I love my local airport. It’s MLI, sometimes known as the Moline Airport or as it’s officially called, the Quad Cities International Airport. What is great about this airport is that you can pretty much roll into a parking spot 20 minutes before boarding and be alright. I personally am not brave enough to try it, but I’m certain you’d be fine. TSA normally takes less than ten minutes and you can literally park just a couple hundred feet from the front door. There are only a dozen gates, so it only takes a couple minutes to get to your gate. Whenever it’s feasible, we try to fly out of MLI. If we can’t, we generally fly out of Chicago O’hare.
On the other hand, I really hate the whole experience of going to Chicago O’hare. It’s a three hour drive and the last hour is in white knuckle traffic. Then we have to park something like a dozen miles away and take a shuttle to the airport. Getting to O’hare is usually a four hour ordeal for us and we have to leave at least two hours for security and getting to the gate. There is nothing pleasant about having to leave your house six hours before boarding.
Booking award flights out of MLI however, is a little tricky. Flying to Europe on points, we usually find the best deals on KLM/Air France Flying Blue or with either Aer Lingus or Iberia Avios. None of those airlines fly out of MLI, but they all have direct flights from Chicago O’hare to Europe. There are only three airlines that will book with points out of MLI: United, American, and Delta.
This leaves us with three choices. The first is to book with one of the European carriers and deal with the whole ordeal of driving to Chicago. This isn’t great, not only because of the way there, but generally that means we’re trying to stay awake while driving home after a seven hour time change when returning from Europe.
The second option is to book a separate award flight to get to Chicago and book with a European carrier out of Chicago. The problem with the second option is that if something happens to your first flight, such as a delay, the second flight doesn’t care that your first flight is delayed, since it’s not their fault and frankly not their problem. When I’ve done this in the past, I’ve booked a day early just so we could make sure to get there in time.
The third option is to book the whole trip with one of the American carriers that fly out of MLI. The problem with the third option is that it’s often a whole lot of points. United Airlines consistently charges a premium for flying to a small airport, and I usually just look at their prices and laugh. Delta rarely has good award prices and when you find a deal you need to book them as a round-trip ticket to get good rates. American Airlines, however, continues to surprise me with great value on award flights out of MLI, although you do have to hunt a little for them.
Punishing Myself in Style
I’ve been a distance runner for about eight years now and I’m turning 50 next year. I decided that as a challenge to myself, I would run my first 50K during my 50th year. But let’s face it, I’m a travel hacker, if I’m going to do a 50K, of course I’m going to do it with a little style.
I decided to do the 50K which is one of the UTMB ultramarathons that are taking place in Nice, France. The race in the 50K category in Nice is actually a 54K with around 7,000 feet of elevation gain. This is going to hurt – honestly it’s probably bordering on self-torture. But hey, If I’m going to torture myself, why not do it in the hills overlooking Nice, Monaco and the Mediterranean Sea, right?
Searching for Flights
Now that I knew what I wanted to do, I needed to get there. I started my search the same way that I always do, by searching on PointsYeah from Chicago to wherever I want to go, in this case the Nice Airport, NCE. Right away I noticed that American Airlines had a 19,000 mile award from Chicago to NCE.
If I see that any of the major American carriers have a cheap flight from Chicago, I instantly change it to MLI, just to see if they also have a cheap flight to the Quad City Airport. Sure enough, American tacked on an extra leg and it was still 19,000 points and $11 in taxes. I immediately jumped on that.
Flying home, the best I could find was again an American Airlines flight from NCE to MLI for 30,000 points and $130 in taxes and fuel surcharges. Honestly, that’s not bad, but I decided to look around a little bit. I went on Flight Connections and filtered down to see where American Airlines flew directly from Europe to Chicago, knowing that there are multiple flights from Chicago to MLI every day.
I then used PointsYeah to check each of these cities to MLI to see if American Airlines had any other great deals. I wound up finding a flight from Dublin to MLI for 19,000 American Airlines miles and $47. This of course means that we will have to get from Nice to Dublin, but Aer Lingus is available for 6,500 Aer Lingus Avios and $37 in taxes.
Why would we position ourselves to a different country just to fly home? Well, I always like a bargain, but this also means we can spend a day or two in Dublin. I love the idea of having a stopover like this, because it really gives you a quick sample of a city so that you can know whether or not you would like to return later. Honestly, I feel like being cheap can actually make your trips better.
What We Are Paying Vs Cash Flights
Once we book the flight with Aer Lingus, which I’ll book for 6,500 Amex Membership Rewards points transferred to Aer Lingus Avios and $37 in taxes, we will have essentially booked the entire trip for 38,000 AAdvantage miles, 6,500 Membership Rewards points and $95 in fees for each ticket.
Booking the American Airlines portion of the flights with cash would have cost $1,091 if we booked it as a multi-city flight with an open jaw (a flight itinerary where you fly back from a different city from where you landed). The cost of the Aer Lingus flight was $162 for a one way flight from Nice to Dublin. Together, the itinerary was $1,253 booking with cash. That means we got a value of 2.6 cents per point for our award flights. Considering The Points Guy values American Airlines miles at 1.65 cents per point and Amex Membership Rewards points at 2 cents per point, I’d say we did pretty well on that redemption.
Creativity and Thrift Wins Again
When we first started travel hacking, we didn’t have a lot of points to throw around for our trips. On our first trip to Europe, we had to fly back from Stockholm because that was the only flight we had enough points to book, even though we were going to be in Italy. We ended up having to book a separate flight from Rome to Stockholm to make it work. It turned out to be great though, because we got to experience Sweden for a few days. It taught me that thinking outside of the box can allow you to enhance your trips while essentially being cheap.
This time we had the points to fly back directly from Nice, but by being creative with how we booked our flights, it allowed us to retain more of our valuable American Airlines miles and we were able to tack on a side quest to Ireland. Enhancing our trip while getting great value is a win win, even though after running the 50K, I probably won’t be able to walk by the time we get to Dublin.
Newby to Expert Traveler 