How To Save 34K Points Flying Roundtrip

Don't always think when you want to book a flight you can only book it through that airline.

For example, in my previous article, 'Use Points or Spend $32k to Fly Business Class', we want to fly from Detroit; DTW, to New York; JFK roundtrip on Delta Airlines.

For the 3 Lyle Travelers, this is going to cost us 69K Delta SkyMiles +$33.40 USD in fees.

However, just like I did when I looked into booking an American Airlines flight via searching on Qatar Airways website, I can do the same thing here and search via another airline that is part of the same alliance as Delta; which for this particular round trip from DTW-JFK, I can search Delta flights via Virgin Atlantic website.

And here were the results, the same flight, flying on Delta Airlines, but shows up on Virgin Atlantic, AND for much less miles!

And as you can see, I can fly each of us to New York from Detroit, for only 7,500 miles + $17.22 in fees each.

And the same when coming back to Detroit from New York, just 7,500 miles for each us + $17.22 in fees each.

For a total of only 45,000 miles & points + $103.32 USD for the 3 LYLE Travelers.

Just like I did with converting American Express US Membership Rewards (MR) to Delta SkyMiles at a 1:1 conversion, I can also convert Amex MR to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points at a 1:1 conversion.

By doing this, we just saved 24,000 miles & points.

But wait, there is more!

If you wait for bonus promotions, such as the one Virgin Atlantic is running right now with American Express, you can end up using even less points.

For instance, the Amex US Membership Rewards program has once again launched a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club!

This means that instead of converting 7,500 Amex Rewards points to Delta SkyMiles, you only have to convert 5,769 Amex Rewards Points for each ticket. For a grand total of only

34,615 Amex Membership Reward points needing to be converted to SkyMiles, vs. 45,000 SkyMiles needing to be converted.

Which ends up now saving us 34,385 miles & points from our original booking through Delta, where it would've cost us 69,000 SkyMiles.

What do you think about that!?