The world of all things points and miles is changing rapidly. So to dig into where things are at and what’s ahead, Gunnar and Kyle bring in the man they call “St. Peter” – Thrifty Traveler’s Senior Award Analyst and guru of all things award travel, Peter Thornton – to talk about the state of award availability and spell out the best uses of your points and miles as we enter the second half of 2026. Plus, they recap about some rare business class deals making a comeback, why airlines are throttling award searches … and, for some reason, talk a lot about cycling?
The world of all things points and miles is changing rapidly. So to dig into where things are at and what’s ahead, Gunnar and Kyle bring in the man they call “St. Peter” – Thrifty Traveler’s Senior Award Analyst and guru of all things award travel, Peter Thornton – to talk about the state of award availability and spell out the best uses of your points and miles as we enter the second half of 2026. Plus, they recap about some rare business class deals making a comeback, why airlines are throttling award searches … and, for some reason, talk a lot about cycling?
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00:00 - Introducing “St. Peter” and his adventure across Iowa
03:35 - Rami introduces the show from Emirates First Class!
04:35 - Rare business class awards are … back?
09:25 - Airlines are blocking award searches
15:15 - The Extra Mile: The current state of award availability
20:40 - Where to find economy award availability
23:30 - Where to find business class deals
27:15 - R.I.P. to the deals that got away
36:00 - Peter predicts: What’s coming next?
40:20 - A listener asks: How to find award space before calling to book
44:30 - Peter asks: What state would you bike across?
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm your host, Gunnar Olsen, with my consigliere, Kyle Potter, but today we have a very special guest. We call him St. Peter. He's Thrifty Traveler Premium's senior award analyst, and he's a living nightmare for airline revenue management departments the world over. It's Peter Thornton. Peter, welcome back to the show. How are you? Pretty good, Gunnar. Thanks for the intro. Of course, man. Uh, today on the show, Peter is our points and miles guru here at Thrifty Traveler. He finds, and most importantly, vets out all of our Thrifty Traveler premium award alerts. He is deeper in the weeds of award travel than anyone on the planet, so we are having him on to go over all things award availability. We wanna know where it's easiest to use your points and miles right now, where it's hardest, what new quirks and issues should travelers be made aware of, and of course, we'll have him dust off his crystal ball to chat about what he thinks is next. But first, Peter, I need to find something out because you just got off the bicycle after riding the RAGBRAI, which stands for, I looked this up, the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, an annual seven-day cycling tour across the state. It touts itself as the oldest, largest, and longest recreational bicycle touring event in the world. What is that event like? Well, I'd say my father described it best as we were talking with family yesterday, and it's pretty much a traveling fair. Okay. So we start, you, you bike river to river, you dip your back tire in the Missouri River, and you ride across the state. You dip your front tire in the Mis- Mississippi River. And yeah, you go, it's about 400 miles total. It's one week, one full week, so you're biking approximately 60 miles a day. And yeah, you, you pass through a bunch of small towns in Iowa. Everyone's super welcoming. I mean, some of these small towns, it's like the biggest event of the year. So they're bringing in a lot of money. They're, they're selling lemonade stands, they're selling pies. They got vendors all over. There's beer tents. It's, it's pretty much, yeah, like a festival, a traveling festival. And when you're on the road, it's a sea of bicycles. It's like there's nothing else like it in the world, I don't think, so. You're just riding down these rural roads, highways, cornfields everywhere, just taking it all in. It's pretty awesome. It's amazing. Would you ever do this, Kyle? Look at me. Do you think I would do this? The traveling fair? That's not a selling point for me personally. The biking part does sound fun within... I mean, how many of those 400 miles did you bike? All 400? Oh, yeah. Wow. I did a little extra, 'cause they always do, like, 100 mile, or an extra loop to get 100 miles in a day. And, uh, it was funny, we were sitting at one of the stops before this, and someone recognized my dad. He's like, "You're 100-Mile Dave." And then we were, like, debating doing the extra loop, and he's like, "Well, now I'm doing it." So. The, the fact that St. Peter's father's name is 100-Mile Dave- ... is literally perfect. Okay, I, I have a question, a burning question I'm sure everyone's thinking of. That's a lot of quiet time on the bike, 400 miles. How often did you think about award availability? How much points and miles, uh, seepage was there into your thought process while you were riding the bike? I'm gonna actually say very close to 0%. Wow, good for you. All right. Clocking out. Yeah, the, the corn fields pretty much clear your mind. Uh, mostly thought about what kind of pie I was gonna get in the next town, so yep. That sounds amazing. Well, we're gonna do the opposite. We're throwing you back in now that you're off of vacation and off of the bike. Today on the show, we're talking about award availability and everything you need to know about redeeming points and miles this year. All that and more. Yo, this is Rami from somewhere between Milan and New York, JFK. If you don't know where I am, then welcome to the world of Points and Miles, or as Kyle likes to hear, Miles and Points. Anyway, welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler Podcast Okay, welcoming us back to the show this week was Rami checking in from Emirates first class. He looked very pleased with himself, as we all would. A big time flex from our guy Rami. We hope he used points and miles for that flight, otherwise you'd be about 15 grand lighter, I think. Um, we're about to jump into the show, but first, a quick reminder to please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. If you have two minutes of your time and energy to donate to this free show, it really helps us a lot. All right, it's time for Something Hot and Something Cold, a look at the good and the bad news out there for travelers from the past week, and we're gonna focus on all things award availability specifically this week, uh, starting with something hot. Our colleague, Katie Rollins, pitched a story a few weeks ago that I wrote and took credit for, of course, um, outlining a really positive trend where some of the rarest business class points and miles award space became bookable recently, and I outlined five different examples in it. Um, I want you both to pick one and describe why it's so rare. Peter, I'll start with you. What did you like from this story? Uh, my favorite one from this story was definitely the nonstop Los Angeles to Lima, flying LATAM business class. Uh, why I loved it so much is, to be honest, I've worked here for four-plus years, and I've, we've never seen, you know, solid, like, several dates bookable for two passengers on this nonstop route. Never before in four-plus years, so super rare opportunity. Uh, also, it's, if you look at the West Coast to South America options, there's very limited nonstop options. Um, so this, this is really useful if you wanna save time. Saves a ton of time over connecting the East Coast. You look, I just looked up the Great Circle Mapper, and it's a straight shot down to Lima. Going to, it's like you're making an L going all the way to Miami and then down. So you're saving a ton of time, and yeah, just I, I live on the West Coast, so anything West Coast nonstop across the ocean is amazing. Yeah, for, for those who don't know, Peter is San Diego based, so this o- obviously makes a big deal for you. But w- why do you think this happened? Why did this availability pop up after having not popped up for at least five years? Yeah, so I, I dug in a little bit, and I, I noticed that, uh, a few weeks back, for the winter schedule, LATAM only had one flight on Thursdays. Every other day of the week, they had two flights. And it looked like they added a second daily flight on Thursdays to the winter schedule. So this happens a lot, like, if, if airlines add a frequency, not necessarily a new route, but they add an extra frequency, we sometimes see award availability open up right when they open that new flight up. And it seems pretty obvious that this was the case. It was every Thursday, you know, throughout the winter, had availability, so we, we sent it to our readers, and some people booked. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. This is, this is gonna be a common theme of what we're talking about for the next, you know, 40-plus minutes is c- c- changes in capacity, whether it's a new route, a- additional frequency, adding, you know, a bigger plane with more business class seats really is the key driver, it seems like to me, in actually being able to book these things. Case in point, you know, something that we hadn't seen bookable on that route for five-plus years, all of the sudden, the floodgates are open. That's, that, that's pretty telling to me. Uh, was that the case on the one you chose? What did you choose off this list? I'm gonna go with Qatar Qsuites because it has been pretty tough sledding booking, you know, what I think many of us consider to be the best business class seat in the world for the last, I don't know, two, maybe even three years. I mean, our advice What Peter always tells all of us is y- you can, you gotta look not just 11 months out, but 355, 360 days in advance, and increasingly be ready to book, you know, when the clock strikes the next day Doha time. And so there have been not one, but two deals with pretty wide open space within, you know, the next six to nine months. The first from Philadelphia, which was the exact result of this. Uh, that's a route that American Airlines used to operate, and they dropped it, and Qatar picked it back up as soon as th- as soon as those flights became bookable. Tons of award space throughout the calendar. And then more recently from JFK, which is ironically maybe the hardest gateway to book Qsuites out of, seeing that not just, you know, in, like, March or April, but December and January, when typically Qatar just doesn't let anybody book period, even when it was much easier a couple of years ago. So seeing widespread space on both of those, being able to book with points for as low as 70,000 points each way, even less with a transfer bonus, pretty incredible. Yeah. That's another fantastic option. Um, I, I recommend you go check out the story on our website, uh, about all this rare business class award space. One other one I'll highlight, the JFK to Honolulu in Hawaiian first class space that came open. Now, that's, that's pretty amazing. We almost never see that. I can't remember ever seeing that since I've worked here. Um, those aren't the fanciest Hawaiian Airlines first class seats, but it's still a lie-flat seat on what is otherwise a very, very long flight in the back of the plane. Longer than probably anything flying to Europe, right? Yeah. It's gotta be. It's probably 12-plus hours and, you know, JFK to Athens might be nine. Yeah, that flight to JFK to Honolulu is 11 hours. I remember looking it up, and yeah, it's, it's longer than any, any Europe flight, so- Yeah ... sweet deal. Bookable for 95,000 Alaska miles or 98,000 American Airlines miles. Well worth it for 11-plus hours, uh, across the Pacific there to Hawaii. Um, can we pivot to something cold, some not so fun news in the world of points and miles? Uh, we found two examples recently of airline programs making it harder to search for award space. Not just the booking the flights, but even searching is coming with more and more hoops to jump through. So last week, um, our friend Katie on the team spotted that Singapore Airlines was now blocking award searches for KrisFlyer members with zero points in their accounts. Um, Gary Leff from View from the Wing said he'd seen reports of having 1,000 miles in your account was enough to allow you to search. Other reports suggested having some activity in your account over the past 15 months would also allow for award searches. We have not heard directly from Singapore Airlines on any of this. Um, we also just saw a similar stance taken by Qatar, which won't allow you to search for flights for more than just yourself Um, unless your companion traveler has had their own account that is 30 days old and has earned Avios by flying or spending on a Qatar credit card. If your mind is spinning, so is mine. Uh, basically, we've tracked this trend of airlines throttling back award space before, um, making it harder to find award space to book. But are we into a new era where they're actually just trying to make it harder to search too? What's going on here? That's a St. Peter question if I've ever heard one. Yeah. Yeah, I, unfortunately so, but yes, I, I do believe we are in that era. I mean, as, as you just said, two, two major airlines have started doing this, and I think a big reason is there's a ton of automated tools scraping these airline websites now. And the airlines have con- ever since this started, they're, like, different airlines have been constantly combating this, you know, with, you know, CAPTCHAs to, to be able to search, and now they're, you know, uh, as tools, you know, evolve and are able to get past that, they're trying to find new ways to, to stop these bots, basically. Um, I think that's one point of it. Uh, the other point is the airlines, they really do want their most loyal customers to be able to book these award seats. So To be honest, it is kind of a way for them to do that, but it, it also, I think it can hinder them getting new loyal customers, because if someone's not able to search, I mean, how are they ever gonna find out about, you know, why would they become loyal? But I do see one side where it's like, "Oh, it- we're only gonna- we only want to save these seats for loyal customers who have miles with us, who credit their miles to us, who fly us." So it's tough, but yeah, I, I think it's definitely gonna just keep happening more and more, to be honest. Yeah. What do you think? I, we've referred to this in the past, and this is not the first time this has happened. I'd say this has been happening for the last one or two years as a, the silent devaluation, because it just makes it so much harder to find and, and then eventually book these things. And I think that there are, to Peter's point, two reasons. The automated tools like seats.aero points out, I mean, there are a dozen or more at this point, I think is probably the biggest reason, um, why airlines are making these kinds of changes to try to implement these roadblocks. But two is, you know, I think back to when I first started doing this, redeeming American Airlines miles. You had to call to book Japan Airlines, and Qatar Airways, and Cathay Pacific, and a handful more. And f- you know, into basically the pandemic, airlines made a concerted effort to make this easier by bringing all of this functionality online. And I think they're kind of realizing that they might have let the genie out of the bottle a little too far with some of this stuff, that they've made it too easy. And yes, you know, it's making it a worse user experience and, you know, they may be losing o- on people who could become loyal customers, but I think bigger picture, a lot of airlines are coming to the realization that people like the three of us are not loyal customers. I'm, I have booked Qatar Qsuites, I will continue to book Qatar Qsuites as many times as I possibly can. I will probably never pay for a Qatar Airways ticket, period, in my life. I just probably won't, unless if there's a crazy mistake fare. And I think that airlines now have a lot of data and insights and intelligence about what they're actually getting out of the transactional people like the three of us and the thousands of people listening to us, and they've just kinda decided it's not worth it, and that's a piece of this, too. Yeah. This is, uh, three people sitting around a table realizing that the airlines just don't want us there anymore. No. It's, it's what we are doing that they're actually trying to push out. It's a long list of people who don't want the three of us. Uh, okay, we may have discovered a silver lining here with Singapore Airlines in particular. So new this week, uh, our team discovered that this Singapore Airlines AI chatbot that they have for customer service will actually pull some award availability for you. It looks pretty slick. We haven't had, as of this recording on Monday, a chance to vet it all exactly to see if it actually works, but if this does work and an AI chatbot can just pull availability for you, do we like this as a workaround? I mean, so long as, and I assume it's, it, you can get the chatbot to pull award availability for you even if you have zero miles in your account, then that's really helpful to at least, at least start to explore whether there's something possible before transferring 1,000 points for a test transfer or, you know, the 100,000 plus that you would need to book one of those Singapore Airlines business class seats or, you know, significantly less for economy. Yeah, I mean, for sure. I, I didn't have a ton of time to play around with it before we started recording, but from the looks of it, it, it looked pretty amazing if you could just type in, like, "Can you tell me all these dates? Uh, what, what, if there's any availability?" And it re- re- would reply, but, um, still, still a lot of questions whether it's giving you correct information or not, so we're gonna dig into it. Yeah, we, we won't send it to our premium members until we know it's ironclad. Yeah. That's, that's the, uh, the St. Peter promise. He's always gonna dig into it for you. All right, we have a ton more to talk about with award availability, but first we're gonna take a quick break. Okay, it's time for The Extra Mile, where we dig a little deeper on an important travel topic, and it's inspired, as always, by our awesome Extra Mile newsletter. It hits your inboxes every weekday morning, giving you the latest travel news, some fun deep dives, an occasional look at the bizarre place that is the Thrifty Traveler team Slack, and much, much more. Sign up today at thriftytraveler.com/extramile. Okay, this week on The Extra Mile, we're going over the state of award availability, and I think there's an obvious place to start here. What am I talking about when I say award availability? Peter, I'll let you take this one. Uh, basically what it means is there's either availability or there's not. I mean, that's the-- When it comes to partner airline availability, you know, using, using like, uh, Air France miles to book Delta flights, uh, or American miles to book Qatar flights, uh, what we call this is a saver award, and that's, that's what we're looking for for award availability. Typically, saver awards are what airlines, you know, the operating airline releases to be booked by partner airlines. So it sometimes it doesn't matter how many miles you, it doesn't matter how many miles you have in your account. If, if it's not available, if the inventory that, you know, they attach like a letter code to it is not, uh, bookable, you won't be able to book it. So that's the basics of award availability in that respect. Um, there's other, you know, there's other programs like, like when you're flying the airline whose miles you're using, like Delta Sky Miles to fly Delta, they use dynamic pricing. So that we're, we're more or less looking for drops just like cash fares, like price drops and calling-- we call award availability like good prices basically in that, in that respect. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I, I think the one thing we always try to hammer home to people is that, you know, having hundreds of thousands of miles isn't always enough to book the seat that you wanna book every single time, right? Like, the availability has to be there, and that's kinda the hardest thing to explain to people who've worked really hard and spent a lotta money to earn a bunch of points over time. All right, so I have a question for the two of you- Yeah ... that we're not prepared for, putting you on the spot early. Okay. Let's pretend we're giving the State of Award Availability speech, like the State of the Union. What is the state of award availability right now? What do people need to know? What's changing? For the better, the worse, or both? Okay. Perhaps a cop-out. I'll go first, Peter, but I think the- Politician's answer coming up I think that, uh, th- the answer was in the question, is that it just is changing, and that the key is to just stay up on what is changing and when. Because what we've seen since I've started really focusing in on award availability is that something changes every month to some program or something somewhere. The taxes and fees are always changing. The rates are always changing. You know, uh, airlines joining different alliances and becoming bookable with other programs. You know, y- we have new programs jumping in. The only constant is change. I know, that's a disgusting- I was gonna repeat that line back to you disgusting cliche So I'm glad you reached it yourself. The only constant is change, but I think that is really the key to, to, to getting good redemptions and winning at all of this, is just to make sure that you're up on things, because it is the most confusing part, is how much change there is. All right, Peter- Yeah now give us a real answer. I think the, the biggest thing is everything lasts a shorter amount of time than it used to. Uh, it's harder and harder to book things that were always there, you know, maybe nine to, nine to 12 months in advance or six to 12 months in advance, are now only there, like, 11 to 12 months in advance in some cases. And ra- when rare availability does pop up, it's not lasting a full day s- anymore. Sometimes it's lasting a few hours. So that's the biggest change I've noticed. There's, there's a lot more people in this game, and the, the seats that do open up, they go f- they go much quicker. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, and just goes to show you have to be decisive with this stuff now more than ever. If you see something that might work, you might as well book it because, you know, in nine times out of 10, let's say, you can cancel that award either for free within 24 hours, um, because even foreign airlines are required to honor the 24-hour rule as long as that flight touches US soil, that applies to award tickets too, or it's a reasonable fee if you get a week later and you decide you can't take this trip. I think to me, the two biggest changes that stand out, like we said before, is just how dynamic this is, how much award space is being driven, not by, you know, an airline like EVA Air deciding for years they were going to release two business class seats on every single flight as soon as that calendar opens. They do not do that anymore. Airlines don't deal with, uh, award availability like that in that kind of like blank statement kind of approach. And two, just how much stingier they're getting with allowing partner airlines to book with these kinds of workarounds to book with a different airline program for a fraction of the miles, that a lot of airlines are hoarding this award space. Cathay Pacific is really only possible to book by using Cathay Pacific Asia miles if, if you wanna fly business and especially first class. Same goes with Qantas. I mean, we could go down the list. That is becoming, I think, maybe the biggest change that has changed how I think about award availability. Yeah, for sure. Um, let's give people a way to use their points and miles. Let's tell them where to look. Um, let's talk, let's start with economy awards, which are obviously a lot easier to find. Uh, if you're looking for a trip in 2026 or 2027, what deals, what favorite sweet spots do we like right now for economy awards? Uh, my favorite is gonna be booking American Airlines domestic flights with Alaska points. So if you got a signup bonus or you earn a lot of Alaska points, um, that's a lot of, a lot of routes you can book for just 4,500 miles one way, even when those flights are, like, hundreds of dollars. So domestic flights are high right now, you know, relatively compared to the international flights, and I think that's still a sweet, sweet spot. Yeah, it is, and those short ones, those 4,500-mile flights, the first class seats on those are 9,000 miles- Yep ... each way, which is still significantly cheaper than a lot of the Delta flights that I'm finding. I'm essentially commuting to Chicago and back all fall for various reasons, and I've, several times I've looked, and that, that Alaska booking on an American flight in first class is significantly cheaper than basic economy in Delta, I'm like, "Done. Here we go." So that's a nice one too. Kyle? I would say Delta SkyMiles not within the United States, but basically anywhere else. I mean, the number of really, really cheap round-trip redemptions to places like Europe, most recently Hong Kong for what, under 30,000 SkyMiles round-trip. The number of times we've sent deals to Mexico and the Caribbean for as low as 8,000 SkyMiles round-trip. There are a lot of good deals there. Not in economy flying domestically because those cash prices are so high, but looking abroad, that is-- It's not a slam dunk, but it's looking pretty good, and it has been for a while, I'd say. Yeah, really good. A lot of good Caribbean stuff lately, too. We had a Montego Bay, Jamaica, deal for Thrifty Traveler Premium members the other day and using SkyMiles, which was excellent. It is really a bummer that it used to be that the SkyMiles rates domestically were such a sure thing. Like, we could find really cheap stuff flying all over the US, um, to, especially to the Delta hubs, and now those have kind of all evaporated all at once 'cause the sky-high cash prices. Hopefully, they come back someday. Any other economy awards, uh, that jump out to mind to you guys? I mean, I just, you know, to reiterate his point, Delta SkyMiles to the, uh, across the Pacific to Asia and, like, South Pacific, just insane deals right now. A lot of that's, they're, they're newer routes. Like, they're adding routes, and seems like they're trying to go head-to-head with United and ramp up their transpacific, and it's just creating fare wars, so seeing tons of SkyMiles deals that cross the Pacific. Yeah, we've heard from so many people who booked those deals in the past few weeks, whether it was, uh, Taipei or all the way down to Auckland, Sydney. Amazing, amazing stuff. All right, let's go to the front of the plane. What do we like in 2026 or 2027 for, uh, sweet spots, award sweet spots in business or first class? I'll, I'll start with that. I, I'd say Iberia business class, uh, it's still, we still see it there consistently at the end of the calendar. Uh, right now it's a good time to book for next summer. Um, and also they, they do have plans to add more routes, and as, as we have said many times, you know, new routes are, are a goldmine for award availability. So we're o- we're gonna be on the lookout for that. Um, you know, rumors of Vegas or Atlanta, who knows where they're gonna go, but when it does, I'm sure the award availability will open up. Are you flying Iberia to go see the eclipse? Are you still doing that trip? I'm still doing that trip. No, no, I'm, I'm booked on a few different things now, so- we'll see what I actually end up taking. That's another full one-hour podcast. Yeah. Peter's 18 bookings to get to Spain. Yeah. Well, I'm going to Iceland, so. Oh, you're going to Iceland now? Oh, okay, I thought you were going to Spain. No, that's good. Iceland will be really fun for the eclipse. Yeah. Kyle, business class? I mean, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think we have to talk about Delta SkyMiles, the number of deals that we've seen to Europe for under 100,000 SkyMiles one way during peak summer, not January and February, where we typically see rates like that. Hong Kong for 85,000, again, on that new route, which they're clearly trying to fill seats. Tokyo for under 80,000 miles each way is something that we found just a few weeks ago. These are better deals than you're gonna find on basically any other airline where award availability is just so hard to come by that it doesn't matter that they charge 60,000 miles each way because that availability is just not there. And then- Aer Lingus, I think it has gotten harder certainly than it was this time last year when that was really kind of pretty evergreen as long as you were booking typically two months out and, you know, as far as six to eight months out it was really easy to book those seats for as low as 45,000 Alaska Atmos rewards each way. It's gotten harder, but it's still there, uh, if you're flexible. Fortunately, Alaska's website allows you to see a calendar view, which makes it much easier to find those cheaper non-stops into Dublin and then even connect onward into Europe, which using Alaska miles you can drop the price from 55,000 for a non-stop from, say, Chicago to Dublin to as low as 45,000 by connecting onward to, like, London or Paris. Amazing deals, still a sweet spot for sure. Yeah, I was gonna add on Aer Lingus if you didn't mention it just because it has been more or less reliable, which I hesitate to say because of course they could just pull the rug on us tomorrow and we could never see it again. But, uh, you know, especially when you're looking, you know, just a couple months out, sometimes they, they have that kinda rolling release, especially in places where, uh, demand has been pretty soft like here in MSP, which is why of course they're abandoning us. Um, any other ideas for business class, good reliable ways or good sweet spots to book, uh, business class awards? So I had two others on my list. Um, this is not a reliable way, but StarLux business class is another one to keep, keep your eye out for 'cause they also do have plans to add more routes as they, they have this new A350-1000 jet and the plans to expand, like, to the East Coast and, and possibly elsewheres too, so. When that pops it's gonna go very fast, though . Yeah. But a more reliable one would be, like, Swiss or Lufthansa to Europe. Um, they typically have solid award availability, especially in the shoulder seasons, you know, the fall, um, well, the, the late fall, like November, December, and then into, you know, the early, early spring. Um, we typically see that pretty solid, so that's a good option. Nice. I like that one, too. Kyle, any others? I was gonna say Swiss- Okay ... so Peter got me. Awesome. Okay, um, let's flip it a little bit and just talk about, uh, some of the deals that got away, 'cause sometimes these things are too good to be true. Uh, we actually wrote about this on the site this week. Um, but we, the most recent example of course was this, this Finnair, this way to book Hawaiian first class with Finnair. Uh, Peter, can you just kinda go through what, what the deal was and what has happened to that, uh, that poor redemption which is now gone? Yeah, so this was one I, I discovered when I was just chatting with Finnair, you know, looking to see how- You're just chatting with a- Yeah multinational airline, as one does. I do this very, very often throughout the week, to be honest. Yeah. I'm always pulling up the chat like, "Hey, how you doing?" I, I, I recognize the name sometimes. I'm like, "Oh, I know this guy." Just checking in. How's the family? Yeah. How's the kids? Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, I just wanted to see how much they were charging. I mean, they, they have the, the chart, which I saw, so I had an idea what it should be. Um, but you never know sometimes. You always need to double-check, you know, especially when you got to book by phone. Uh, do you see the award, award availability and how much it is? So going through, you know, for a deal and checking for s- Seattle to Honolulu first class, and he comes back and tells me 26,000 miles one way. I'm like, "Really? That's amazing. That's not what it should be." And then I, I mean, I didn't tell him that, I just kinda, and then I kinda looked back at the chart and I'm like, "Oh, that's the premium price." And, but then I was like, "We gotta test this." And we test booked it, and sure enough, it was booked into first class, got to choose a seat. Um, and yeah, all, all, all was clear. We sent the deal. Some of our subscribers definitely booked it. And yeah, it, it turns out it was, it was too good to be true. It, it was not the correct pricing, so they, they ended up correcting it. Um, but now it's, it's still a decent deal if you have Avios, uh, just 'cause you can transfer from all the major banks. I believe, what, it's 48,000 Avios now. So if there's a transfer partner, it, it's still less than... If there's a transfer bonus, sorry, it could still be less than what Alaska charges on that route. Yeah. It's, that was an amazing deal. It was obviously too good to be true, but I mean, it, it lasted about a month after we first notified our members, and we, we heard from lots of people who were able to book it, including Katie, right? Yep. Yeah. Yep. It lasted about a month. It did, however, last about 72 hours after we published a story on this- ... letting more people know. So I have to ask, are we the bad guys? Well, yes, but also I don't- I'm not gatekeeping this information, you know? Like, this is incredible stuff. This is the stuff that gets us excited, and we should give, you know, our readers and listeners and, and Premium subscribers a chance to book it if and when we can. Of course, our Premium members get a good headstart on things, and then we eventually published it. And, uh, when we published it, some other Points and Miles people also jumped on it and got their communities involved, and that's what happens is, you know, sometimes these things get a little too popular, the, the light shines on it. But what I w- wanna focus on is that how many people are getting to fly first class to Hawaii. Those, those didn't get canceled, right? No. No, no. Those, those flights are all honored. Yeah. Like, this wasn't a mistake fare or whatever. It was, uh, just a really, really good deal that only lasted a little while, and, and we found it and got a bunch of people to Hawaii for way, way less than usual, so. I'm curious what you think about this, Peter. Like, how do you th- where, how do you draw the line of like- This, we, we have to share this Yeah, no, I mean, we- the people need to know. The people need to know where the deals are. That's, that's what we're all about. That's what we do. Yeah. So, I mean, if we didn't tell you, then who's gonna book it? Like five, the five people that, that know about it? No, we, we wanna let people know. That's, that's our whole motto, how to book these cheap deals, so. This was like the, uh, the SkyMiles workaround, um, when before SkyMiles flash sales became abundant like they are now, when the only way to get a good SkyMiles deal was to route yourself, uh, into Mexico afterwards, and Kyle, you did it to get that incredible deal on the way back from Australia. Yep. Right? And, uh, you routed yourself through LAX to Mexico City to get, like, a 95,000 SkyMile Delta one deal. Instead of probably 450,000 for the nonstop from Sydney to LA. Yeah, and you- Yeah ... you wrote about it, and I remember somebody commented on it, was, like, very disappointed in you that you decided to share this. Like, okay, man, get over yourself. We're trying to help people travel for less. Do not underestimate how much disappointment I can handle. No, I, I agree with both of you. I think if we're not sharing these things, we're not doing our jobs. I would much rather have five more people, 10, 15, 20, however many, book an amazing deal with their points to take a trip they couldn't otherwise afford and then have that deal disappear than to just have it, you know, go on into eternity unnoticed or mostly unnoticed. I think if we're not sharing these things that we find, we're not doing our jobs as a flight deal service. It just would entirely defeat the purpose to gatekeep this stuff. Yeah. Uh, any other deals, any other sweet spots that are now gone that either of you wanna highlight? Uh, one that I really, I'm really sad about is that Los Angeles to Dublin nonstop, uh, Aer Lingus, it was bookable on British Airways' site for 47,500 one way, um, using British, yeah, British Airways Avios, as I just said, um, during the summer, during the peak. So it was a really quirky thing where the peak season actually got cheaper than it was supposed to be if you booked with British Airways. With Aer Lingus it would've been 75,000, but now I think, you know, it was a few months ago I noticed it's reverted back to the correct pricing, and it's 75,000 regardless during the summer. But I used that once before, and that was just one of my favorites. That is a haul from LA too. Yeah. So to, to have that price at 47,000 is pretty crazy. No, I, I loved it, but it's gone. It was good while it lasted. Glad you got in on it, and I'm sure some of our people did too. Um, you know, it, it felt for a long time like there was like a dozen of these kinds of weird, quirky sweet spots within Avianca LifeMiles, and as that program has made changes almost universally for the worse, a lot of these things have gotten stamped out. So for years you could book a one-way from JFK to Lisbon flying TAP Air Portugal business class for 35,000 miles each way, even though economy costs, I think, 30,000. Yeah. And even though business class on the flight back to JFK costs the full, I think, 63,000 Avianca LifeMiles at the time, so, uh, basically half the cost. That has been gone for a while now. There was also one where, you know, instead of paying as much as 70,000 miles, you could book JFK to Zurich in Swiss business class for 55,000 miles each way This is what happens, you know? Airlines figure out this stuff, or they make a temporary decision to cut people a good deal, and then they get enough seats booked or whatever it is that they're trying to do that motivates this, whether it's a mistake or intentional, and then they close it up, and then we go looking for the next one. Yeah, and there's always something new to replace it. That, uh, that TAP Air Portugal JFK to Lisbon was one of my I see the light moments in points and miles, where I saw that for 35,000 miles each way, and I was thinking to myself, "How many worse ways have I used 35,000 miles?" And it was, uh, the list was too long to name. But that was also my first business class flight when I realized that they gave you socks. Oh my God. Are you wearing those socks right now? No, but I still have them. They changed their- I remember taking those socks off the plane with me, being like, "Are you allowed to take these- "... or do they want those back?" Uh, but man, I was so excited about free socks. I remember you sharing this in the company Slack after you took this flight, and I thought it was a bit- ... that you were, nope, you're just really, really excited about socks. Oh, what a, what a luxury item. Get to swap socks, right? And then you get to swap back into your, your outside socks at the end, and they're not all nasty from having been in them for an entire flight. It's great. You were, you had your little piggies flying all over the business class cabin on this flight? No, they weren't flying. They were out for a second while I was exchanging the socks out, but I wouldn't call them flying. That's- Well, I don't know. You make some violent hand gestures here. I don't know what you do with your legs in a lie-flat suite. I do. Okay, um, let's get the crystal balls out, guys. I need you to help me out. Um, Peter, last time you were on the show, you predicted that an airline program we weren't thinking about was gonna come in, make a big splash with new transfer partners and some new redemption opportunities, and like clockwork, Japan Airlines Mileage Bank delivered in a huge way on your prediction. I'm giving you full credit for that one. Um, so what's next? What's, what's your next big prediction that everyone should take to the bank 100% true? Put it on Kalshi. Put it on Kalshi. Oh, no. This episode of Thrifty Traveler podcast is very much not sponsored by Kalshi or PolyMarket or whatever else Good point, yeah. Uh, the bad side. I'll start with that, sorry. Um, good news, bad news. I think more airlines, as we talked about earlier, are gonna start restricting their business class awards even. You know, a lot-- We've seen this more commonly with first class, but I think it's gonna s- creep into business class where you're only gonna be able to book those seats with those airline miles. I think we, we were just looking at stuff this morning, and we kinda think Emirates might be leaning towards that right now, where they're no longer bookable with partners, but they are releasing their lowest cost, what we call saver awards, to their own mileage program, Emirates Skywards Miles. So that's not... You know, we're still shaking that out, but I could see that becoming a normal thing. And also, uh, we, we've seen this more or less with Delta and United, the two major airlines in the US. We s- kinda see the same thing, like you can really only book those business class seats with Delta miles or with United miles, for the most part We might see this with American Airlines next. Who knows? So that's kinda- there could be some others, too, but those are the two I'm looking at most, most, more closely. Um, on the good side, I do think we're gonna see some pretty killer sales to, uh, Manila with this new Delta route, and that's really exciting. Philippines is amazing. Uh, and just the transpacific travel in general. I think we're gonna see a lot of fare wars between Delta and United as Delta t- really tries to ramp up their transpacific network, so. Yeah. Well, I really hope that that competition, uh, comes to fruition. We see some, like you said, awesome fare wars, some, some award fare wars as well, and just hopefully, uh, that kinda transpacific market opens up like crazy. It's hard to believe that it could get better than what Delta's already offering, but man, if there's, if they're facing real competition, especially to Manila, that's, that's very, very exciting, too. Um, okay, is that, that, those are your crystal balls. Do you have anything, Kyle? I have one crystal ball. Okay. I think we're gonna see Airlines do more of what United did this year, where they really sweeten their credit card program or status or both by cutting travelers an even better deal. Delta started this a couple of years ago with the 15% discount for Delta-operated flights. United took that to 11, and that is why it is basically impossible to book, to book a United Polaris business class seat using Avianca Lifemiles or Air Canada Aeroplan points or whatever Star Alliance partner because they're hoarding that space to make it more alluring, to be able to tease the big discount that you now get for having a United Explorer card, where instead of paying 200,000 United Mileage Plus miles for a one-way to Tokyo, you can book it for 100,000. It's not 15% off like Delta does. It's up, it's 50% off. So I think I'm, I'm still a little shocked we haven't seen Delta do some elevated version of this yet. American, I would bet, is gonna do something in this vein next year. Alaska, I don't think that's out of the question either, especially as they add a lot of, a lot more international routes. I think that's gonna become more and more prevalent in the next year or two, which is a bummer. You know, it basically becomes pay to play in this stuff. You gotta have one of those credit cards or status in order to get the best deal. But at, at the same token, you know, those savings are probably well worth having a credit card that costs $95 a year or maybe is free for the first year, and then you book that flight, and then you decide, is this worth keeping for the long run? Yeah, it's, uh, even more of a bummer for Peter and Katie, who now have way more math to do, especially if these aren't just, like, a flat, you know, 15% or 10%. And then also there's a transfer bonus, and now it's like, now you're doing so much math before we can send this to our Thrifty Traveler premium members. Better him than me. It's all good. I love math. It was actually one of my favorite subjects, so- Oh, well, you're good at it ... it's all good. You're good at it, Peter. We see it every day in your premium deals. You do the math so we don't have to. You call the airlines so we don't have to. As long as you love doing things that we don't wanna do, like biking across Iowa- or calling Finnair, uh, we love you for it, man. Uh, can we help a listener? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Brie from Wisconsin wrote us. Uh, Brie said, "I am a Thrifty Traveler Premium subscriber." Thank you for that, Brie. "From my alerts, as well as the mentions on the show, I understand that sometimes you have to call or chat with Finnair to book partner award space. How do you even find that award space in the first place to know you should call or chat to take advantage?" Um, I guess we can start with Finnair in particular, Peter, and then maybe broaden it out a little bit, but how do you find award space so that you know when you have to call? Yeah, so the, the trick is here, you gotta focus on the airline you're looking to fly, and that, that will determine how you go and search for award availability. So with Fin- y- if you're trying to book with Finnair Aviuos, there are several airlines that they partner with that you cannot book on their website. You cannot search for availability on their website. So you'll need to, you know, use a different airline's website to find that availability. So I'll just go over the two major cases we, we usually talk about, is booking American Airlines flights with Finnair points. The best way to do that is to search Alaska. So you're trying to search on a different partner's website. So if it's an American Airlines flight you're looking to take, look on Alaska Airlines' website. If they can book that American Airlines flight Nine times out of 10, Finnair is gonna be able to book that flight as well. So that's really, it really de- depends on the airline you're looking to fly. In most cases, it c- gonna be Oneworld partners with Finnair, so using either American Airlines' website or Alaska Airlines' website to see if that airline can be booked by those air- with those miles, you know, with Alaska miles or American miles. Then you can most likely book it with Finnair over the phone. And the, the other case we use a lot is LATAM. Now, that's a special case. They have r- they are not part of any alliance, so the best way to search for that is to look on Virgin Atlantic's website. If Virgin Atlantic can book a LATAM flight, most likely you can book it with Finnair. So it's kind of a case-by-case basis, but you just gotta kinda know where to search for that airline. So, um, maybe to help Bree a little further, when you go to call an airline, what do you, what information do you come equipped with typically? After, of course, you're done with all the pleasantries, con- I was gonna say, these people know him- Yeah and probably what he's looking for. Yeah. So that's all taken care of. After you're, after you're done checking in on him and asking about the wife and kids, how, what, what do you go to next? Like, what are, what are, what's the information you have every time you call an airline to look for availability? Uh, you really, you want as much information as you can get. I mean, just get the, the date for sure. You want the, the flight number, the departure time, arrival time, um, you know, the route, of course, and then also how many passengers you wanna book, what class of service. And then you also need, for all the people you're booking with, you need their full name as it is on the passport and the date of birth. So you need to have all this information, your, your frequent flyer numbers. A lot of times they're gonna run through, you know, verification checks, so you just- You need to have as much as from information as you can basically on the flight. Yeah, I think that's, that's exactly right, and also just ask for exactly what you want when you're on the phone with an agent. Don't give the agent any leeway. Be like, "I'm looking for something like this or like that." Just tell them exactly what flight it is. If you think the award availability is there, if they come back and say there's absolutely nothing, you can maybe hang up and try again. Otherwise, you know, maybe, maybe they aren't actually seeing anything. But just know exactly what you want when you go into a phone call with an agent. Don't make it easy breezy. You're not there to chat, unlike Peter. I would just say I think the last thing to have would be to have at least two dates. Yeah. Because if, if the first one you check isn't there, you can of course hang up and call again, but maybe there's just a quirk with that one date. So if you have a backup date, something that will work, maybe not your ideal, feed that one. Be like, "Hey, can you check this date instead?" Same other details, and then that way you don't have to hang up and call again if you don't need to. Okay. Bree, I hope that that helps. If you want us to answer your questions on the podcast or if you have any feedback for us, hit us up at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We might feature your question on next week's show. Uh, to close the show, as always, we are going on the spot, and because we invited Peter here on his layover on the way back to San Diego via Iowa and Duluth, he's come up with an on-the-spot question for us. What do you have, Peter? All right, so at the beginning of the show, we talked about my bike ride across Iowa last week. Uh, my question for both of you is if you could pick one state to cycle across, which one would it be and why? Wow. One state to cycle across, which one would it be and why? I might... So this is not my answer. I'm s- I'm thinking out loud. I'm talking through it. Might, I love Montana so much, but man, the second half of that ride or the first half of that ride would be awful. Uh, the eastern part of Montana is not most beautiful country we have here. Um- You'd be going up some mountains, too. Yeah, it would be, it would be a steep climb either at the very end or at the very beginning, too. Uh, man, also Alaska, but, you know, a lot of wildlife concerns up there as well. I think maybe like a Oregon or a Washington. The climate's probably good enough that you're not gonna get too hot. I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm talking through it, but I think an Oregon or a Washington would be my answer. What about you, Kyle? The, the cheat answer would be the northern half of Idaho because it's 12 miles across. Ro- Rhode Island isn't too far behind that. I was kind of expecting an answer like that too. My, my honest answer would probably be- Colorado would be really fun because y- you get some mountains, and that would be really hard but beautiful. And then basically from Denver east, it's downhill- Yeah ... if you're on the right road. Right. Um, so then that would be pretty easy. Otherwise, it would be complicated, but I think Maine would be really fun. I mean, it's just such an awesome mix of completely, like, north woods and then just the most beautiful ocean views that you've ever seen. Um, so one of those two would be my real answer if I wasn't feeling like- Yeah ... the laziest person on earth- and said northern Idaho. That's such a funny answer. What, Peter, do you have one, other than Iowa, of course? Iowa for the 18th time. Yeah, Iowa again. No, um, hmm, I, yeah, another one. Let me think. Phew. I, I mean, I've wanted to cycle down the coast of California, the state that I'm living in. Mm. So that'd be super fun, I think. It'd take fore- It'll take a while. It'd be hard. You know, there are a lot of hills, but it'd be amazing. That's a good one. Yeah, that would be a really, really beautiful one. That was a really good on-the-spot, one of our best ever. Thank you, Peter. And thank you all so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice, and like and subscribe to the show on YouTube. Send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation. If you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We would love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team. Uh, this episode was produced by your favorite host, who by my count, uh, took credit for Katie Rollins' work four times in this episode- Gunnar Olsen. Sorry, Katie. It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next time. See ya. See ya.