Fly With Points

From Dreaming to Doing: Our Tokyo Trip on a Budget with Points and Miles!

We haven’t talked much about the value of points and miles yet, but I would love to tell you about this trip Alyssa and I are currently on. As I write this article, I’m sitting on 777-300 in business class, flying ANA from Chicago O'Hare to Narita, Japan. This is not a humblebrag; instead, we want to explain how easy it can be to get outstanding deals through points and miles if done correctly.

We decided to plan a quick trip to Japan a few months ago after searching Google.com/flights and finding which airline flew from our home airport (MSP) to Tokyo and we discovered that Delta had a direct flight. After pulling the flight information up, we realized Delta wanted 300k SkyMiles per person plus $51 for taxes and fees for each roundtrip to book that flight or $3,442.00 per person. So, we decided to check all of Delta’s partners. (See our Mastering the Skies post for more details after finding the same flight on Virgin Atlantic and AirFrance). We decided to go with the best deal, AirFrance (Flying Blue Miles), at 81k Miles per person roundtrip and $54.85 for taxes and fees each. Click the picture below for a video of the process.

We booked this by transferring our American Express membership rewards points to Flying Blue through the transfer program.

After transferring the points, we booked a non-stop flight from Minneapolis to Haneda, Japan. Even though we booked this with Flying Blue Miles (AirFrance), the flight was operated by Delta, which works out great for us because Alyssa and I currently have Platinum status with Delta, which gets us upgraded to Delta comfort almost instantly as long as there are seats available. Delta Comfort gets you more legroom for those who don't know. Alyssa is 6’1; she needs extra legroom, priority boarding, and free drinks, which we love. This may sound ridiculous, but we hoped this would be our backup flight.

*Pro-Tip: Book any award flight that fits your travel itinerary and is a good value for your points and miles. “Check the details,” but typically, you can cancel them with minimal fees.

A week later, I looked around for business class seats to and from Japan around the exact dates of our Delta flight. Sure enough, I found a flight on the American Airlines website operated through Japan Airlines. It was from Haneda to Chicago Ohare for 60k AA miles and $44.55. I decided to book this flight after comparing American Airlines to Japan Airlines' other alliance partners. If we had purchased this ticket in cash, it would have cost us $4690.57 per person. See the picture of the Japan Airline screenshot below.

We always look at what each point's value is at redemption.  To calculate a point value, you take the cash price minus any taxes and fees, then divide it by the number of points. In this case, we had a value of 7.7 cents per point. That’s awesome!!!!  Typically, a good value is somewhere in the ballpark of 2 cents per point.

At this point (I know it sounds ridiculous), we had our roundtrip booked with Delta Comfort and a one-way business class booked home with Japan Airlines…We still needed to find a flight to Tokyo in order to cancel our roundtrip flight with Delta. We couldn't just cancel one leg of our round-trip itinerary without canceling the whole flight. I knew that ANA operated out of Japan, so I started looking into their flight schedule from Chicago O'Hare to Haneda or Narita. After figuring out that they operated one flight daily to both airports and were opening business class award availability about seven days before the travel date, we set up a few flight notifications through Expert Flyer.

Eight days before our scheduled Delta flight, I found a flight on ANA through their partner airline, United. (YAY!)

*Pro-Tip: Award availability typically opens up around 9 a.m. in the local time of that airline.  Also, if you find availability for a specific flight through an alliance partner, all their partners should have access to the same award flight.

Once I found availability on United, I decided to call Virgin Atlantic and book the flight. But wait, Virgin Atlantic isn’t an alliance partner of ANA, but they currently have a partnership.  I know it’s confusing and weird, but it is a great thing. It is one of the best values out there. After the phone call, we booked a Virgin Atlantic flight operated by ANA for 47,500 miles and $203 ea. Unfortunately, you can’t book ANA flights on the Virgin Atlantic website. So a phone call was necessary, which took about thirty-five minutes from start to finish. This flight was in business class from Chicago O'Hare to Narita, Japan, with a cash value of $8997.20 per person. Wow!!!

After booking both business class flights, we canceled our FlyingBlue (Delta) flight for $56 each.

After the cancelation fee and taxes, we still received 12.45 cents per mile for both flights. Again, value is calculated by taking the cash price minus all the taxes and fees, divided by the number of points.

Total cost for 2 tickets: $27,375.54

What we paid:

• 215,000 points
• $495.10 in taxes and fees
• Plus $112.00 in order to cancel our Delta Flight

These flights were the best value we have ever received from our points, and this trip was amazing!