Points And Miles Give You Flexibility!
One of the best things about booking with points and miles is flexibility! We had previously booked IAD to Dublin with an 11 hour layover in Paris (which we were excited about) on Air France Business Class for 38k points a person one way booked with Virgin Atlantic (We caught a 30% transfer bonus from Amex a few months ago) and the taxes and fees were about $500 total for two. (The price of the flights were 97k points total for two without a transfer bonus) Yesterday I saw a post thanks to Frequent Miler that there was Delta One availability on Virgin for select routes. We were able to find 2 seats JFK to FRA for 50k points each and $5.60 in taxes. I transfered 3,000 points over from Chase to make up the difference in price. One phone call to Virgin and paying a $50 fee each to cancel the original flight. Then they booked us on our new flight. The remaining $400 in taxes and fees from the original flight will be refunded to us. Now we get to experience delta one and have a quicker route to Dublin. A direct positioning flight to JFK is about $100 each for us and a direct flight from Frankfurt to Dublin is only about $60 each. The taxes and fees we are refunded from the first flight will actually cover all that. We have been to Paris before and with the bed bug issue we decided it would be better just to get to Dublin as fast as we can. Now we should get to Dublin around Noon instead of at almost 11 at night! This is a reminder that when you book with points you have a ton of flexibility and always keep an eye out for a better deal or alternative route on an existing booking! Also this shows the power of using flexible points and miles. The same flight booked with delta would be 375,000 Delta miles. But by transferring your flexible credit card points to virgin atlantic you can book the same flight for only 50k points! And using the current 30% transfer bonus from Chase you would only need to transfer 39,000 Chase points to make it happen!