Continental Airlines/OnePass

So Our Hawaii Flights Now Cost $255

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060524 Hawaii Aloha Rocks

I love mileage and point collecting more and more everyday. While it is fun to jump through hoops to go after the latest offers to fill up our reward accounts, my favorite part is being able to turn around and use them to save our family hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Last year we were able to redeem a bounty of earned Continental and United miles to get not only our family of 4 to Hawaii with a multi-day stopover in LA for Disneyland, but also my in-laws. We will take the trip later this summer, and are still anxiously awaiting our departure.

I also want to clarify something though before I get into the heart of this post. When I tell people we are going to Hawaii/Disneyland for 2.5 week with our boys, they wonder if we are either insane, or how we were able to afford the trip without winning the lottery. I am assuming it is their trip envy kicking in. The reason we are going for so long is because of miles and points. It is because we have very few hard costs for the Hawaii trip. Miles have paid for our mainland flights, and points were used for all of hotel nights while in Oahu. We have already saved thousands of dollars using miles and points! That is money that can be used for all types of other things on vacation, let alone staying a couple of extra days.

In addition, a lot of the miles and points we earned were for free via promotions, credit card bonuses, or doing things we would do normally. We are a normal, middle-class income family and are not sitting on mountains of cash to be able to jettison all across the world. We are doing rewarding family vacations by smartly using miles and points.

I hear from people over and over again how difficult they think it is to redeem miles and points, most without even ever trying. Or if they did attempt to try, it was by simply calling up the airline and saying I want to leave on these days, can I redeem miles? More than likely the success ratio will be small.

Redemption of miles and points take a lot of patience and flexibility. Once I knew we had plenty of miles and points in our accounts to start looking at redeeming them for Hawaii, the process took a while to complete. Every day I would check Continental and United’s reward availability to see if any cheap redemption options showed up in the system.

The key was to check every airport within a several hour radius, and be flexible for what flight going could be paired with a return flight home. The only restrictions we had were 1) the trip had to occur during the summer, and 2) we wanted to go for around 2 weeks. I had our preference to leave out of our home airport in Cleveland (CLE), but I knew in reality we might not get it using miles.

Then that one day, availability in and out of Chicago opened up for reward using the lowest level award tickets available. We have driven back and forth to Chicago many times, and it’s an easy drive, so we instantly took advantage of finally finding a low-level redemption to Hawaii. We paid our $30 in ticketing fees and were on our way to land of hula and surfing.

Most people at that point would chalk up the success and move on to the next part of the trip. For the most part I did; however, I also knew driving back and forth to Chicago would take almost 6 hours each way and cost at least $150 in gas and tolls, let alone parking at the airport for 2.5 weeks. Plus after all that flying on the way back home, do we really want to sit in a vehicle for another 6 hours to get home? Not ideal with little ones, and all of us more than likely will be extremely exhausted.

So I continued to watch for reward availability in and out of Cleveland around the same days we already had booked. Everyday certain legs of the trip I could see slowly open up, but I could never piece together a full itinerary. Again, this is where patience, and flexibility came into play. Finally, this week, there is was staring back at me. Luckily, it was not a fiscal fast day, or I would have been struggling.

I was able to form a plan of super saver fares getting us back and forth to Hawaii, in and out of Cleveland, and still with our stop over in LA for Disneyland. This is another reason I love the flexibility in miles redemption. If I had purchased the tickets outright with cash, I would have been faced with probably $100+ change fee per ticket. By using miles, the key was that the change in itinerary cost us ZERO more miles! The only thing we had to pay was a $75/ticket change fee ($225 total). So now we have paid a total of $255 ($225 + $30 original fees) for our tickets to Hawaii.

Was it worth the extra cost?

ABSOLUTELY! The convenience alone was worth the extra $225. As I mentioned above, driving back and forth and parking would have easily set us back more than the change fees. I knew all this in advance, and that was also why I felt comfortable originally ticketing in and out of Chicago as I knew we could either 1) get to Chicago easily and affordably if needed, or 2) it was still cheap to switch the tickets around if availability opened up.

Now it is true that we now leave a day earlier than before on the way going to Los Angeles (LAX); we originally left on a Saturday afternoon, and now leave late Friday night. So we will need to get an extra night of hotel. Even with that cost factored in, we still felt extremely comfortable making the switch and it will save us a lot of time and convenience for the sake of the boys (and sleepy mom and dad).

So the overall thing I want to instill in everyone is to not expect a quick and easy reward ticketing process every time. Finding that dream vacation for free, or really cheap takes effort, like anything of value. I love the hunt and the planning process for large vacations, and when I can use miles and points to make it happen for my family for next to no cost, it is all the more rewarding. Save Money, Travel More.

Mileage and Reward Points Status (January 2012)

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This is our monthly recap where we look at what reward programs we were able to add miles or points to over the previous period. While we continue to be all about ways to earn really cheap or free airline miles and hotel reward points, we have shifted our “collecting” mindset into spending over the past months. What fun is earning all these rewards if you never spend them. With all the really great credit card rewards being offered for signing up for new cards, airlines have slowly been increasing their redemption rates and/or making it more difficult to spend those rewards. So we are trying to use some of our stash to help plan the next family vacation. To read proof how collecting miles/points can work for your family, read our post on how we are going to Hawaii (and Disneyland) for $30 in total cost for the flights.

We have really dwindled down a lot of our accounts because of the Hawaii trip, but that is what the miles and points are for, right? So far, we have received our mainland flights and all of our hotel nights on Oahu for absolutely “free” using miles and points in various programs.

With our last credit card churn back in October, we are gearing up for our first official multi-card churn this month. United announced the merging of Continental accounts will start in March, so I want to get at least the United Explorer cards before my Continental cards try and convert. We will also probably be trying for several other cards too. Stay tuned later this month.

Below is where we stand at month end.

[easychart type=”line” height=”300″ width=”350″ title=”Mile/Point Status (As of 1/31/12)” groupnames=”Delta,United,Continental,USAirways,American,Hilton,Intercontinental,SPG” valuenames=”Jan2011,Feb2011,Mar2011,Apr2011,May2011,June2011,July2011,Aug2011,Sept2011,Oct2011,Nov2011,Dec2011,Jan2012″ group1values=”69447,69447,70447,70947,70947,70947,71007,71097,71197,71287,71377,71465,71555″ group2values=”100043,100043,108043,108059,108059,109059,109059,109059,110115,58569,58569,58570,117079″ group3values=”67333,67333,67333,67333,67333,67433,68433,68433,68433,0,0,45040,8″ group4values=”8018,8020,11759,13778,13778,13778,13899,13977,14090,28713,41516,46578,46678″ group5values=”0,300,600,600,600,4600,6500,9500,17000,19500,20000,20500,20500″ group6values=”11679,11679,21979,24479,24479,26297,26297,26297,26297,26547,26547,26547,26547″ group7values=”29271,29271,29271,29271,167571,169571,173571,173571,174071,174071,174071,1071,1071″ group8values=”0,0,0,0,0,0,16,34,294,294,360,360,360″]

The following is a brief summary of the things we have done in the past month to build up our accounts.

Delta SkyMiles– Audience Rewards trivia questions in all three of our accounts.

United Mileage Plus- The great Gilt.com promotion credited. The accounts also will seem skewed in relation to the Continental accounts, because we moved all of the miles over into United.

Continental OnePass- Again we cleared all of our miles out by moving them over into United. There is also a very small credit of 6 miles from converting our last Best Buy Reward Zone points from 2011 via points.com.

US Airways Dividend Miles– Audience Rewards accounted for most of the miles posting to each of our accounts. There also was a points.com conversion of Best Buy Reward Zone points that credited in January.

American Airlines AAdvantage– No change.

Hilton HHonors– No change, but this month I expect a bump because of the mobile promotion from January.

Priority Club Rewards- Every month I dread going to the Priority Club or IHG websites because they are horribly slow. Just trying to sign in to our account takes forever. No change.

Starwood Preferred Guest– Our account has not been credited with SPG points via Audience Rewards going all the way back to the end of Nov. 2011. I am trying to track down whether this is a local issue, or a system wide failure.

Note, we also have reward accounts with AirTran, Southwest, Frontier, Choice Hotels, Wyndham Rewards, and various other programs, but since we do not really use them, there is little advantage in including them in this list.

The point of showing these reports each month is to show you that every little bit of miles and point collecting can really add up to big rewards. It is never to late to sign-up and start collecting for your future travel needs. Thanks for reading! Save Money, Travel More.

Continental OnePass Card Holders 50% Bonus Miles

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Do you think Continental is fighting for a chance to stay alive amid the merger with United? Back in October my wife and I each opened up new OnePass personal credit cards for the stellar 50,000 miles each offer. After making our first purchases, I actually just threw them in the safe the other day until I can figure out when would be a good time to shut them down prior to them transitioning over to the United Explorer cards. The big thing is I do not want to risk not being able to get the United Explorer bonus in the future if the cards would switch.

Well now Chase is making it harder for me to not use the card. In the mail, my wife and I each received the below announcement that from January 4 to March 4, 2012, we will now earn 50% more miles on all purchases.

50% Continental Offer

So Continental purchases will now net us 3 miles per dollar, and purchases everywhere else will bring in 1.5 miles per dollar. While it is not a huge increase, the Continental Cards now carry a high likelihood of working their way back into our wallets. The Discover More and Miles cards we use only net us 1% back with the excepting of the 5% rotating categories on the More card and 2% back on the Miles cards. Therefore, for everyday spend outside of the Discover premium categories, we are better off using the Continental cards.

As I sit and relish in the thought of raking in more miles, I also begin to wonder.

1) Is this promotion the start of a new trend with Chase? Are we likely see higher earning potentials as the new standard? Or does Chase know that we have not used the cards a ton within the first couple months and really want to win our business?

2) Is this really an effort for Chase to try and unload a ton of extra Continental OnePass miles that they are sitting on prior to rolling over the card to United? Maybe we might see some other new promotions out there to help gather up all those unwanted miles. Maybe it is the other way around and Continental is trying to sell as many cheap miles at discount as they can before the merger?

I really think it is a combination of both scenarios in item 2. Whatever the reason, we will be switching our spending over to Continental and Chase while our Discover cards take a well needed break.

Edit: This is a targeted offer. You may be able to call up Chase and have them apply it to your account, but it is YMMV.