Free flights to London
After I booked our Norway cruise and got everything set up, my parents decided to join us. They do not get casino deals (yet anyway) but I looked to see if we could get them free flights and a good deal on the cruise.
Once I determined the cruise was in their price range, I got to work. I contacted our cruise agent Mary Kennedy at Sunny Breezes and she worked on finding the best deal possible on the cruise I was booked on for my parents. While she did that I started looking at my parents’ points inventory.
My mom sent me two things that caught my eye. They had over 70,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards and over 85,000 Capital One points. I knew that we could pull this off. Since I had just booked the same flights the day before I knew which flights I wanted to book. However, my parents don’t have American Express Membership rewards so I devised a new plan for the new flights. I love cards like American Express, Chase Sapphire, and Capital One which have many transfer partners. You can make so much happen with these points they are so versatile.
For my parents my strategy had to be different so here is what I did:
I had booked a Delta ticket for my flight to London. My parents had Capital One points from a new sign-up bonus (see more here). I transferred 65,000 points to Airfrance and booked the same Delta flight for them that I am already on. I had used the website Point.me the day before and discovered the day before was the best way to do this.
I moved Chase points to Virgin Atlantic to pay for their flights home from London. Chase has a promotion with Virgin Atlantic right now to move ultimate rewards and get a 40% bonus. The flights we needed were 60,000 points for 2. Thanks to the bonus we only had to move around 43,000 instead of 60.
After we got all the flights booked we reached back out to Mary at Sunny Breezes. She put the deposit down on the room she had on hold. Her quote was several hundred less than what I found on the Princess website. I was super appreciative that she moved quickly. When dealing with points time is of the essence and Mary was with us the whole way!
