How I Scored 2 Free Flights to Maui

Warning: Illegal string offset 'caption' in /home/breadc7/public_html/dir/wp-includes/media.php on line 1698

Warning: Cannot assign an empty string to a string offset in /home/breadc7/public_html/dir/wp-includes/media.php on line 1698

Warning: Illegal string offset 'caption' in /home/breadc7/public_html/dir/wp-includes/media.php on line 1698

Warning: Cannot assign an empty string to a string offset in /home/breadc7/public_html/dir/wp-includes/media.php on line 1698

I am still buzzing about my most recent travel hacking win. I scored two free flights to Maui this week! The cheapest similar flights I could find online were running around $800, making this particular travel hack incredibly fruitful. $1,600 in free flights anyone? Yes please!

Here’s How I Did It:

Last Fall Garren and I both signed up for the American Express Gold Delta Skymiles Card when they were offering their 50,000 miles sign-up bonus. Garren was very skeptical at first. It took a lot of convincing and I may or may not have signed him up without his full participation, but in the end we were both Amex cardholders. All we had to do was spend $1,000 in the first 3 months, which was easy (maybe too easy). After 3 months we got our 50,000 bonus miles credited to our Delta Skymiles account, which is Delta’s frequent flyer program. We had the miles, so then it was just a matter of finding the right flight to use them.

After our trip to India, we’d been thinking a more relaxing destination was in order, so naturally Hawaii fit the bill. I went to Delta’s search engine, selected “Show Price in Miles”, and entered our preferred travel dates. Checking the “My Dates are Flexible” box is perhaps the most important part of this whole process. I chose “5 Weeks” instead of “Flexible Days,” which allowed me to browse the calendar view to see when flights were cheapest and to help gauge whether I was getting a good deal.

Even though I normally travel with Garren, I always search flights for one traveler because sometimes there is only one seat left in a certain fare class, and you won’t see those cheaper fares if you search for 2 travelers. I hit “Find Flights” and waited with fingers crossed.

Oh, how I love a good deal. And I love hunting for one even more. I browsed through flights, toggling from month to month, and found that the fares were never lower than 45,000 miles, and the highest fares went above 100,000 miles. Last minute fares were sky high and dropped around one month out, but only if you were flexible with your travel dates. They climbed until about five months out, when they dropped down to the 45,000-60,000 range and stayed there.

When I hit early December (my preferred travel dates) my heart jumped. There it was, a 45,000 mile fare! There was just one seat left at that fare, so I booked it and a second one at 50,000 miles using each of our Skymiles sign up bonuses. I had to make the two purchases seperately to get the 45,000 mile fare, but because Delta lets you choose your seats, I was still able to get us seats together for every leg of the journey. So, simply by signing up for the Amex Gold Delta Skymiles Card, and using it for normal spending, we had snagged two free flights to paradise!

Technically it wasn’t completely free, since Delta charges a small fee, but I think we can all agree that $11.20 is a negligible amount when we’re talking about a round trip flight to Hawaii.

If you want to try this out for yourself, Amex is currently offering a 30,000 mile sign up bonus, but unless you are in a rush I would wait until they offer something a little bigger. I’ve even seen private offers with sign up bonuses as high as 70,000 miles for the same card. If I see anything, I’ll post it on the Facebook page so you can all reap the benefits and get your own flights to paradise! So follow along and hit that like button!

Update: If you send your name and email to me at sonja(at)breadcrumbsguide(dot)com I can refer you and get you this offer from Delta:

50,000 bonus miles after they use their new Card to make $2,000 in purchases within the first 3 months and a $50 statement credit after they make a Delta purchase with their new Card within the first 3 months. Limited time offer ends 7/6/2016.

Shoot me an email and I’ll get you that free flight!

The other great thing about the American Express Gold Delta Skymiles Card is that once you earn miles, they go straight to your Delta Skymiles account and are no longer tied to the credit card. That way you can cancel the card once you’ve earned the sign up bonus and avoid the $95 annual fee (which is waived the first year). Garren cancelled his a few months ago without an impact on his credit score, and I’ll probably cancel mine before the first year is up. We are now both using two more travel rewards cards to earn more miles towards free travel!

Have you ever dabbled in travel hacking? What free travel deals have you scored?