This week on the show, we get to know co-host Kyle Potter a little better as Gunnar grills him on everything from his failed attempt at becoming an Uber driver that ultimately brought him to Thrifty Traveler, his punk/hardcore touring band days, to covering state politics as a journalist for the Associated Press (Kyle contains multitudes…). Plus, we talk about some sizzling transfer bonuses and help a listener decide if she should transfer points to Emirates speculatively.
This week on the show, we get to know co-host Kyle Potter a little better as Gunnar grills him on everything from his failed attempt at becoming an Uber driver that ultimately brought him to Thrifty Traveler, his punk/hardcore touring band days, to covering state politics as a journalist for the Associated Press (Kyle contains multitudes…). Plus, we talk about some sizzling transfer bonuses and help a listener decide if she should transfer points to Emirates speculatively.
(00:00) - Who won our big airline mileage program draft?!
(02:20) - Something Hot: A trio of transfer bonuses (including a sneaky great one from Qantas)
(08:20) - Something Cold: The best credit card bonus offer we’ve ever seen is almost gone
(10:40) - A word from Thrifty Traveler Premium - use promo code TTPOD to save even more!
(12:25) - The Extra Mile: Going deep with Kyle Potter
(13:15) - How Kyle went from covering politics to getting snubbed as an Uber driver
(25:55) - Quick Hitters: Kyle on his touring punk/hardcore band, his best MSP Airport hack, hist next trip, the worst flight of his life, his dog Mikka, and more.
(34:50) - Listener Question: “Should I speculatively transfer points to Emirates?”
(37:30) - Gunnar On the Spot: 2 truths and a lie about Kyle
Produced by Gunnar Olson & Long Tran
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo. Welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olson, the unlikeliest, scrappiest airline loyalty draft underdog that there ever was here with your proverbial Goliath. It's Kyle Potter. Goliath.
That's a no. I'm like a full six inches shorter than you. Yes. But you're a giant in the space in the points and miles space. Also not true.
Alright, Kyle. To start, I need to find something out. How did our inaugural airline loyalty draft go? It pains me to say that despite all of my bluster during last week's episode of the draft, Gunnar Olsen won with a commanding 56.3% of the vote. We tallied everything up from Twitter, from Instagram, from our website, from YouTube.
And, Gunnar, you didn't just eke out a win. You really put me in my place. I try to live my life without many regrets, but not picking Alaska Airlines mileage plan with my number two or even my number one pick might be a top five regret for me because I think that's why you won. Yeah. I thought that one was a steal when I got it at, at number two.
But, you know, I thought my drafting of Emirates only to have two of their transfer partners pause transfers about twelve hours after the draft was gonna sink me. I thought I was completely cooked. And, my mom voting on every platform at least 10 times to each save me in the end, I think. Thanks a lot, Gunnar's mom. It was fun.
That was a really fun draft. I really hope we can do that again, in some version or another. But I've got good news for you. This is our show. We can do whatever we want.
So we could do another draft this week if we wanted to, but we're not. We're not doing that. But today on the show, we're gonna discuss some new exciting transfer bonuses to some of our favorite airline programs. We're gonna talk about the rapidly approaching end of the best credit card offer ever. And in our featured segment called the extra mile, I'm interviewing Kyle.
What's his favorite color? Who's his least favorite coworker? We're gonna find out. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Alright.
Let's jump into something hot and something cold where we look at the good and the bad news out there for travelers from the last week, and we're gonna start with something hot as always. Kyle, a trio of transfer bonuses that we're really excited about. A 25% bonus when you transfer chase ultimate rewards to virgin and an identical 25% bonus, from chase to flying blue as well. And then a, Qantas bonus, 20% bonus when you transfer Capital One Venture Miles to Qantas. These are all really exciting.
I I think these Chase, bonuses to Virgin and Flying Blue are especially good for, our Sky Ma or our SkyTeam flyers out there. But, what stands out to you about either of these? I mean, first of all, transfer bonuses as a whole are just pretty amazing. It's an opportunity to get some free miles. And I think for a lot of people who are understandably anxious about transferring their miles to an airline partner, in some cases, you know, in an airline mileage program of a foreign airline that they've never flown, maybe don't even aren't even aware of.
These transfer bonuses make it a little bit easier to stomach. But, again, you know, it's an opportunity to get some free miles with an airline program. And, you know, in this case, having not one but two great SkyTeam partners in both Virgin Atlantic and Air France KLM flying blue. The number two pick overall on my roster from last week's airline mileage program, draft mind you, is amazing. And then Capital One, I think, in particular, stands out with this 20% bonus to Qantas.
Not because Qantas is so great, though. We'll get into a couple of different sweet spots people could use, in order to book something with their Capital One miles. But Capital One just is not as generous with these kind of transfer bonuses. You know, month by month, we typically see both American Express and Chase out with at least one, if not several different transfer bonuses to some of their select transfer partners. Capital One, it it's only a handful of times a year.
I mean, five, six months of the year at most. So seeing this from Capital One coming back with this 20% transfer bonus to Qantas from Australia is pretty exciting. Yeah. Their Capital One is definitely a little stingier with these things. But when they give you an opportunity like this, you have to jump on it, especially with Qantas where, you know, people might look at some of the rates Qantas charges on some of these, especially on their own flights to Australia and think, you know, maybe that's a little rich for my blood, but a transfer bonus kinda closes the gap there and makes a lot of these, redemptions kind of a lot easier, a lot easier to stomach on the on the account.
So what what, what are some of the redemptions from Qantas that that you like the most? The one that stands out the most is, you know, if you're gonna fly fifteen plus hours to Australia, being able to do it in a business class seat is a game changer. Being able to lie flat and sleep for a solid four, five, six, seven hours instead of, fifteen minutes, which is my record, in economy, is amazing. And the rub here is that booking business class to Australia on any airline is one of the hardest things to do using points. So the game changer here is that Qantas is much more liberal with allowing people to book business class seats if you're using Qantas points.
You're not gonna find many seats bookable with American Airlines miles or Alaska miles even though those two programs on paper would charge you fewer miles. So being able to book for a 9,000 Qantas points, and you factor in this 20% bonus, which means you can transfer just 20 or 90,000, Capital One miles over to Qantas and then book a business class c to Sydney, to Melbourne, to Brisbane, is is makes this a much, much more palatable redemption and really a great way to use some Capital One miles if you have some saved away and plans to get to Australia this year or next. Yeah. That's clearly, I think, the best redemption and, like you said, going down to Australia helps to have a bed in the sky when you do so. If you wanna fly in the back, the economy rates are just 42,000 Qantas miles from the West Coast or just about 35 k with, that bonus.
And then you can also use Qantas miles, to book AA flights in The US. 8,000 miles or in this case, 6,700 Capital One miles will get the job done there. You could also fly business class to Europe using these miles. And, of course, Emirates, our favorite redemption, a 8,000 Emirates miles, or I'm sorry. Qantas miles to fly Emirates first class.
That's over to that's JFK to Milan. That's what John booked, our chief flight deal analyst recently. And then, 75 k in business class. So that's only 89,000 or 62,000 with Capital One when you use this transfer bonus. So awesome value here all across the board.
One last little plug for Capital One here. We have some great stories on our site kind of lining up all of the different ways to use these transfer bonuses from Chase and Capital One as well as some others that are a little bit less exciting available right now. But one thing that really stands out about Capital One is so long as you transfer miles in increments of above a thousand, you can really start to dial it in by the hundreds, which is unique from all of the other banks. So all the other banks, including Chase, you have to transfer a thousand or 10,000 or 15,000 or 16,000 points, which ends up meaning that, you know, by the time you factor in that transfer bonus, you're gonna end up with a couple of hundred miles just kind of sitting in an airline account with Air France or Virgin Atlantic. Being able to dial it into 15,100 venture miles transferred to Qantas or, you know, 91,400 miles transferred to Qantas allows you to to make sure you're not just kind of sending miles out the door.
And, you know, a couple of hundred miles here or there may not sound like much, but it it it it adds up over time. You know? Yeah. For sure. If, you're out there and you're looking to book something, take advantage of some of these transfer bonuses.
And don't forget about Qantas and all this either. But we gotta pivot to something cold, Kyle. Before we, I guess, slam the freezer door shut here, there's a little bit of time to get in on one of the best credit card sign up bonuses that we've ever seen. So we've gotten word that the Chase Sapphire Preferred offer will be ending soon. And while we don't have an exact date for you, it's clear that the offer is set to expire in just a matter of days.
Just to recap, this is the Chase Sapphire Preferred offer for a hundred thousand bonus Chase Ultimate Rewards points when you spend $5,000 in the first three months. And, of course, the craziest part of all this probably is that this comes at a $95 annual fee. So, Kyle, one more time for the people in the back. Why is this offer so special to you? Because all of my family members are asking about it.
I mean, this has rightfully generated a lot of excitement in large part because it is the biggest and best credit card bonus, not just on the Chase Sapphire Preferred, but period on travel credit cards that we've seen in almost four years. Earning a six digit bonus on a card that, only has a $95 annual fee is absolutely unbeatable. I'm honestly still a little bit surprised that it has lasted this long while its days are numbered. It has been around for, you know, more than a month now, and that is a little bit surprising. But, you know, time is running out to take advantage of this.
Again, we've said it before. We'll say it again. Credit cards are very serious business. Spending $5,000 in three months is not nothing. That is a significant amount of spending.
But if you can do it right and time it right with a big home project or estimated tax payments for next year, whatever the case may be, and go back and pay it off in full and on time. This is one of the best deals in travel period right now to be able to earn a hundred thousand points, to then transfer to Air France or Virgin Atlantic with the 25% bonus or the next big transfer bonus that Chase may roll out to transfer over to Hyatt, which, you know, while I have poo pooed on them a little bit on this show, it's still one of the best ways to to use chase points period. So you can get a ton a ton of value out of these points if you play your cards right. Yep. If you can scoop this card up and hit that minimum spend responsibly and, of course, pay it off in full every month, you gotta run, don't walk to this deal.
This is one of the best deals in travel. Let's take a break. We are just a teensy bit biased, but we believe it. Thrifty Traveler Premium is the single best flight deal service out there, bar none. If you want dirt cheap fares and awesome business or first class deals bookable with points in your inbox daily, this is what you're looking for.
And honestly, I'm kinda losing track of all of the awesome deals that John and the rest of our premium team, including you, Gunner, are sending out to our members on a daily basis. Any recent gems stand out to you? Yeah. How about, two of our patented Unicorn alerts in the same week? We started with SAS business class flying up to Copenhagen from just 29,000 points each way.
Peak summer stuff. The best availability in July in that peak summer month. This one was pretty incredible. The best ways to book was with Air France KOM flying blue. Would you call it spectacular?
Yeah. I would call it spectacular. You could say that. I agree. I learned that word a few weeks ago.
And then we sent out late last night, our team was busy putting together a first class deal Dallas to Sydney on Qantas, in their first class cabin, which looks just so nice. And, it's a 10,000 Qantas miles each way. You could also book it with, Alaska or American as well. Sizzling deal. Pretty amazing.
Hopefully, we get lots of members who booked these ones. If you want deals like these, 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 your first year of deals. That's thriftytraveler.com/premium. Use the promo code t t pod, five letters, all one word, for $20 off your first year.
Alright. Back to the show. Alright. Welcome back. We're gonna do the extra mile where we dig into a topic a little deeper every week, and we're digging into the deepest topic of all because I get to interview Kyle this week.
This is a get to know Kyle episode. How do you feel about that? I am truly terrified. The fact that you started that with the deepest topic of all, like, do I need a therapist in the room? Are you my therapist now?
It's okay. This is we could we could edit out, anything that gets too personal. But, you know, I have some questions on here. I have a couple of questions where I want you to kinda expand a little bit, and then I got some quick hitters at the end. Are you cool with that?
Just yeah. And just so everybody knows, I have no idea what Gunner's about to ask me. So this could get real dark real fast. It's not gonna get dark. It's all light in the world of Kyle Potter.
Alright, Kyle. Let's start here. Tell me about your career as a professional. How did you get to Thrifty Traveler? This is a really fun story.
Prior to working, here at Thrifty Traveler, I've been here for almost seven years now. I was a reporter, journalist, and my prior job was working for the Associated Press, covering state politics at the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul. I was there for a long time, and I I really loved my job and until I started to not love my job so much in large part because I started freelancing here. And that story is the fun part. My wife and I got married in the summer of twenty eighteen.
And as we were planning our wedding that spring, started to look at the budget for that wedding as any anyone, any fiance does and started to look at how much money we had saved up. I was like, oh, crap. This isn't gonna work. I need to do something here. And so my first thought was this was, you know, this the winter and spring of twenty eighteen, and, the Super Bowl was being hosted in Minneapolis here in our hometown.
It's like, great. I'm just gonna drive Uber a ton with all of these out of towners for a while and just rack up some extra money and save it for the wedding. And so I applied to Uber, and they denied me because my car, Chevrolet Volt, only has four seats, and you need five to drive for Uber. And so I started racking my brain for what else I could do. And then I remembered following Thrifty Traveler and being a premium member.
And so I just sent a message on Instagram asking, hey. I'm local here. Love what you guys do. Love travel. Would love to write about this on the side if you're looking for any freelance work.
So the reason why I'm here is because Uber shut me down. Failed Uber driver, Kyle Potter. I did not know this story. That's a pretty amazing one. It's I I it's it's honestly kind of funny to say that out loud.
No. It is one of those true everything happens for a reason kind of situations. And, you know, within a couple of months, if not weeks of, you know, writing on the side, writing up news, writing some airline mileage program guides and beginners guides to, you know, redeeming credit card points and miles and that sort of thing. We started talking about doing this full time, and coming on as our executive editor. And it was just so clear that this is what I needed to be doing, that as much as I did truly love covering politics and and doing what I thought was some really important work, this feels even more important to me and has for the last, you know, better part of seven years because writing about travel, something that makes people really happy and that people really care about instead of writing about something that really pisses most people off in politics has been, a really, really rewarding change.
That's awesome. So let's go back just a little further. I'm kinda doing these big questions in reverse chronology. But when did you know that you had, like, the travel bug? I think I got bit in a couple sequences, but primarily, you know, my now wife and I took a trip to Southeast Asia and Japan, in 2017.
At the time, my now brother-in-law was teaching English in Japan. And so we decided we wanted to go visit him, but wanted to build out this bigger trip. And this was by far the biggest trip that we had ever planned to take. You know, we had done some trips together to go hiking out in Utah, which was amazing, and it definitely started to kinda creep into my DNA then. But I think where things really started to fall into place where I started to learn a lot more and care about this and start to build my life around it was the process of not just taking the trip, but booking the trip to, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan.
And what clicked was that as amazing as that trip was, every single day was incredible. Going to the beaches in Thailand and eating street food in Hanoi and exploring not just Tokyo, but some parts of, rural Japan on that trip really were life changing experiences, but also putting together the puzzle of getting from place to place and redeeming what, you know, few airline miles I had at that time in order to reduce the costs and trying to fit all of these puzzle pieces together. What clicked for me was that that process was really fun and rewarding for me. And for most people, it's kind of a bore or a chore or something they wish somebody else would do for them or that they would pay a travel agent to do. And for me, it was really, really fun and exciting to learn about that and really exciting to, you know, listen to podcasts like the extra pack of peanuts podcast, which is to, to this day, one of my favorite travel podcasts of all time, and it was really instrumental Travis and Heather, the host of that show, in kind of helping me understand how these things worked.
And reading sites like one mile at a time to learn more and go even deeper and figure out, you know, which airlines should we be flying and is it possible to book business class on this trip? It was kind of when I started to jump into the deep end and, like I said, start to build my life around this was that trip in 2017. Yeah. Well, without flattering you too much, we're all very glad you took that trip because it's fun that, you've passed along your knowledge to all of us, including, you know, helping me plan a honeymoon right after I started here too. So that but that like you said, the puzzle is so much fun and putting things together like that.
And once you realize that it is a bit of a game and a bit of a test, of yourself and a, like, a challenge and a fun way with just, the ultimate reward at the end of it. You know, we talk a lot about the nuts and bolts of booking trips, and we talk a lot about booking business class. And then we talk about the trips themselves. And part of what makes that entire thing so much more rewarding is that the fun begins not just when you land in your destination jet lagged. It begins not just when you board the plane and you get maybe a lie flat seat for a twelve, fifteen hour flight to Taiwan and then onward.
But it begins once you start planning that trip and start working out the puzzle pieces and the best way to book a flight from point a to point b using the points you have and which airline transfer partner to transfer those, miles to, it makes it really fun. It can be incredibly frustrating even after doing this for the better part of a decade, but it still is having fun from the moment you start planning a trip just makes the entire experience a lot more rewarding. Yeah. That's awesome. Been great advice.
Alright. I'm gonna go back even further. Alright. Where did you grow up, and what did that place teach you? I grew up in, Duluth, Minnesota, which is about two hours north of us here in Minneapolis on the shore of Lake Superior.
And what did that place teach me? You know, I'm gonna get more personal here than I expected to. I don't know that that is what that place taught me, but it's what my parents taught me. And, in particular, my dad is just a really impressive guy because he always instilled in us a belief, and he lived it that you can learn to do anything. You know, for example, my sister got married in front in their front yard, about ten years ago.
And as they were planning their wedding, they started talking about, wanting some bench like, some special benches and where they could get them for all the guests to sit because it was a relatively small wedding. And my dad was just like, I'll just build them. My dad had never built benches before, and he you know, he's gone on to make cutting boards using a lathe. As my wife and I have bought not one but two houses, he's helped us with little projects that have shown me how I can do them myself. And so now whenever I have a a problem in my life or something I need to fix in the house or something I need to figure out how to do in order to take a really cool trip, I just have this mindset that I can learn how to do this if I don't know how to do it already.
That's awesome. That's a great answer. Alright. We're coming back to the present. You ready for that?
Yes. Okay. What still gets you fired up about travel and points and miles? What's kinda the latest thing? You know, all of our interests always evolve in this business, and it's easy to get jaded when we're in this every day.
But what's still what still lights your fire? You know, two things. First, I I still can think of myself as a journalist, as a reporter, and so nothing gets me more fired up than big news. So whether it's, you know, Delta's massive meltdown from last summer or, you know, the looming real ID requirements, which by the time, you know, listeners are listening to this episode are going to be in effect. Changes in airline mileage programs or status programs, like when Delta, you know, had a ton of blowback for reworking its medallion status program.
Any kind of big news just gets my adrenaline going, and that's the kind of stuff that I really, really love to work on. No matter what kind of news it is, good or bad, it's just a really exciting time, kind of that newsroom feel of of all of us on the editorial team, yourself included, as well as Nick, Long, and Jackson working together to get a story together and figure out what we need to do. But I would say the biggest thing is, you know, having the tie in with our premium service and doing in person events or just getting feedback from, you know, our members who, you know, get a deal to book Qantas business class to Australia or a mistake fare to Dublin for a hundred and $35 round trip when it that ticket should cost $900. And we get these reminders on a daily, if not hourly basis, that travel is really truly life changing, that people out there are taking trips because of the deals that we're sending, because of the stories that we're writing, trying to help people connect the dots and teach them how to do these things themselves.
There I think there was a temptation and there was a thought in the back of my mind when I had decided to leave the Associated Press and come work here full time That I was leaving behind something really capital I important in journalism, in political journalism of holding truth to power. And I still believe that. But at the same time, I, without a doubt, believe that travel is just as important. That, you know, having new experiences and taking time away from work and going on a trip with your loved ones, that is incredibly important in helping people do more of that with whatever budget that they have, whatever their goals are. That is really, really important and fulfilling to me.
Yeah. It's not the same. It's not apples to apples as, say, you know, covering politics and state houses and those things that affect people on a day to day level. But when people want and need to travel, and in some ways, kind of what we're doing is almost standing up to the airlines a little bit and kinda holding them to account. And, you know, when Southwest strips away everything that makes them Southwest, we're gonna talk about it and, make sure that everybody knows exactly what they're getting.
So there are some similarities even though, of course, it's not apples to apples, and I I wouldn't compare what we do exactly to, to covering a state house. But No. No. I mean, it's certainly not, and I don't wanna pretend like what the work that we're doing on a daily basis is that level, that pedigree of journalism. It's not.
But what we're doing is really fun. And at the same token, you're right. There is a level of accountability here of talking about exactly what Southwest is doing and explaining it in ways that people can understand so that people understand why Southwest is doing what they're doing. Of talking about, you know, a couple of years ago when Delta SkyMiles deals basically disappeared and writing a story called the sad state of SkyMiles and pointing out that, you know, the the steady trickle of great international SkyMiles deals had basically vanished only to find, you know, basically a week and a half later, Delta came out with arguably the best SkyMiles flash sale of all time, which was, you know, a round trip fare from anywhere in The United States to Auckland, New Zealand and back for 37,400 SkyMiles total. And then that just kind of continued for weeks, if not months on end, into present day where we're still seeing, you know, a lot of SkyMiles deals.
I'm not gonna say that we are the reason why that happened. I don't actually believe that that's true, But it does still remind me that we do have, you know, some responsibility even to hold some of these very big, powerful, and incredibly profitable airline and travel companies accountable. Yeah. Delta, you're so obsessed with us. It's embarrassing.
Stop reading Thrifty Traveler. Alright. Ready for some quick hitters? Let's do it. Kyle, you're a musician.
What kind of music plays in your head when I'm talking on this podcast? Elevator music? I don't know. I don't wanna insult you. I know.
I don't know. I will clarify. I am not a musician. I am capable of playing some music. But prior to journalism, prior to going to journalism school, I was in touring punk and hardcore bands.
So I would say, like, really aggressive punk rock music plays when you're talking, but I don't think that would really capture who you are, Gunnar. It's more that's more about me. That's the best answer to that. I hope that, for everyone out there listening, you get some punk and hardcore music playing while I'm speaking as well. What was the name of one of your bands?
Any good ones? The the last band I was in was called Cowards. That's pretty good. It's, I would I would say it's a fun listen. I would say it is if you like aggressive punk hardcore music.
If you don't, you can probably safely skip it. It won't hurt my feelings. What was your best gig ever? Oh, we played a lot of, small basement shows in Duluth. And the last show that we that we played was in, our guitarist's basement, and that was just a really fun experience being with all of our friends before we decided we some of us had moved away.
I was in the had moved down here to Minneapolis at the time, and it was just kinda time to call it before we kinda drifted apart and weren't able to do it anymore. It was a really, really fun experience. Where's Skig? The the night before in Minneapolis, which we just like sometimes people are just not in sync, and you can practice as much as you want, and we did. We practiced a ton.
We practiced a ton before that show and just, like, things just weren't clicking. So it's so funny to go to completely opposite ends of the spectrum from one night literally to the next. That's awesome. Alright. Every year, the Thrifty Traveler team goes on a team retreat where we all get together.
If you could pick an ideal TT retreat location, what would it be? We've done it already, but I just want everybody else on our team, which has grown a lot since we were last there, to go to Oaxaca in Mexico. It's one of the coolest cities I've ever been. The food is absolutely unbeatable, second to none. Being able to buy, bottles of Miss Call, great bottles for, like, $14 and bring them back in your suitcase.
I need to do that again, and I would love you and the rest of the team who weren't with us on that first trip in 2019 to join us. Yeah. I regrettably missed that one by, a few years. But We hadn't run you through the, chair and the lawn gauntlet by that time. Yeah.
Exactly. I wasn't yet a member of the team. I had to watch that one from afar. Tell me about your dog. Oh, the light of, our lives.
Mika is a nine year old Pembroke Welsh Corgi, the cutest little creature in the world, the sassiest, most stubborn creature in the world, more stubborn than any human being I've ever met. For anybody who out there who has spent time with corgis, they have so much personality. And our corgi, Mika, has so much personality. She's so funny. She's so stubborn.
She actually refuses to walk with me alone. She will walk with my wife alone. She will walk with both of us alone. But if I try to take her on a walk, she just kinda plants and freezes and just refuses to go any further. And you just kind of accept your dog for what they are, and that is that is what Mika is.
She is stubborn and just loves us to death, and we love her to death. Mika makes lots of appearances on our, our team video calls, every now and that. It's always a joy to see Mika. What's your next trip? Next trip is, almost, it'll be almost exactly five years to the day since my wife and I had to cancel our long planned trip to London and Scotland.
We'll be going there in late August of this year, fly into London, connect upward to Edinburgh, spend some time both in Edinburgh and in the Scottish Highlands, and then pop back down to London for the the kind of the final week of the trip. I have actually other than connecting through Heathrow at least four times, I've never entered the country of England. I have never been. My wife studied abroad there, and so we've been talking about this literally for as long as we've known each other, which is almost eleven years now. And so we are finally, finally making this happen going, late this summer.
I'm really, really excited for it. That's awesome. Alright. What's the worst flight of your life? Oh, that that first trip, the one that kind of set off the light light bulbs for me going to, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan, the our first flight was flying economy from, LA to Taipei, which is about thirteen hours.
And the flight itself was great. It was EVA, one of my favorite airlines. That's actually what started my love affair of EVA was just how great the service was even in economy. But it doesn't matter how great the service is if you can't sleep for more than five minutes at a time. And I just I have the worst luck sleeping on airplanes.
Getting to the end of that thirteen hour flight on, you know, basically four naps of five to ten minute increments, you're just you're just not a real person at the end of that. So that that one really stands out. I've had some other experiences including flying, from Minneapolis to Iceland and onward into Sweden when I was in high school, where, again, just completely unable to sleep. I can't sleep in cars. I barely sleep on airplanes.
It it's pretty rough. Whatever else you can get on the flight can make up for some of it, but if you're not gonna sleep at all in those long overnight flights, it's pretty tough. Alright. Good answer. Best MSP airport hack?
Oh, this is a good one. Oh, I got it. The, arrivals pickup area at the airport tends to get really, really backed up, especially lately for whatever reason as we're recording this in, in May of twenty twenty five. So if you're going there to pick somebody up, if somebody is picking you up, instead go to the departures level, up one level. Pretend like you're dropping someone off.
I've done this with my wife a handful of times recently as she's traveled for work, never waited more than a couple of seconds to pull in and pick somebody up. It's a great way to beat the long, long lines getting into the arrivals level at the airport. Yeah. It's also not illegal at MSP. It is at some other airports, but at MSP, they do encourage you to do it, especially when arrivals gets, really messy down there.
So great tip. Alright. Ready for a last one? Let's do it. Rank your coworkers from most to least effective and use their physical appearance to break ties.
No. Wait. HR is telling me we don't like that one. HR is right. I'm not gonna do that.
Alright. Fine. An actual last one. One travel tip to give any traveler right before they head out the door on their trip. What is it?
One of my favorite ones is really simple when it comes to beating jet lag, which is to set your watch when you board the plane to your final destination. Because the hardest part about beating jet lag is just adjusting your body clock and your mind to the time of the destination that you're gonna be in. And this is not a silver bullet. You still have to kind of live by that time on your watch. But, you know, let's say you leave, you know, from the Midwest or from the East Coast at at 7PM, and it's, you know, 3AM, over in Europe or it's noon, in the destination in Asia.
If you can, you know, kind of wait to go to sleep until the time when you would be asleep once you finally reach that final destination, it gives you such a great head start to adjusting your body clock to the time. Use, things like melatonin to get to sleep, you know, both on the plane and especially when you land, when you might have trouble sleeping through the night. You know, those two things of just forcing yourself to adjust as soon as possible, as soon as you get on that first flight, I think goes a long way and is part of why I feel like I have gotten much, much better even as I've gotten older, at adjusting and beating jet lag. Awesome. Dude, this is really fun.
If I'm, like, sweating over here. I'm glad it was fun for you. I can't wait to put you on the hot seat with some of these. I am HR is not gonna step in when I tell you to rank your coworkers. Okay.
Yeah. That's right. Next week, you're gonna get to hear this in the opposite format. So, I promise it'll be fun. Please don't skip it.
Alright. Yeah. We'll see. Okay. Let's move on to our listener question of the week.
Let's hear from the people. So kinda going back to what we talked about in the intro, our Emirates discussion, we have a great question from listener Rose. She asks, I just read an article that says starting late May, AmEx and Chase will suspend points transfers to Emirates. I know I'll be taking another trip on Emirates, JFK to Milan, either this year or next. Should I go ahead and transfer my points to have in my Emirates account or just keep my fingers crossed that they work things out?
Kyle, what do we think about what we call speculative transfers? So the undercurrent of all of this is that transferring points is a one way street. Once you send your points from a bank like Chase or American Express or Capital One over to an airline like Emirates, you aren't getting them back. There are some very, very few exceptions to this rule, but they are slim exceptions. So that means the stakes are pretty high for transferring points before you can use them.
So I would say, if Rose if you know exactly when you want to travel, but you're also flexible, with when you can book this trip using Emirates miles. If you are able to book that trip right now, but, you know, it's within the calendar, so it's by April of twenty twenty six at the latest. You're not talking about taking a trip in July or August, which means it's gonna take another couple of months before you can actually redeem those points, which means Emirates could change its entire reward structure and make a flight from JFK to Milan, you know, twice as expensive in miles as it is today. If you can move pretty quickly as soon as those miles hit your account and the availability that you want to book using those miles pops up, then I would feel okay about this. But otherwise, I think, Gunnar, you put it best in our, you know, 10 commandments of points and miles episode.
The value of flexible points is when they're flexible. And if you put all your eggs in the Emirates basket, that could come back to burn you. Yeah. I, personally, I don't love speculative transfers if you get a crazy transfer bonus. I've done it before when I think we saw Capital One to Virgin was 40% at one point, and I had just a few Capital One points.
And I was willing to part with them because I'd used the Virgin program so much. But, for one single redemption, I don't know if I'd risk it. I think I would maybe wait it out and see if things work out. Unless, as Kyle said, you have your dates ready or your preferred dates ready to go. So 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, Kyle. It's your turn. Alright. Gunnar, to put you on the spot, in the theme of this episode, we're gonna play two truths and a lie. So I'm gonna give you three tidbits about myself, and you're gonna pick out which one is a lie.
Alright. Was I born on July '17 at 07:17PM? Did I play hockey as a kid until I was forced to quit because I was born with one kidney? Or was my previous band, Cowards, in which I played bass and sang, with a guitarist named Kyle and a drummer named Kyle? Oh my gosh.
You know, when you go out to team happy hours and everything, we don't ask each other how many kidneys we have. So that one, maybe that's true. I think I think the seven seventeen seems specific enough that you didn't just come up with that. So I think that the three Kyle band members is your lie. I was putting you on the spot, which means I make the rules, and all three of them are true.
Oh, that's awesome. You only have one kidney? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Why didn't you ask about my kidneys? We did a whole interview. You didn't ask about my bodily organs. Well, I know what to ask you. Some interviewer you are, Gunnar.
I guess. Yeah. I'm sorry about that. Wow. That's we're learning so much about Kyle in this episode.
It's pretty awesome. The whole Internet is learning about about my body, and it's a little weird. I I almost regret saying that, but not as much as I regret not picking Alaska Airlines mileage plan at number two in our draft last week. And it all comes back to my triumphant draft victory from last week. But that's gonna be it for this week.
I wanna thank everybody so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. If you could rate us five stars on whatever podcast platform you prefer, it would be hugely appreciated. Also, like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube. These are a lot of fun to watch as well. Come join us there.
And then send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation, who needs to book a trip, or who needs to know about those, transfer bonuses we talked about at the top of the show. And, of course, feedback. Keep sending us notes. We love to read them. Podcast at thriftytraveler.com.
Whether you like the show or you got, some constructive feedback for us, if you have, more things you wanna know about Kyle for the next time I interview him, let us know there. Kyle, tell us about the Thrifty Traveler podcast team. This episode was produced by the guy running our hotel alert service, Long Tran, and the reigning champion and man to whom I owe a beer from the airline mileage program fantasy draft, Gunnar Olson. It was edited by David Strutt. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot.
See you next time. Next time.