgin Atlantic miles, which I don't understand how you would have that. But if you have 700,000 Virgin Atlantic miles, it does not mean you're going to be able to fly Delta One around the world. Right.
A lot of what you're talking about here, Peter, I think comes back to you. You got to put stuff into award travel in order to get more out of it. That I mean, we we do our best. Other companies do their best to help people connect the dots and learn this stuff. But at the end of the day, you need to be able to be willing to put in the time to at least understand the basics, right?
if you want to do this on your own, you got to put in the time to find the award space, to earn the points, to transfer them, learn all of the ins and outs, and then learn how to deal with the hiccups of all this ticket didn't go through. Is this phantom award space where, you know, American Airlines is showing a Japan Airlines first class seat bookable from JFK to Tokyo, but it's not actually there. And how do you check on those things?
I mean, I think the three of us sitting at this table would agree it's absolutely worth the effort, but you need to be willing to put in that effort in the first place. No, 100%. Yeah, I mean, it takes time. It takes time to, you know, in repetition, just trying to learn it, you'll become like second nature at some point. Yeah. Yeah.
All right, let's shift gears here and talk a little bit about what's happening lately. And recently we had a show where Kyle and I came up with an extremely catchy name for this abundance of award space we found over the last few months. Stop trying to make Hot Flight Summer happen, Gunnar. We call it Hot Flight Summer, and basically...
Peter, you're to blame for all of this. You're the one who's found so many deals that you're stressing John out. I've never seen John, the head of our Thrift Traveler Premium, stressed before. And I actually saw him pacing around this office at one point because of you. I have lost track of how many times Peter has... I've either heard...
Someone say that you relate or you've said directly to us. This was the craziest deal of flight of craziest week of flight deals in my career. I think we're at least at five within the past like couple months. Yeah, this this has been a trend recently for sure. I mean, it's I haven't seen anything since I started working here in recent time that we've seen in recent times. I mean, it's just been a flood.
So why? Why is this happening? Do you have any theories? Kyle and I have talked to ourselves in circles about why this is going on. What's the deal? Yeah, well, I mean, it all comes down, as we've said many times, supply and demand. But the big thing here is airlines have made these schedules months ago. There's a lot of news recently that's not very travel-friendly.
So airlines are still flying the planes though, and people might not be booking. So a good way to do that especially is to use award travel. It's kind of opaque pricing in a way. They're not selling their seats off for super cheap cash fares as far as business class goes. But it's a good time to get people more loyal to their programs.
Because, oh, I can actually book this for this price. It exists. Yeah, at the end of the day, I have no crystal ball. But those are some theories I have. We've seen it a lot. When there's a downturn in travel, the deals are better. And I think that's kind of what's happening now. We're noticing fewer numbers in international travel. Deals are popping up.
We talked before in the previous episode about how in normal times, if you gave an airline CEO a choice between selling a business class ticket for $4,000 or letting a traveler book it with their miles for 50, 60, 70,000 miles, they're always going to pick that $4,000 fare. But when times start to get a little bit tougher and they're having trouble filling those seats, even those seats at the front of the plane,
The airline would much rather sell that ticket, let somebody with miles book it for 50, 60, 70,000 miles, than start to sell that ticket for $2,000 because that dilutes the price point and they lose that pricing power at the front of the cabin to charge corporations or wealthy travelers those high prices for a lie-flat business class fare.
I think the point you made, Peter, about letting people in these loyalty programs have a win too is pretty huge because we've talked about this trend on the show as well. There were a few years there where it was excellingly
exceedingly hard to find award availability, especially on the long haul routes, especially in the front cabins. So to let people know that, hey, by the way, this program that we care about and you should care about will still be valuable to you, especially when it's not necessarily going to hurt them because nobody's paying that cash fare anyway. So that's a really good point. Yeah.
I think we all expect that this hot flight summer is not going to last forever. So projecting forward, Peter, I know you said you left your crystal ball at home, but if you have a portable one, please whip it out and tell us what's going on the rest of the year, next year. What kind of flight deal trends do you see in the future specifically for award travel? I mean, a trend that we've seen is the whole, you know, airlines are...
fine tuning who they release their award seats to. So I think that's going to continue. Like it's not always going to be a blanket. Sometimes they'll release, you know, certain routes to partners, but certain routes they'll keep only for their own airline miles. I think that's a trend that will continue or certain classes as we've seen first class is becoming primarily like you can only book with the airline you're actually flying book with their miles. Um,
But I also believe there's going to be new opportunities. There's always going to be new opportunities. Primarily, I can see new airline programs becoming transfer partners, which will be amazing when it happens because that's always exciting when there's new programs to dig into. New ways to send your Chase Points or American Express or Capital One to new airline programs because there are some out there where like...
Nobody pays attention to them because, you know, you you're not going to ever have a meaningful amount of Lufthansa miles and more because there's no way to transfer U.S. bank points to that program. And there are dozens more like that. Yeah. And I and that can open up more opportunities that I you know, if we were playing speculation, Lufthansa miles and more recently changed their program.
their pricing scheme. And I could honestly see them become a transfer partner for a bank. I mean, these international airlines are probably going to want to get into the U.S. banking system as far as like points. So I kind of see more opportunities coming that way. Yeah. And you kind of alluded to this earlier. I mean, so much of what we see in terms of deals bookable with points and miles is
is not across the board like it's easy to book you know any business class flight on Air France or with China Airlines over to Taipei or whatever or Starlux to Taipei go down the list so much of it now is really really dynamic based upon
small changes of adding a fifth frequency each week instead of just three or four or changing the aircraft type that operates a route or adding a brand new flight like a lot a lot of the deals I mean we're seeing more than ever but a lot of them are really dictated by these kind of operational changes that the airlines make and in some cases you know these things last for hours and it's
in sometimes minutes because, you know, basically they make a change. It triggers a change in how the airlines are releasing award inventory that you can actually book. And then eventually the airline catches up and, and, you know, zeros that out. Yeah. I think that's the important note is that, you know, Peter, there's always new opportunities. Like you said, when we interviewed Jared, he said the same thing, you know, the people like to, to,
cool about the golden age of points and miles and how we're well past that and is everything dead and is everything going dynamic and it's just not
Not the case because there's things are always going to be changing. The only constant in this industry is change. And when things change, opportunities open up, especially for people who have points and miles are earning them efficiently and are willing to spend them. So but I guess still don't hoard your points. Don't sit there and wait for that perfect opportunity. Keep keep those points coming in and out of your account and keep traveling, I think.
Is the key. Any other trends to look forward to over the next year or a couple years? You can project as far out as you'd like. Next couple years. Oh, wow. I definitely see more mergers. I mean, that's just prediction again. Any trends? And I
Yeah, I just think more partnerships, especially within the U.S. market. We have a lot of airlines right now. That is a good prediction. Consolidation, I see it happening. Yeah. And it's always a bad thing for pricing for the most part, but, you know.
There'll be, there'll be other opportunities. Yeah. Bad thing for pricing, but possibly good for partnerships. Like you said, and relationships with other banks and other airlines as well. Okay. Peter, this is the part of the interview that I think, uh, you're not going to love as much as Kyle and I are going to love. And that's because our team here, the thrift traveler team has an obsession with a story that you told us. And the, the,
The story is fantastic, really, and we're so excited about it. But what really was great about it is that it was one of the first stories you ever told us in our first team retreat with you there. And I just need you to explain MTV Spring Break 2001, how you got there, what happened, and then most importantly, what happened on that stage.
Funny thing. I mentioned earlier I worked for an airline called North American Airlines. This was before that. I flew them from Providence to Cancun. This story came up because we were in Cancun area, East Luma Harris. And yeah, I think someone mentioned a Fast and Furious movie coming out. I was like, oh, yeah, I remember Fast and Furious. I was here, you know.
They were promoting some movie. Who did you say? Ja Rule? Ja Rule, Paul Walker, and Vin Diesel. Yeah. I mean, RIP Paul Walker. Basically, too long to read. We got to get to that. I was in a caveman suit singing a song about animals for MTV Spring Break. Some show called Dude, This Sucks. Yeah, it was interesting. And it's very, very interesting because John's favorite band is Dave Matthews.
And they called me the Cave Matthews Band. Who is they? Oh, MTV. Yeah. Yeah. Just the sequence of events that leads to you singing on a stage in front of guest judges, Ja Rule, Paul Walker, and Vin Diesel in a caveman suit is just an incredible image, especially because when you told us this story, we knew almost nothing about you.
So this is like core text for thrifty traveler now. And I feel like every time we go on another retreat, we peel back another layer of this story and learn like some other little detail. I will say, though, for anybody listening that's watching on YouTube,
Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to locate video of the Cave Matthews band playing on Dude This Sucks MTV Spring Break 2001. So if you have any leads, podcast at thriftytraveler.com. We will find it one day. Dude This Sucks. I forgot the name of the show. That was the little bit of information that got me this time.
Thank you for sharing that with the wider audience, Peter. And the best, you know, some of the details of the story are just going to stay with the Thrift Traveler team. And that's okay. Maybe on your next time, next time you come on the show, maybe we'll get a couple beers in you and let the rest of the story fly. But before we do that, let's help out a listener. How about that? Sounds good. We have a listener named Mike.
who wrote to us saying the following i'm fairly new to the points and miles space and i always hear you can get the best airline redemptions when you book as soon as the award trip becomes available however i'm finding that most award trips for next summer in business class are super pricey like 200 300 000 points
Looking at North America to Greece specifically. Whereas the same trips this August or September can be booked for much lower, like 55,000, 60,000 points. Is this just this particular route? Is it that you don't always get the best redemptions by booking early or is something else going on? Appreciate any advice. What do we have for Mike here, you guys?
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