Jan 20 (edited) in Flight Bookings
Delta One Suites Flight Example
Another great example of the power of points and miles when transferring out to transfer partners.
Found a really great points flight for someone. Wanted to share it with you guys. Please read to the end for all the details.
I found 3 seats in Delta One Suites from West Coast to Australia for April 2024.
(They are still available as I post this)
I was contacted about someone looking for 3 seats to Australia from Washington DC in April 2024.
For those of you that know the points and miles world you know this is a hard ask. This last minute and looking for 3 seats is near impossible. But I gave it my all.
Best results for points bookings I usually find 354 days out. Best results for New Zealand and Australia are normally found from the east coast. Don't be afraid of a cheap cash positioning flight to the airport where you can find a points deal out if. So many people don't find deals because of lack of flexibility in dates, departure or arrival airports, or only looking to fly Direct from point A to Point B.
The client was about to book economy flights for 3 people from DC to Sydney for 600k Amex points in the portal for 3 people round trip in Economy. ($6,000 cash price, Amex points only worth 1 cent per point in portal) They reached out to me wanting to find business class.
So I looked on my normal favorite tool seats.aero to see what I could find. Nothing from the East Coast so moved to the West.
I was able to find an awesome deal with all things considered.
3 seats from LAX to Sydney in Delta One Suites
Round Trip.
April 16th
165k points and $37.90 one way per person
Return April 29th
165k and $90 one way per person
990k points and $354
The cash price of these same flights is almost $29,000 dollars.
Sometimes you can find these flights as low as 80-90k one way per person through Qantas or other partners but this is an incredible deal for a last minute flight for 3 that is near impossible to find. Other times I see them in the 100k-130k range on Qantas.With the cheaper options normally it's only 1 or 2 seats available. It all depends on many factors. For best results I like to search as far out as possible 355 days in advance for most airlines.
Around 2.88 cents per point in value. Almost 3 times the value you would find in the Amex portal.
These flights would be book in the Virgin Atlantic Program.
You would make an account with Virgin Atlantic.
Login and locate the flights you want.
Confirm sest availability and price.
Transfer your points to Virgin Atlantic from Amex.
Finish booking on Virgin Atlantic.
These same round trip flights if available in Amex Portal would be 2,900,000 points! (1 cent per point)
The same flights within Delta are 410,000 points one way per person. 820,000 round trip per person.
For 3 people 1,230,000 points one way. 2,460,000 round trip.
Virgin Atlantic is almost always a cheaper way to book Delta One seats than Delta itself.
They would also need to book cash or points positioning flights to the West Coast from DC. I found non stop flights to LAX round trip for $200-300 a person.
In the end the client was not able to be flexible enough for these dates and decided to book the original economy flights for 600k points. Which means these flights are still up for grabs!
See all the screenshots below for proof and details. Hopefully someone is able to snatch these flights up before they get booked. They are pricey in terms of normal prices but a great deal for Delta One Suites and last minute flights.
Hopefully you learned a few things from this post that will help you when it comes time to redeem your points and miles!
If you have any questions comment below!
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Delta One Suites Flight Example
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