Why yes that is a Middle Economy Seat on a flight across the Atlantic Ocean. At least I paid only 11,000 points and $160 for it! Photo by: Evan Berman

I mostly write about ways to get outsize value from points and miles, such as flying Emirates First Class or Turkish Business Class for a fraction of the cash price. But there’s an oft overlooked benefit of having a stash of transferable points and miles and of using them to cover travel expenses. Let’s talk about the safety net of points and miles.

I Missed a (Long International) Flight

I recently embarked on a 3.5 week long Round The World international trip. I had a blast and look forward to sharing my experiences with you. I always strive to be candid, from talking about the time I lost my passport to giving the expenses to the exact $1, so I want to share how missing a flight impacted me and how I reacted.

As I wrapped up my time in the Middle East, I had a couple of hours in Dubai before the next flight. I was heading to Doha, Qatar before flying Qatar Business Class to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Unfortunately, a combination of traffic and getting stuck inside the largest mall in the world, the Dubai Mall, I arrived at the airport too late to check a bag and there was no Business Class award space from Doha to Sao Paulo. No matter where you fly from in Europe or the Middle East to Brazil, it is more than 10 hours and I was not looking forward to taking that long-haul flight in the back.

So, it was 11:30pm in Dubai on Saturday September 9th. I had already taken time off from work for this trip and was scheduled to return to work on Monday. While I have worked in Europe before, I was not going to be able to fly back to the US any later than Sunday night. I had exactly 1 day to fly back from the Middle East to the US on a Sunday at the tail end of peak Summer travel season! Fun, right?

Don’t Panic, Use Your Points!

The first thing that I did was buy a charging adaptor that worked in the UAE. This was going to take a minute and my phone was at 3%! Once I was situated and found a chair to sit down and check flights, I got to work. I searched Google Flights, using the explore mode. No city in the US offered a flight from Dubai for less than $1,200! That’s a lot more than I want to pay for an economy flight! So, points it was. I quickly came up with a plan because DXB (Dubai International Airport) flies more international flights than any other airport in the world so connecting to somewhere is easy! Here it was:

Start Searching for Europe/North Africa to US Flights

There are many more direct US flights than the Middle East which only offers flights on Qatar ex-Doha (DOH), EgyptAir ex-Cairo (CAI), Emirates ex-Dubai (DXB), and Etihad ex-Abu Dhabi (AUH)). My plan was to search for any last minute Business or First Class availability from Europe or North Africa to the US. The routes I specifically searched were:

• London (LON)-New York (NYC). The advantage here is that both cities have multiple airports and offer better than average premium cabin award availability.
  • I searched this using United’s site for Star Alliance flights, American Airlines’ site for oneworld flights, and Air France’s site for SkyTeam flights. No business class availability that fit my schedule (and was reasonably prices mileage-wise) was found.
• Frankfurt (FRA) and Munich (MUC)-Boston (BOS), Washington DC (IAD), New York (EWR and JFK), Miami (MIA), Houston (IAH), Atlanta (ATL), Toronto (YYZ) and Chicago (ORD) using United and Air Canada’s sites.
  • There was a Lufthansa First Class award on FRA-BOS and MUC-IAD but both left Germany in the morning, meaning it would be a mad dash to fly to Germany, clear customs, and get through immigration in both directions with enough time to board. In short, it was not going to happen!
• Paris (CDG) and Amsterdam (AMS)- New York (EWR and JFK), Boston (BOS), Chicago (ORD), Miami (MIA), Houston (IAH), Dallas (DFW), Atlanta (ATL), Toronto (YYZ), Montréal (YUL), and Detroit (DTW) using Air France’s site.
  • Unfortunately, I only found economy awards and ridiculously priced business class awards (i.e. 400,000 miles for a one-way flight). Thankfully, there are many of these flights each day to the focus cities such as New York and Boston. Keep this in mind ;).
• Madrid (MAD)- New York (EWR and JFK), Boston (BOS), Chicago (ORD), Miami (MIA), Philadelphia (PHL), Dallas (DFW), Atlanta (ATL), and Toronto (YYZ) using American Airlines’ site.
  • No business class availability was found for Iberia (what I was hoping for). There were expensive priced awards either on British Airways, transferring at LHR, or on American metal for 400,000 miles!
• Istanbul (IST)- New York (EWR and JFK), Boston (BOS), Chicago (ORD), Miami (MIA), Houston (IAH), Dallas (DFW), Atlanta (ATL), Toronto (YYZ), Seattle (SEA), and Detroit (DTW) using United and Air Canada’s sites.
  • I found no business class availability on Turkish Airlines flights to the US in Business Class. That means I could have booked a flight for 105,000 Turkish Miles & Smiles Miles, but that would be a terrible deal and no seats were available for purchase at the 45,000 mile level.

It was frustrating. There were several Business and First Class Awards to book but I either could not get to the departure airport in time to make the flight back to the US or the availability was for Monday or Tuesday. I eventually settled on this Air France flight from Paris to Boston in Economy.

Well, I didn’t pay $5,100! 😉 Remember when I mentioned searching for award availability for Air France on the CDG-BOS route? Well, here is the economy award availability: (Keep in mind that the cash price above is for a non-existent Business Class seat. The flight was completely full, there were no empty seats. This was truly the last seat available).

Now that this was complete, I needed to get to Paris. Thankfully, I had almost the entire day– Dubai is 2 hours ahead of Paris and I found this flight at roughly 1am.

Then, Find the Flight to the Airport Where I would be Flying to the US

Much like the concept of booking a positioning flight works in the US (ex. flying to Seattle from Charleston to head to Eastern Europe or to New York to head down to Santiago, Chile, despite the distance), I needed to get the “long-haul” flight back to the US booked before figuring out how to get there. With the condensed schedule, it would do me little good to find a cheap flight to Athens, for example, if I needed to fly home from London. After I knew I needed to get from Dubai to Paris, it was a lot easier to proceed!

Again, I started with cash flights on Google Flights:

I shifted to award searching. There are a couple of options: Air France and Emirates fly directly to Paris from Dubai, but both would get into CDG too late to catch the return flight to the US. If you can make a stop, there are a couple of logical options, based on geography: Turkish Airlines via Istanbul, Aegean Airlines via Athens,or Swiss Airlines via Zurich. Neither of the last two fit into my time pattern so option #1 it was! Here’s a second Google Flights screenshot featuring the flight that I ended up choosing at the bottom:

Thankfully, I had 45,000 Turkish Miles in my account from a cancelled business class flight I had booked. The (mileage) price was steep for two economy flights, in fact more than double the price in miles of the Air France award to Boston.

I did not grab a screenshot of the booking process, but it was 27,500 points more to fly in Business Class. Had I been able to take advantage of the Lounges at IST again, I would have splurged for the more comfortable seat and better service. Instead, I flew Turkish in Economy and saved the miles for better uses (such as 45k miles to fly Star Alliance Business Class one-way to Europe from the US). The AED 450 comes to $122.52, for reasonable taxes & fees.

Booking and Time to Check-In

After finding these two flights, it was time to book. The total came to 12,750 Flying Blue Miles and 27,500 Turkish Miles. As mentioned above, I transferred no miles to Turkish Miles as I had enough. At the time, AmEx was offering a 25% bonus to transfer points to Air France/KLM FlyingBlue.

In all, I used 11,000 AmEx Membership Rewards points and $260.03 as well as 27,500 miles from the existing pile to get from Dubai to Boston via Istanbul and Paris! I booked the flights and got through security and on my way to Paris via Istanbul.

Takeaways:

This may be controversial but the optimal number of flights to miss is not 0. If you fly often (as I do), you are faced with a choice: get to the airport early and never* (nothing is guaranteed in life!) miss a flight or get to the airport sometime before boarding begins/bag drop ends and miss a flight every now and then. If you follow this advice, know that sometimes you will miss a flight. Always be prepared and have a backup plan! Otherwise, be content to waste your life sitting and waiting in an airport– make sure to get good lounge access! 😉

I had less than 24 hours to find a way to get from Dubai to the US. While Business Class or First Class did not work out, I was able to find a ticket all the way to Boston for just 11,000 AmEx Membership Rewards and 27,500 Turkish Miles and $260.03. This included a nearly 8.5 hour economy flight from Paris to Boston. Less than ideal, but so much better than paying $1,000+!

Hopefully you never have to worry about missing a flight and rebooking a new one. But, if you do, this provides a good framework to take the stress out of it! Have you ever missed an important long-haul flight? If so, did you get on the next one the airline offered or how did you resolve the issue?

Evan